Spain Blocks 65,000 Short-Term Rentals in Escalating Battle With Airbnb Over Affordable Housing

Thousands of travelers hoping to spend a few days in Spain this summer could find their holidays in limbo after the Spanish government, responding to residents’ complaints about the lack of affordable housing, ruled that thousands of Airbnb listings are illegal and must be canceled.Spain’s consumer rights ministry on Monday ordered Airbnb to block 65,935 listings that it claims are against the law. The ministry has sent Airbnb’s Irish subsidiary three resolutions in recent months notifying it of illegal tourist accommodations detected on its platform and ordered ads for them to be blocked.Airbnb appealed to the courts to avoid the block, but the Madrid High Court of Justice has upheld the first of three orders. The ruling affects accommodations in Andalusia, Madrid, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Basque Country, and Catalonia’s capital, Barcelona.Consumer affairs officials cited three reasons to justify the illegality of the 65,935 listings, among them their lack of license numbers or incorrect numbers and the failure of others to indicate whether the landlords are professionals or individuals.Airbnb has not responded to a request for comment from The New York Sun.Spain’s consumer minister, Pablo Bustinduy, says his goal is to end the widespread lack of control and “illegality” of tourist accommodations, as well as to facilitate access to housing for local residents. Spain is suffering from a widespread housing affordability crisis.Protests have taken place for months across the country, with Spaniards complaining about rising housing costs. More than 150,000 took part in a protest in Madrid last month. Chanting, “Get Airbnb out of our neighborhoods,” they blame online rental platforms for the lack of affordable long-term rental properties.Rents have doubled in Spain in the past decade, a European Union travel monitoring agency, ETIAS, reports. “They’re kicking all of us out to make tourist flats,” a senior citizen from a Madrid neighborhood now dominated by vacation rentals, Margarita Aizpuru, says. Barcelona’s mayor, Jaume Collboni, has ordered a total ban on tourism rentals by 2028, Reuters reported.American cities have had their own battles with Airbnb. Irvine, California, Portland, Maine, and Durango, Colorado, are among the cities that have implemented regulations, taxes, and zoning policies to restrict or eliminate short-term rentals .The number of short-term rentals also has exploded in Hawaii, which attracts millions of tourists a year. “On Maui alone, 52 percent of homes are sold to nonresidents, and 60 percent of condos and apartments have gone to investors and second homeowners,” a Stanford researcher, Noah Jordan Magbual, reports. “The once indigenous population of the Hawaiian archipelago are now outcasts in their own home.” Hawaii now has the second highest homelessness rate in the country.America’s largest city might be going in the other direction on regulating short-term rentals. In 2022, New York City’s city council made it more difficult for homeowners to rent rooms through short-term rental services by passing a “draconian” law with a maze of new regulations. The rules were supported by the hotel industry. Now, with prices on hotel rooms skyrocketing in the city, lawmakers are considering a walk back of some of those regulations, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Spain Blocks 65,000 Short-Term Rentals in Escalating Battle With Airbnb Over Affordable Housing

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