The managers of legal tourist apartments in Catalonia are going on a counterattack. Because for years a good part of the political class of this country and a lot of related citizen associations have blamed them for all the problems in relation to access to housing. And the decree law of the Generalitat that basically empowers city councils to revoke licenses has already raised all the spears.
The Catalan Federation of Tourist Apartments (Federatur) held a debate this Monday at the Col·legi d’Economistes de Catalunya to warn that the restrictions will not make it easier for young people to find an apartment. In fact, they implied, as long as the administrations insist on using tourist apartments as a scapegoat and do not really decide to increase the public housing stock, the situation will continue to worsen.
How many active tourist apartments does Barcelona have? Well, about 7,500, and how many empty apartments are there in the city? Well, about 75,000 are considered sporadic use. The numbers were provided by Luis Falcón, director of the inAtlas consultancy. “It is clear that the Special Urban Plan for Tourist Accommodations of the Ada Colau governments did not improve access to housing, and the decree law of the Generalitat will not do so either.”
“We are being victims of populism,” said Gonzalo Bernardos, professor of Economics at the University of Barcelona. Colau began to blame tourism for all the evils. They want Barcelona to be a seedy town and what do they want us to live on? There is no industry anymore. We are a world capital of startups thanks to the foreigners who come to the city. But at this rate in Barcelona we won’t even have students.”
Furthermore, lawyer Pablo Molina pointed out that some approaches of the Generaitat rule, such as allowing five years of activity as compensation, is a relatively risky system. “And the particularities of each municipality are not being taken into account. Public powers must create public housing. “They’re not really managing the problem.”
“We are not against regulating the sector,” said David Riba, president of Federatur. Obviously uncontrolled growth is very dangerous. But they are forgetting that our clients only spend 30% of their budget on accommodation.”
