MADRID (AP) — Spain has ordered Airbnb to block more than 65,000 holiday listings on its platform for having violated rules, the Consumer Rights Ministry said Monday.
The ministry said that many of the 65,935 Airbnb listings it had ordered to be withdrawn did not include their license number or specify whether the owner was an individual or a company. Others listed numbers that didn’t match what authorities had.
Spain is grappling with a housing affordability crisis that has spurred government action against short-term rental companies.
Just fucking tax them into unprofitability.
I saw this headline and just assumed it was an anti-tourist thing, but I was wrong.
On a Monday morning, it’s just nice to see that somewhere on this planet there are countries willing to take federal action to attack the hoarding and purposeful scarcity in housing created by a greedy few sons of bitches.
I expect housing scarcity to become the next problem that gets solved somewhere in the world while the US pretends it’s unsolvable. (Not unlike homelessness and gun violence.)
The Spanish prime minister-- Pedro Sanchez-- is a political animal. He managed to maul and contain the far-right in a snap election he called. He has also spurred the economy and is growing, because he integrated many migrants well into the labour force. And even baser is that his government is pro-Palestine. All he had done in the past years granted him the political and social capital to enact policies that might ruffle the feathers of monied and powerful interests.
I hope Sanchez’s government will survive any politicking against his progressive policies. The housing crisis is happening across the developed world, and oligarchs will propagandise the public into believing that the crisis is unsolvable, because resolving this will eat their bottomline.
My neighborhood i rent in is really expensive. I’m well off but not well off enough to ever be able to afford a house here. Especially not now with a one year old kid. My rent is $3500 but the cheapest house here would be at least $10000 (all expenses considered) a month on a 30 year mortgage.
Most of the people that live in the single family homes here are old with no kids. Most families with kids here rent.
Every so often I see one of the homes get all it’s landscaping cleaned up, the house painted and sometimes an extension added onto it. Those are all the Airbnb’s. Just a house that sits there empty for 3/4 weeks.
The other ones get torn down and turned into what I’d call a “box” house. Basically that ugly style of house that takes up the entire plot of land but still is only meant for one family. These are bought by the inherited wealth families that have a couple kids and want to get out of the main city but still don’t want to live in the deep car dependent suburbs.
All of this because housing is used as an investment vehicle. From large corporations to individuals in retirement.
I really wish we could treat it for what it is. Shelter.
You may be interested in Community Land Trusts.
I really wish we could treat it for what it is. Shelter.
Agreed.
$3500
Yowza. I was fortunate to get my condo two years ago before this stuff accelerated to the point of hopelessness, and now that the US is having its credit downgraded, that was an even luckier thing to do.
My city has a snitch email, which you can contact and ask if a certain rental place is licensed
Already used it on two apartments my landlord is renting out. Turns out only one of them was properly licensed
AirBnB inflates housing prices, any regulation against it is pretty much always good for the locals
Only if you live somewhere people actually wanna go to :taps_head:
No matter where you live, AirBnB/VRBO can only make housing prices go up, never down. At best it’ll be neutral. It’s always taking inventory that might otherwise go to a local.
Well it is an anti-tourist thing in the sense that regulations on AirBnBs and the like are meant to close the “hotel license” loophole. Touristy places generally don’t mind new short-term accommodation and give out licenses like candy, likewise small places with relaxed property markets, non-touristy places are much more restrictive because they don’t want to tank their economy.
For grandma in a village renting out some rooms to visitors getting delisted will result in her going to the municipality, asking for a license, getting one, and putting the listing up again. For an investor buying up apartments in big cities to illegally use as a hotel because renting long-term has lower ROI, well, they won’t get a hotel license, their listings are going to stay down. If you want to build only hotels and have no long-term accommodation may I suggest building a theme park somewhere.
I expect housing scarcity to become the next problem that gets solved somewhere in the world while the US pretends it’s unsolvable.
To solve that you need to antagonize NIMBYs so I’m not hopeful.
There is no federal government in Spain, but yes, you are right. And by the way, housing scarcity has been the underlying problem to most economical divides and class discrimination since decades now.
Spain’s government is more federal than federal governments like the German one. Spain’s Autonomous regions have way more leeway and freedom than regions in federal governments.
Spains regions lack of their own police, tax collection (the German federal level doesn’t even have a tax office), only partial cultural autonomy. Also the powers they have are only devolved, they’re not guaranteed those rights.
German states are fully formed states in themselves, they have their own sovereignty, delegating the exercise of parts of it to the federal level just as EU member states delegate sovereignty to the EU. “Fully formed state” here meaning that they do not rely on the federal level for their administration, in fact living in Germany you generally don’t come into contact with federal bureaucracy at all, it’s all state or municipal level (district level is technically state level, they’re devolved public bodies).
I’ll grant you that among unitary states Spain is quite federal, but it’s not “more federal than federal countries”.
Spanish regions have their own police. These police forces are autonomous from the central ones. https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policía_autonómica Some even have a specific name: Mossos, Ertzaintza, policia foral, etc…
The Spanish regions have autonomy on both collecting taxes, and assigning their own budgets. They are autonomous in the case of emergencies, healthcare, education (which allows them to set their culture), cultural ministeries, with their own regional bodies that make their own decisions.
All this is more federal than the federal states of Germany. Signed, somebody from Spain that lives in Germany, and does come in contact with the federal government quite often.
All of that is things that German states have. Not sure what federal agency you’re in contact with but it certainly isn’t the Ausländeramt that’s state-level.
Exactly. All of that things that Germany has, meanwhile Spain is not even a federation. Yet it has the same level or more of autonomy on its regions than a federation.
Found a paper (a bit older, 2001, but should still be mostly accurate) comparing the two. Cliff notes:
- Despite legislative power going by default to the central state in Spain and to the states in Germany, distribution of power is overall comparable. Less uniform in Spain as every region gets its own autonomy statute instead of all German states pooling their sovereignty in a uniform way.
- Administration is practically completely state matter in Germany, while Spain retains central administration structures in all regions. Those largely delegate matters to the region’s administrations, though. So again overall not too dissimilar in practice.
- Regarding the judicature: The regions don’t have courts. They have some say when it comes to how court districts are drawn and that’s pretty much it. German states all have their own courts and appeals courts, the federal level only has cassation courts. In this area German states have way more autonomy. States elect judges for their own courts as well as 50% of federal judges, or 50% of the people who elect them are designated by the states, depending.
- Spanish regions have very limited means to influence central legislative. No right to initiative, no own legislative body, just a right to petition. German states can initiate federal law, have their own legislative body, and much federal law needs passing by both federal and state bodies because it tangentially affects state prerogatives.
- Interestingly, the federal level has larger powers of oversight over the German states than Spain does over the regions. In both cases the oversight isn’t large, though, in Germany it only exists in so far states are administering federal law on behalf of the federation, which isn’t often the case. E.g. (practically all) criminal law is federal law, but administered by the states on their own behalf.
- German states have more financial autonomy. I won’t get into details the distribution of taxes between federation and states in Germany is complex AF, also, has been renegotiated multiple times. Regarding administration, though, as said: The federation has no tax office, they couldn’t collect taxes if they wanted to.
- German states have much, much, much more power when it comes to asserting their power. Maybe that’s why they’re not as hell-bent on carving out power for themselves: Autonomous regions have to rely on public sentiment and the good will of the constitutional court, otherwise the central authority can just walk straight over them, so they take whatever they can get their hands on while German states are much more relaxed about it.
Still, I don’t think it is a federation. In Italy we got 5 indipendent statute regions as well, still not a federation.
By name it is not a federation (define federation…) Yet Spanish autonomies enjoy more autonomy than some federal states.
It is a nation including some regions given autonomy. I believe a federation by definition is comprised of exclusively equal member states forming common governmental organs.
Ope, yeah. Forgot that Spain is a monarchy, but by federal I just mean ‘nationwide’. Thanks.
Being a consitutional monarchy or republic doesn’t have anything to do with federation.
Being a constitutional monarchy instead of a republic just means that they have a predesignated figurehead that represents the country, instead of electing that figurehead. The person is just a figurehead that rubberstamps things, but doesn’t take decisions at all. Be it the king (in a constitutional monarchy like Spain, Norway, UK, Denmark, Sweden, etc) or however you want to call it (in a republic like France, Germany, etc).
The government gets elected.
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You’re not far off. We don’t call it ‘federal government’ but in practice it’s exactly that, in the same line that we call the prime minister ‘presidente’.
those numbers are awfully close to 16 bit unsigned int max (65535). suspicious.
