After years of regulating them, and banning new ones from being added in recent years, Barcelona now plans to end all short-term apartment rentals for visitors simply by not renewing the licenses of the 9,700 or so legal rentals.
The last of those permits expires in 2028, and the city says the apartments, as they become available, will help local families find permanent housing. Rents in the city have risen by 68% over the past ten years, creating a crisis for many families.
While some groups welcome the move, Apartur, a group representing the city’s tourist apartment industry, says the move will lead to higher poverty and unemployment rates if tourist find themselves without places to stay in the city, and also claimed that revoking permits for legal rentals would stir a rise in illegal rentals.
Since 2015, the city has also barred the opening of new hotels in the city’s most popular areas, but the current mayor has signaled he might relax that rule as the phase-out of apartment rentals takes place.
Image: anti-tourism banners hanging on Barcelona building
