Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments • Hacker News Board

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#91

Post by YossarianFrPrez » Fri, Jun 21, 2024, 7:59 PM UTC

SeanAnderson wrote: post #25

Barcelona has a population of ~1.7 million. The metro area surrounding is ~5.7 million. The metro area grew by ~100k in the past four years. They are freeing up ~10,000 houses over the next four years with this legislation. Barcelona built ~15,000 new properties between 2011 and 2020. The math don't math. It's a drop in the bucket. The entire impact of AirBnB + all housing built in the last decade does not offset the…

True, and I agree this is nowhere near enough. But wouldn't a "defense in depth" approach be wise? There are no all or nothing solutions, especially when it comes to policy in a large city. Any bit of relief will no doubt likely be welcome.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#92

Post by jupp0r » Fri, Jun 21, 2024, 7:59 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #64

pupperino wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That being said, in the US you can and should absolutely should build more, and basically get rid of most zoning regulations. You'd have a hard time finding anything as touristic and dense as Barcelona in the US.

I argue AirBnB should be banned anywhere building cannot be done at a rate which ensures affordable housing can exist for locals. Whether that is due to construction labor shortages, density, zoning, whatever, it does not matter. AirBnB can exist where there is surplus housing capacity, but should be banned anywhere else. Locals get votes, tourists and AirBnB do not. The harm of not being able to afford housing is fa…

Following your logic, why not ban hotels?

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#93

Post by JoshTriplett » Fri, Jun 21, 2024, 7:59 PM UTC

jfim wrote: post #46

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting hotels that feel like an AirBnB don't really exist. Even though the professional AirBnB hosts are doing all the functions that hotels do. Why not the reverse.

What do you mean by a hotel that feels like an Airbnb? If you want to stay at a place that has a kitchen, and multiple bedrooms, there are suite hotels (eg. Homewood suites) and extended stay hotels. If you want someone to host you, then a bed and breakfast is another type of accommodation.

There's a wide variety of possibilities here:

- Not wanting staff or service.

- Wanting something that looks and feels like a home rather than a hotel room. This isn't available everywhere.

- Wanting something that isn't shared with a bunch of other hotel guests. (Aside: I have no problems with apartment buildings banning AirBnB/VRBO, because that's much more "cheap hotel substitute that might bother neighbors" than "unique offering that isn't likely to bother anyone".)

- In general, wanting something unique that doesn't tend to exist as a hotel.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#94

Post by pelorat » Fri, Jun 21, 2024, 7:59 PM UTC

SeanAnderson wrote: post #25

Barcelona has a population of ~1.7 million. The metro area surrounding is ~5.7 million. The metro area grew by ~100k in the past four years. They are freeing up ~10,000 houses over the next four years with this legislation. Barcelona built ~15,000 new properties between 2011 and 2020. The math don't math. It's a drop in the bucket. The entire impact of AirBnB + all housing built in the last decade does not offset the…

Here in Europe building denser housing is extremely frowned upon by cultural conservatives, who unfortunately are in charge everywhere. That's why there's hardly any high-rises in Europe.

Extreme height restrictions combined with extreme regulatory costs is what has lead to this issue.

Show a European politician, especially a local one in charge of urban development, an image from Tokyo and they will recoil in horror.

Here in Europe everything must be flat and look cultural.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#95

Post by SaintSeiya » Fri, Jun 21, 2024, 8:00 PM UTC

As they should. Speculating with housing is as disgusting as speculating with healthcare, the fact that is normalized in countries such as USA makes it not less disgusting.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#96

Post by Izikiel43 » Fri, Jun 21, 2024, 8:00 PM UTC

thr0waway001 wrote: post #54

Ya listening Canada? This is how it’s done.

Canada needs to relax their zoning policies a lot and build a ton more buildings. People mostly want to be in one of 3 destinations in Canada:

* Vancouver

* Toronto

* Montreal

Which is where high paying jobs are, and which are mostly zoned for houses.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#97

Post by billfor » Fri, Jun 21, 2024, 8:00 PM UTC

popcalc wrote: post #10

deutschepost wrote: post #3

Good. Tourists should sleep in hotels and locals should sleep in their flats. Platforms like AirBnB only put oil in the fire when it comes to housing crises.

Alternatively, the population practicing birth control could solve the crisis. Don't have kids if you don't own at least one home :)

We should at least stop treating population growth as an economic necessity (mostly because of corporations and the need to service a debt bubble).

Where it ends up in the extreme case is people living on top of each other.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#98

Post by iso8859-1 » Fri, Jun 21, 2024, 8:00 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17

lucasfcosta wrote: post #5

Honest question: does this work? It seems to me that this change will have unintended effects and will fail to produce the desired results. AFAIK rent in NYC hasn’t gone down since they changed their short-term rental regulations. I might be naive, but I’d assume that the solution is to build more housing to increase the supply instead of curbing the demand? Genuinely curious about others’ takes on this.

Where in Barcelona would you increase density? https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/barcelona-pop... from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40752920 ("Barcelona has a 16,000 people per square km density - that’s already one of the highest in Europe.") Capital moves faster than meat space. To defend the human (affordable housing), you have to regulate. The whole "just build more, I want my AirBnB" argumen…

> Where in Barcelona would you increase density?

It would make sense to increase density around existing rail infrastructure. Barcelona has 7700 km2 of space, that's a lot. They have only 750 persons per km2 on average. Especially the outskirts of the province have really bad density. For example, Sant Joan de Vilatorrada has only 660 inhabitants per km^2 and it is only 3 km from the railway station, 80 min from the Sants station. That density is worse than Phoenix, Arizona, which has 1198/km2. So there is lots of available space.

Note that these numbers are of the Province of Barcelona. I don't know why you'd restrain yourself to the city proper. Here is a dense map of rail: https://www.urbanrail.net/eu/es/bcn/bcn-region-map.htm

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#99

Post by cs702 » Fri, Jun 21, 2024, 8:00 PM UTC

SeanAnderson wrote: post #25

Barcelona has a population of ~1.7 million. The metro area surrounding is ~5.7 million. The metro area grew by ~100k in the past four years. They are freeing up ~10,000 houses over the next four years with this legislation. Barcelona built ~15,000 new properties between 2011 and 2020. The math don't math. It's a drop in the bucket. The entire impact of AirBnB + all housing built in the last decade does not offset the…

[Deleted]

See LightHugger's comment and my response below:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40753303]

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#100

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 21, 2024, 8:00 PM UTC

deutschepost wrote: post #3

Good. Tourists should sleep in hotels and locals should sleep in their flats. Platforms like AirBnB only put oil in the fire when it comes to housing crises.

[deleted]