Barcelona is joining other global tourism hubs culling their Airbnb supplies. Last week, the city’s mayor, Jaume Colboni, announced that he would allow the city’s 10,000-plus short-term rental (STR) licenses to lapse after their November 2028 expiration and would not issue new STR licenses. This could mean that the Catalonian capital that attracted nearly 12 million tourists last year could effectively be free from the likes of Airbnb and Vrbo by 2028, which officials hope will alleviate their current housing crisis.

The city’s housing shortage has been the result of compounding events and challenges. According to the New York Times, the Great Recession’s housing collapse brought investment firms to Barcelona, and they speculatively bought up properties; later, pandemic unemployment caused a surge in evictions, particularly for those living in private equity–owned homes. Rents, according to Bloomberg, have increased 14 percent per square meter over the past year; Idealista, Spain’s largest property listings site, reports that seasonal rentals account for 30 percent of Barcelona’s rental market supply.

Banning STRs from the city is part of a broader legislative effort to boost the local housing supply, begun in a 2019 emergency decree law that required large-scale property owners (those who own 10 or more properties) to register in a database, and compels them to provide “social rents” to those facing eviction. According to The Register, the decree law directly addresses underutilized or unoccupied homes. It also says that those owners who operate properties that are not in use as permanent residences can be fined for each month the property is vacant, or risk having these homes expropriated by the government to be used as social housing for up to seven years.

Top image by Pol Albarrán/Getty Images

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