EUROPE CRACKS DOWN ON AIRBNB
Paris, Berlin seek to keep room-sharing out-of-towners from displacing locals
As the summer tourist season heats up in Europe, officials are cracking down on Airbnb and other online room-sharing services.
While popular tourist destinations such as London and Amsterdam have embraced room-sharing, other European cities such as Paris and Berlin are moving to stop out-of-towners from overrunning neighborhoods and displacing residents.
In Paris, government inspectors are enforcing a ban on shortterm stays in investment properties booked through San Francisco-based Airbnb and similar websites. “If Parisians want to rent out their home when they go on holiday, that is not really a problem,” said Ian Brossat, Paris’ deputy mayor in charge of housing. “What concerns us is when someone purchases one or more properties with the aim to turn them into tourist rentals. We don’t have enough properties to house Parisians.”
In hip and artsy Berlin, property owners and renters seeking to sublet online must register with the city before advertising their homes. Proponents say the rule prevents a frat-house atmosphere in the German capital.
“Tourists and residents have different schedules. Travelers often arrive late and party in their accommodations,” said Joachim Oellerich, chairman of the Berlin Tenant Community, a civic organization. “Residents complain about noisy tourists who litter in the hallways.”
Paris and Berlin are at the forefront of efforts to rein in room-sharing in Europe, but they’re not alone. Last year, Barcelona fined Airbnb $41,000 for illegally renting out rooms in private residences because the homes weren’t registered with Spain’s Catalonia region tourism registry. The city has since established an office to regulate shortterm rentals. In Italy, the hotel industry has called for a crackdown on room-sharing.
The European measures often anger homeowners who say they have a right to rent out their properties.
“It’s nonsense because commercial hosts on Airbnb are only a minority,” said Sebastian Olényi, a Berliner who rents out his flat. “I only had good experiences so far. My guests are often relatives who visit their families in Berlin, or business people who are in town for conferences.”
In France, homeowners are free to rent out their primary residence for up to four months per year. Under a Parisian law enacted in 2011, people who want to rent out an investment property must own an equivalent property with a long-term tenant.
In May, French inspectors scoured room-sharing sites such as Airbnb, Homelidays and LeBonCoin and found at least 100 illegal short-term rentals among 2,000 properties they examined. Last year, Paris imposed fines totaling $644,000 on 56 properties.
The City of Light is Airbnb’s most popular destination. It has 40,000 listings — 8,000 more than New York.
Still, the website said it doesn’t oppose the law.
“Around 83% of our listings in Paris are main residences, so this crackdown does not really concern us,” Airbnb France spokeswoman Philippine Nouveau said.
Berlin passed a law last year requiring all short-term vacation rentals to be registered with authorities. One-time fees can run higher than $250.
As in Paris, the Berlin government says the rule affects only people who rent out investment properties. “The aim of the law is to turn holiday apartments into regular housing to alleviate the housing shortage,” said Torsten Kuehne, a district councilor for Prenzlauer Berg.
Bernhard Holzer, spokesman for Wimdu, a Berlin-based vacation rental website, doubts the law will have a significant impact on the problem.
“There are only 9,000 flats out of 2 million homes in Berlin that are used as holiday apartments,” he said. “Berlin needs 140,000 new flats to meet demand. It would be better to create more housing instead of slowing down the emerging sharing economy.”