The Government Board approved this Thursday the new ordinance that will regulate tourist housing with the Reside Madrid Plan, “which seeks to increase the availability of housing in the center and definitively regulate housing for tourist use,” the councilor explained.
As announced by the delegate of the Urban Planning area, Borja Carabante, in the plenary session in October, where he defined the main lines of the plan, sand they are going to prohibit housing for tourist use scattered in communities of owners in the historic center (in the APP 0.01 area). “Not even on the ground and first floors, only in buildings for exclusive use,” said the mayor. “This is based on the data we have on the proliferation of these homes, especially in the central almond and the Center district.”
Outside, he continued, they will be allowed on the ground and first floors. as long as they can access independent access. Nor will they authorize the transformation of commercial premises into apartments for tourist use if they are in tertiary areas. “We do not want to transfer the pressure outside the central area, that is why we have introduced this type of precautions,” assumed the councilor.
Homes for tourist use that operate in the center and “already have a license” will be able to maintain their activity, Almeida added.
In addition, they will authorize the transformation of public buildings for private use into residential buildings as long as they are for affordable housing or ‘coliving’. On AP001, which goes beyond the historic center and coincides with the central almond, there is 215 blocks of these characteristics. Likewise, they will allow plots of tertiary use to be transformed into homes “with an increase in buildability to make it more attractive,” said Almeida.
To encourage the policy of rehabilitation of residential buildings, the use may be changed to tourist apartments in those buildings for residential use that have protection (listed), are obsolete and in poor condition and located on non-commercial streets. They can only function as tourist apartments in exclusive building for 15 years.
Regarding the processing of the rule, they plan to take it to the Government Board in December. Afterwards, a period for public information and allegations will open. “We trust that it can be approved throughout the month of July,” Almeida explained.
“Unjustified,” according to Airbnb
Airbnb has proposed to the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, the possibility that local hosts can host occasionally in Centro and has called the new residential protection plan in the district “unjustified.” Consider, however, that the City Council’s current proposal “is far from complying with the proportionality standards required at the European level”, will be “very difficult to apply in practice and unjustifiably punishes an accommodation modality that, to this day Today, it contributes to Madrid being an international tourist reference.
Thus, in the letter that the tourist apartment company has made known on its website, it proposes that the regulations facilitate the dispersion of tourism beyond the city center, preserving local communities and putting an end to a model “that “It only benefits a small group of companies.” In the Centro district, where the density of short-term rental accommodation is higher, Airbnb suggests only allowing new supply from occasional hosts, that is, those who occasionally rent out their main residence or even a room in their own home, while they are in it.
Also, it is committed to promoting collaboration to guarantee the harmonized implementation of the recent European regulations on short-term rentals. According to their data, short-term rental accommodation in Madrid They represent less than 1% of the total park of housing in the city. More than half of the short-term rental accommodation in the city is spread across 20 neighborhoods outside the Centro district, representing no more than 1.2% of the total housing in those areas.
Opposition criticism
For her part, the spokesperson for Más Madrid in the City Council, Rita Maestre, has asked the mayor for the “immediate closure” of illegal tourist housing (VUT) and has warned that concentrating tourist apartments in buildings only “incentivizes large forks. Before Almeida presents her plan to stop the proliferation of illegal VUT and since the day on the climate emergency organized by Más Madrid, the head of the opposition has maintained that “the first thing the mayor had to have done during any of the five years that has been governing the city is to close the 27,000 illegal tourist apartments, apartments that today carry out illegal economic activity in broad daylight without anyone caring or acting on behalf of the City Council.
In his opinion, the concentration of tourist apartments in buildings will encourage “the big funds, the big banks and the large real estate owners expel the neighbors who live in an apartment block in any area of the city to convert them into tourist apartments with which they can obtain more profitability than with traditional rentals.”
inspection work
Madrid already announced in April the suspension of the granting of new licenses for housing for tourist use and toughened the fines for this type of ‘pirate’ accommodation. After this modification, the first penalty is 30,000 euros, the second is 60,000 and the third is 100,000 euros. Sources from the area led by Borja Carabante maintain that these fines are generating a “contagion effect” in the apartments near the sanctioned ones.
Likewise, to facilitate clients’ access to accommodation with a municipal license, Madrid published in May your map with legal tourist homes. In the capital, they then detailed, 92% of the 14,699 tourist establishments There are homes for tourist use, that is, 13,502. Of them, only 941 operate with a municipal license, while another 151 are in process. By number of beds, 47,589 are in tourist apartments, 30% of the total.
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