By Patricia Vicente Rua
LISBON (Reuters) – Lisbon residents seeking to restrict tourist rentals in residential buildings have moved a step closer to securing a public vote after the Portuguese city’s municipal assembly approved a proposal for a local referendum.
The move, which seeks to curb the city’s housing crisis and soaring rents that have pushed many out of the capital, may put an end to the 20,000 or so short-term holiday rentals such as Airbnb, freeing up housing opportunities for locals.
“It’s around 8% of the city’s total housing stock and we’re in a crisis situation where we need houses to live in,” said Raquel Antunes, a 23-year-old project manager and part of the Movement for a Referendum on Housing.
She said the movement was not against tourism, but such rentals were taking homes out of the housing market and “the prices keep rising.”
In Lisbon, rents have more than doubled in the last decade, according to housing data specialists Confidencial Imobiliario. House prices skyrocketed 200%.
New hotels and holiday rentals have mushroomed in Lisbon since 2015, when a tourism boom started to gain pace. While this has boosted the city’s economy, it has squeezed the housing market and sparked protests in the capital and other cities by locals struggling to afford a place to live.
The referendum could set a precedent for other European cities grappling with similar challenges.
After the assembly’s approval of the local referendum late on Tuesday, the Constitutional Court must approve ballot questions, after which the referendum could take place next spring. It would be Lisbon’s first local vote introduced through the people’s initiative.
The result could be a binding resolution to phase out Lisbon’s tourist flats within six months, and bar landlords from setting them up in residential buildings in the future.
(Reporting by Patrícia Vicente Rua; Editing by David Latona and Bernadette Baum)
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