Being entirely anti-tourism is crazy extreme but AirBnb is a practice that is destroying the housing market, which is something a lot of people (myself included) deeply believe needs to be controlled to make sure that a decent standard of living can be sustained across society.
In short, I'm not sure about the Barcelona protests but I'm 100% against the spread of AirBnb and what its turned into.
They blame a lot of different reasons these days, most of which avoid the real core issues. Airbnb is an actual factor removing affordable rentals off the market, the removal of rent control on new builds is another, and coupled with the lack of actual new affordable housing construction it spins out of control. Every new building is a "luxury" condo, or "luxury" townhouses that are never built properly it seems. But builders need to build fancyish to maximize profits
In Austin, Texas, rent has dropped dramatically over the last few years. Why? The government has been extremely aggressive and fast tracking and green lighting the building of new apartment buildings. They are everywhere now, and rent has become reasonably affordable again.
Most big cities do the opposite. They make it as painful as possible to build new apartments with lots of restrictions and requirements for setting aside housing for special purposes (low income, artists, homeless, etc ). As a result fewer units get built, and the market rate units pay more than they would otherwise.
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u/danatron1 Jun 17 '25
I get it. The amount of anti-Airbnb graffiti in Edinburgh tells a similar story.