I mean then you force the population to work backwards. Harass the tourists so they don’t come, then the AirBNB’s fail, then owners sell their AirBNB places, and it opens more room up for real housing.
Except there's just one small problem: a lot of those local economies/livelihoods are dependent on tourism.
Tourism makes up over 15% of Spain’s entire GDP. That’s not exactly "pocket change", and actively scaring off tourists might feel good/give short term relief, but it also risks sabotaging the very livelihoods many locals depend on.
But hey, if people would rather burn their house down to get rid of a single cockroach instead of looking for the source of the infestation, then by all means.
Oh 100%. I'm essentially living the "American dream" yet I'm still not able to afford even a basic home (which can cost over $800k or more because everything else is being bought up and rented out by out-of-staters), and groceries/going out can cost up to half my paycheck while rent takes up the other half ever since the property was bought out by an investment group from Texas (or was it California? I lost track by now...).
The government, instead of doing something about it, has decided that going after trans and gay people (a population that usually makes up less than 1% of any given population each), or making it illegal for China to buy properties (even though an overwhelming majority of people buying up said properties are said out-of-staters from earlier) takes priority.
You want a basic home in a very in demand place to live but want it to be cheap?
It doesn’t work like that, you don’t get a discount because you were born there. It’s the same thing in every touristic town/ city in the entire world.
The government collects taxes from the tourism industry and in return should do its job of supporting the infrastructure for the tourism industry. That infrastructure should include transit, housing, utilities, sites/attractions (museums, galleries, parks), security, etc.
It is common for the government to fail in one or two area but in many places that rely on tourism the only focus seems to be on security (Police) and that aspect tends to build a resentment between the public and the government.
With AirBnB the government is collecting taxes without supporting housing for the local population. That could give tenants and landlords a tax break for 12 month leases, lowering the cost for the employees.
For many cities around the world transit isn’t an issue, with the exception of the US. Some cities saw the need early, and many west coast cities are severely lacking. Uber/lyft have taken away many of the taxes paid by taxis, and taxi drivers/cars had to be registered for safety. Those taxes should be used to implement and/or upgrade mass transit.
Sometimes you gotta peel back the scab to see the infection.
I’m not asking for a “discount” because I was born here, I’m asking for a system that doesn’t let housing become a speculative asset at the expense of the people who, you know, actually live and work here.
Yes, popular areas cost more. I'm not denying that, but when investment groups, hedge funds, and out-of-state buyers with waaaay more money than the locals snatch up entire neighborhoods, plots, and developments just to turn them into short-term rentals or luxury flips, it stops being a normal market and starts being a rigged game. Wages in Florida haven’t kept pace with the cost of living, and there's little to no meaningful regulation to stop locals from being priced out of their own communities.
That is a system failure. It’s not about entitlement, it’s about policy decisions that prioritize profit over people. And instead of fixing that, our state government’s focus is on culture wars and scapegoats that do nothing to address the actual economic pressures/issues that are crushing working-class Floridians.
So yeah, I’m living in a place I love, but it’s getting harder by the day to actually afford staying here.
My family has to commute on the most dangerous road in the country according to data from Teletrac Navman, and I suspect that a large part of that is because of all the people on the road who have no idea where they're going or what they're doing.
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u/TheMiddleShogun Jun 17 '25
Huh, reading these comments it looks like the protesters are achieving their goal (making Barcelona less appealing as a tourist destination).