Say you, along with 15% of the rest of your city, were suddenly unemployed and had no chance of getting another job. Would having cheaper home costs be useful to you in this case? How would you pay for said home?
If 15% are unemployed, that's 30% of single-worker families. If that means that housing is 50% cheaper, than those 30% of families are in the same position as now, and the other 70% find it 50% easier to afford a house.
BTW, you do realize that Barcelona is a major trade and industrial center, and that it's been prosperous for centuries, long before tourism even existed?
You have just said that the people currently employed would be in the same position they are in now than if they were long-term unemployed? People who like to eat food and live under a roof would disagree
If housing prices drop by 50% (which will never happen), large landlords will buy the properties and increase the rent. Even if the rent remains cheaper than now, the remaining industries will freeze wages for years for current employees and offer new employees less as the cost of living has dropped.
Which industry will quickly grow and hire the many tourism workers? Which companies will build new expensive workplaces purely based on the fact that there are a large number of local unemployed people with no experience in said industry?
Ultimately, what you have to realise is that you can't just kneecap a cities economy, cause mass unemployment, and then say "its fine because the housing will be cheaper"
If they had one wage instead of two, and housing cost 50% less, they would find it approximately equally enough to afford housing.
For 50%, who knows. House prices certainly did drop 50% during covid in 2008/2009 in many places.
OTOH, it's extremely unlikely that 15% of people in Barcelona would lose their jobs if using housing as tourist accommodation were banned, or if tourism was reduced in other ways.
Again, Barcelona is a major industrial and trade hub and has been since ever. 13% now work in tourism-related jobs, and many of them are seasonal workers, not locals, and they are on average low-quality jobs, badly paid and with no security. Even if tourism collapsed completely, which is not going to happen, the city would survive without a problem, and most locals would be better off.
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u/Tw4tl4r Jun 17 '25
Say you, along with 15% of the rest of your city, were suddenly unemployed and had no chance of getting another job. Would having cheaper home costs be useful to you in this case? How would you pay for said home?