The Government Council approved on Thursday the new ordinance that will regulate tourist housing with the Plan Reside Madrid, “which aims to increase the availability of housing in the center and to definitively regulate housing for tourist use”, explained the Edile.
As announced by the delegate of the urban planning area, Borja Carabante, during the October plenary session, where he defined the broad outlines of the plan, sand they will ban accommodation for tourist use scattered in the owner communities of the historic center (in APP zone 0.01). “Not even on the ground floor and first floor, only in buildings for exclusive use,” the mayor clarified. “This is based on the data we have on the proliferation of these housing units, particularly in the central Almond and the Center district.”
Outside, he continued, they will be allowed on the ground floor and first floor. as long as they can gain independent access. They will also not authorize the transformation of commercial premises into apartments for tourist use if they are located in tertiary zones. “We do not want to transfer the pressure outside the central zone, that is why we have introduced this type of precaution,” assumed the councilor.
Residences for tourist use that operate in the center and “already have a license” will be able to maintain their activity, added Almeida.
In addition, they will authorize the transformation of public buildings for private use into residential buildings provided that they are intended for affordable housing or “colivings”. On AP001, which goes beyond the historic center and coincides with the central almond tree, there is 215 blocks of these characteristics. Likewise, they will make it possible to transform plots for tertiary use into housing “with an increase in constructability to make them more attractive,” said Almeida.
To encourage the policy of rehabilitation of residential buildings, the use can be changed to tourist apartments in protected (listed) residential buildings, obsolete and in poor condition and located on non-commercial streets. They can only function as tourist apartments in an exclusive building for 15 years.
Regarding the processing of the decision, they plan to submit it to the Government Council in December. Then a period of public information and allegations will begin. “We hope that it can be approved throughout the month of July,” Almeida explained.
“Unjustified”, according to Airbnb
Airbnb proposed to Madrid Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida the possibility that local hosts could occasionally host in the Centro and described the new plan to protect housing in the neighborhood as “unjustified.” Consider, however, that the City Council’s current proposal “is far from respecting the standards of proportionality required at European level”, will be “very difficult to apply in practice and unjustifiably punishes an accommodation modality which, even today, contributes to Madrid being an international tourist reference.
Thus, in the letter that the tourist apartment company made known on its website, it proposes that the regulations facilitate the dispersal of tourism beyond the city center, preserving local communities and putting an end to a model “which” only benefits a small group of businesses.” In the Centro district, where the density of short-term rental accommodation is higher, Airbnb suggests only allowing the new supply of occasional guests, that is to say those who occasionally rent their main residence or even a room in their own accommodation, while they are renting in it.
Also, it is committed to promoting collaboration to guarantee the harmonized implementation of recent European regulations on short-term rental. According to their data, short-term rental accommodation in Madrid They represent less than 1% of the total fleet housing in the city. More than half of the city’s short-term rental housing is spread across 20 neighborhoods outside the Centro district, accounting for no more than 1.2 percent of the total housing in those areas.
Criticism of the opposition
For her part, the spokesperson for Más Madrid at City Hall, Rita Maestre, asked the mayor for the “immediate closure” of illegal tourist accommodation (VUT) and warned that the concentration of tourist apartments in buildings only “encourage big forks”. Before Almeida presented his plan to stop the proliferation of illegal VUTs and since the climate emergency day organized by Más Madrid, the opposition leader affirmed that “the first thing the mayor must do during the ‘one of the five years he has governed 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 hall.
According to him, the concentration of tourist apartments in buildings will encourage “big funds, big banks and large real estate owners evict neighbors who live in a building 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 accommodation 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 60,000 euros and the third 100,000 euros. Sources from the area led by Borja Carabante affirm that these fines generate a “contagion effect” in apartments close to those sanctioned.
Likewise, to facilitate customers’ access to accommodation with a municipal license, Madrid published in May its map of legal tourist residences. In the capital, they then detailed, 92% of 14,699 tourist establishments There are accommodations for tourist use, amounting to 13,502. Of these, only 941 operate with a municipal license, while another 151 are in progress. In terms of number of beds, 47,589 are in tourist apartments, or 30% of the total.
