Lisbon facing tighter local accommodation restrictions
Lisbon City Council is to discuss a new Local Accommodation regulation next week drawn up by council executives.
The move comes amid sharp criticisms from left-wing councilors who fear a rush to register new establishments in anticipation of the new municipal clampdown.
Local accommodation has been blamed for exacerbating Lisbon’s lack of affordable housing crisis.
Over the past 10 years overseas and national investors have purchased entire buildings of apartments, done them up, and sub-divided them into short term city-break holiday lets for tourists.
This, critics say, took housing stock off the market, reducing the overall housing stock in traditional neighborhoods, reducing supply and therefore contributing to house inflation which has seen properties double in value over that period.
Under the terms of the new regulation, Lisbon City Council wants more restrictive ratios between Local Accommodation and properties for housing, proposing that in areas of strong containment (restrictions) that the ratio be reduced from 20% to 10% and in areas of relative containment from 10% to 5%.
It is also intended to create a single absolute containment area at municipal level, “whenever the municipality reaches a ratio equal to or greater than 10%”, according to the proposal, which will be discussed next week at a council meeting scheduled for 27 November.
This ratio is twice as restrictive as the proposal that was approved in a moratorium a year ago and is a stricter containment regulation compared to the the relatively more relaxed one still in force – and which the new one should replace within days. According to the PSD/CDS-PP/IL leadership which runs the city council without an absolute majority, the proposed amendment to the Local Accommodation Municipal Regulations (RMAL) introduces a set of measures aimed at “strengthening the protection of housing, ensuring balanced urban development and guaranteeing a more effective management of local accommodation activity in the municipality”.
The change to the RMAL foresees the “adoption of parishes and within parishes, neighbourhoods as basic geographical units where containment can be monitored, thereby enabling the whole city to to be permanently monitored.
This will make it possible for any parish or neighbourhood that exceeds the containment ratios (ratios between the number of tourism lets and residential housing) to be declared in breach of the regulations.
By revising the containment ratios, the council is making them more restrictive than the current regulations which have been in force since 2019.
On Thursday, the PS councillor issued a statement accusing the elected coalition and Chega of “blocking the urgent solution that has been proposed” by the party saying it intended to block the advance of LA in Lisbon, stopping the proposal from even being discussed.
The proposal also suggests the immediate suspension of any new registrations in those parishes and neighborhoods that are most under pressure, at a time when the suspension decreed by the president ceased on the day he was sworn in as mayor, reopening the possibility of new applications to register on the back of existing regulations still in force since 2019 and which are more permissive.
A study by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation published a week ago indicates that the Portuguese want a reduction in LA and the development of more housing, even if this implies economic losses for tourism.
