Malaga has a major problem with housing availability. And with the proliferation of tourist apartments, there is another. The mayor wants to put an end to both at once: to impose a tax that taxes the use of the latter, in order to partially alleviate the first difficulty. This is what the Malaga councillor argued in a letter to the Minister of Industry and Tourism that such a tax on holiday rentals would swell the municipality’s coffers with “several millions of euros” that could be allocated to social rentals.

The proposal caused a stir.

Tax on sleeping in tourist apartmentsThe proposal of the mayor of Malaga, the popular Francisco de la Torre, is clear and goes beyond his own municipality. In a letter sent to the Ministry of Industry and Tourism, it was suggested that municipal councils could impose a tax on overnight stays in tourist apartments. The aim: that this rate would generate resources that would then be used for social rent.

“It would be a few million euros, a significant figure that would allow us to have much more power and serve many more families within the scope of the social policy that we have been implementing for years,” said the councillor on the EFE microphones.

Problem, solutionThat’s the philosophy of De la Torre’s proposal, which recognizes that the proliferation of tourist apartments has made rent more expensive for families looking for a permanent home. “It’s obvious,” he predicted. What he’s proposing now is that renting to tourists is part of the solution, ultimately creating a better (and more affordable) housing market.

“If tourist housing increases the rent, do it in such a way that people see that tourists who come to that housing pay an amount that serves that purpose,” the mayor of Malaga said during the interview.

So how is it implemented? De la Torre did not go into details. He simply explained that he sent the letter at the beginning of August and that he “invited” Minister Jodri Hereu, who served as mayor of Barcelona, ​​another city whose housing market is quite stressed in terms of tourism, between 2006 and 2011, to consider promoting a legislative initiative to reduce the impact of vacation rentals.

Their suggestion: Setting a rate for overnight stays in tourist apartments, which would then help support social rental. In the case of hotels, the overnight stay tax would be used to promote “quality tourism”, says EFE.

More than 12,000 homes. No further technical details are given. Nor is it fully specified what such a rate could mean for the councils. This is true even for Malaga, where there are more than 12,000 houses registered for tourist use in the Andalusian Junta Registry. What de la Torre stresses is that if his idea is to continue, the rate must be created with the greatest possible support. It is therefore necessary to reach consensus with the tourism sector and for businesses to be conscious of the use of the amounts collected.

So what does the industry think? He doesn’t feel very comfortable. In fact, it would not be easy to reach the consensus advocated by De la Torre. Juan Cubo, vice president of the Andalusian Tourist Housing Association (AVVA), was recognized yesterday Today in Malaga He said the mayor’s argument had not garnered sympathy from the sector. “If there is a lack of social housing, it is because all the governments have not done their part. We deny that we are held responsible for this alleged shortfall.”

The group directly describes the measure as “unfair” and questions its approach. “We cannot be in favour of it because there is no proportionality: hotels also occupy space previously allocated for residential use,” stresses the AVVA director. Calculations by the association show that the weight of tourist homes in Malaga’s residential park is a very small 1.8%. If a proportion is applied, they argue, it should be done “proportionally among all accommodations that remain as residential space”.

An “event.” De la Torre will also have a hard time reaching a broad consensus at the political level. The opposition was quick to level accusations against the PP councillor’s move. Dani Pérez, the PSOE spokesperson in the City Council, demanded that he “stop inventing” and take measures to ease the hardship posed by holiday rentals in the municipality of Amdaluz.

“We must be clear and for now we must ban tourist accommodation in the city of Malaga,” the socialist shouts, before calling on De la Torre to address the Board – the institution that has jurisdiction over the matter, as Pérez recalls – “with urgency”. “Execute the tourist tax in the city.”

“What the City Council of Malaga should do is to work with the Council to implement a tourist tax, as is already the case in many cities outside Andalusia, and to start working to impose a moratorium and ban tourist apartments in the city “, emphasizes the Con Malaga spokesperson. According to him, the proposal to impose a fee for overnight stays in tourist apartments is an attempt by the mayor “to evade his direct responsibility”, which he has “done many times”.

Big headacheMalaga is not the only city grappling with the issue of vacation rentals and the impact it has on an increasingly tense, expensive and inaccessible housing market. In Barcelona, ​​they want to eliminate tourist apartments in the medium term, in Madrid they are freezing permits and toughening enforcement, in Valencia a moratorium is being promoted, the Santiago City Council is in hot water over the regulation, and in Seville they are proposing to cut off the water to illegally rented apartments.

Malaga is not running away. At the end of June, the city hosted a huge demonstration chanting “Malaga is not for survival, it is for living” and the City Council was forced to take action to make it even more difficult to rent tourists: the City Council is only allowing them to register as new accommodation with independent entrances and is assuring that it is working on a regulation to regulate supply in the most saturated areas. A nightly tax is now being proposed, something that the industry is skeptical about and the opposition sees as a smoke bomb.

Picture | Oleg Tsegelnyk (Unsplash)

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