Related Post
Edinburgh housing campaigners have called for the city to bring in an outright ban on Airbnb-style short-term lets after Barcelona’s socialist mayor vowed to stomp out holiday rentals of accommodation before the end of the decade.
Tenants union Living Rent says the move should be replicated in Scotland, calling for either an outright ban or a significant reduction in the number of properties being let out as holiday homes.
Barcelona mayor Jaume Collboni said the Catalan capital’s ban would sort out the city’s ‘biggest problem’ – a housing shortage exacerbated by the 10,000 apartments listed as short-term rentals on platforms such as Airbnb.
Edinburgh City Council imposed a drastic new short-term lets policy last year to stop swathes of properties from being let out to tourists.
Landlords are likely to have raked in cash from the recent Taylor Swift concerts and the Edinburgh Fringe. One flat two miles from the city centre is available for £700 for one night this weekend – shrinking to £185 a night in October.
But the authority declared a housing emergency months later, saying 5,000 households were declared homeless and living in temporary accommodation. Campaigners say the licensing scheme isn’t enough.
Lockboxes containing keys for Airbnb properties are now a common sight in Edinburgh – but locals are split on whether the city should ban them altogether
The city has become a battleground for short-term accommodation – with landlords challenging the local council’s policies in court
Edinburgh resident Kate Stephenson says the issues around short-term letting are ‘complex’ in city because its economy depends in part on tourism
Jo O’Neil, 71 has lived on the Royal Mile since 2007 – and says she would welcome a wholesale ban on short-term lets in Edinburgh
Her partner Jay says the demands for Airbnbs are forcing out all but the super rich in the city centre
People protest in Barcelona against what they see as an overabundance of tourism that is reducing local housing stock and pushing up rents
They want to see the city follow in the footsteps of Barcelona, which is taking the drastic step of seeking an outright ban of Airbnbs by 2029 to combat a lack of housing and spiraling rents.
Echoing similar scenes in the Canary and Balearic islands, locals took to the streets last month to protest the city’s struggles to cope with the annual influx of 32million visitors – waving signs reading: ‘Tourists go home, you are not welcome.’
In Edinburgh, lockboxes containing keys for Airbnbs are commonplace, with investors snapping up city centre properties to rent out to Fringe punters and performers and, campaigners say, depriving locals of quality housing.
Spurred on by this and issues in the Highlands where, like England, locals say their scenic villages are being stripped of year-round communities, Scotland introduced legislation to regulate short-term lets in 2022.
In 2019, there were 14,000 Airbnbs in the Scottish capital, of which 8,000 were whole-house lets that would sit empty for large parts of the year.
After the licensing scheme was imposed in Edinburgh, the number has fallen to 7,000 overall listings, of which 4,648 are for entire properties such as a house or flat.
The council has received 4,327 applications for short-term let licences – and almost half of those, 2,085, were for ‘secondary lets’, meaning second homes or holiday homes that do not serve as full time properties.
But tenants union Living Rent wants to see Edinburgh go further and follow in Barcelona’s footsteps by banning the wholesale letting of otherwise empty houses.
Eilidh Keay, chair of Living Rent’s Edinburgh chapter, told MailOnline: ‘I would love to see a move towards considering a ban on whole property short term lets and encouraging home-letting and home-sharing.’
She claimed the explosion of short-term lets in Edinburgh was pushing people out of the city centre – and risked killing it.
‘It has a knock-on effect: all the shops in the city centre are ‘tartan tat’ and for people that still live there it’s hard to access local amenities,’ she said.
‘Tourism is vital to Edinburgh but residents don’t benefit from the tourism economically. The tourism industry existed before short term lets.
‘And people want to know their neighbours rather than hearing people having parties next door. There’s a real human cost to all this.’
Ms Keay suggested projections of dwindling attendance figures at schools close to the city’s tourist hotspots were evidence of neighbourhoods being emptied of their sense of community by Airbnb landlords leaving houses empty.
St Thomas of Aquin’s, a Roman Catholic high school 15 minutes’ walk from the Royal Mile, expects its school roll to drop from 799 pupils last year to 668 in 2033.
At the same time, Gilmerton Primary School in Edinburgh’s outer suburbs is expecting its roll to almost double in size from 484 pupils to 819.
All the while, accommodation prices explode around peak events – including the Fringe and Taylor Swift’s first run of Eras Tour concerts in the UK.
Former model turned TV personality Gail Porter said earlier this year she was priced out of visiting Edinburgh because of the ‘soaring costs of B&Bs’.
She said in a tweet: ‘I feel so sorry for new young performers that won’t be able to afford accommodation. I’m gutted Edinburgh has done this. Greed is awful.’
MailOnline research turned up properties – full apartments or homes, rather than hotel rooms – on Airbnb for this weekend ranging from £328 to over £700.
One apartment on offer for £728 on Saturday night, at the peak of the Fringe, nosedived to £455 a night next month – before rising to £837 a night around the time of Hogmanay celebrations at the end of the year.
Another flat on Booking.com boasting a castle view is £700 for one night this weekend, dropping to £185 a night in October after the peak season.
Lockboxes next to a souvenir shop selling Scotland-themed fridge magnets. Critics of Edinburgh’s Airbnb policies say the economy will take a hit
US tourists Taz (left) and Alexa Sutherland, who stayed in an Airbnb with their family because it is better value than a hotel
Many properties also appear to be funneling money into the pockets of the already super-rich outside of Edinburgh and even outside the UK.
An investigation by the Local Democracy Reporting Service earlier this year found businessman Alasdair Locke owned 12 flats used as short-term lets, while another 12 were owned by a company belonging to a member of the ruling family of Kuwait registered in the Isle of Man – exempting it from paying capital gains tax.
Ms Keay says she is not entirely opposed to people renting out property on a short-term basis – but only if it is their own home, or a spare room, meaning that properties aren’t sitting empty outside of peak tourist seasons.
She added: ‘I can’t see why taking a property that was once a residential property, during a housing emergency, and turning it into an unregulated hotel for a profit, is at all reasonable. It’s not.’
Edinburgh City Council has said the decline in the number of properties on the holiday let market is an indication that the policy is working.
But it has had to amend the policy after landlords took the authority to court and judges aspects of the policy were unlawful. Every short-term let in the city must have a licence by January 1 2025.
Short-term let providers say they are boosting the local economy. An Airbnb study commissioned in 2022 argues that the 1million guests who stay in Scottish short-term lets each year – half of which visit Edinburgh alone – annually contribute £499million to the economy.
Locals, however, are split on whether an outright ban on short-term accommodation is the way forward.
Kate Stephenson, 42, lives in Edinburgh and told MailOnline: ‘It’s very complex, Edinburgh is a city that thrives on tourism – everyone knows that’s our main source of income – so it’s really important that we support that.
‘But having too many short-term lets is messing up the rental market here. I think if there was a complete ban on Airbnb, of course it would have an impact on tourists coming here.
‘Yeah, they can stay out of the city, but it’s so much easier for people to book accommodation within.
‘It’s all about getting the balance right, but how that can be achieved will be an issue.
‘But it’s not just tourists you need to think about though, it’s also the performers who come here for the festival.
‘It’s a lot cheaper for them to book an Airbnb than it is a hotel – I think whatever happens it’s vital the council get it right as doing the wrong thing could be disastrous.’
Jo O’Neil, 71, and her partner Jay, 76, have lived on the Royal Mile since 2007, and say their block is surrounded by Airbnb.
Jo added: ‘Our experience hasn’t been that great if I’m honest, so yes, I would welcome a complete ban on short-term lets in Edinburgh anyway because it can be very rowdy with lots of people staying in the one Airbnb.
‘They can make the place look messy as well with all the lock boxes all over the place. I think better regulations do need to be brought in, but it’s hard to say what.
‘It gets so busy here during the festival and at Christmas, we leave our home and go to America, but we don’t rent the property out. It’s left empty with nobody in it.’
Jay said: ‘I don’t like the fact that this part of Edinburgh has become so busy, and it’s getting to a point only rich people can afford accommodation on the Royal Mile because the prices of accommodation are so expensive. I’d like to see a ban on Airbnb.’
Some of those visiting the city from abroad told MailOnline it would suffer for a lack of short-term accommodation outside of hotels, which they say are too expensive year-round – particularly for families.
Taz Sutherland, 47, visiting from Arkansas in the US, said: ‘I wouldn’t come to Edinburgh if Airbnb’s were to be banned here. I’d look for somewhere else to stay during my trip to Scotland. I wouldn’t pay the prices for hotels here.
‘I come to Edinburgh every year with my family and Airbnb works well for us because we can get an apartment. If a ban was to come into place then we’d need to book three rooms in a hotel and that’s not something I’d be willing to do.
‘It would kill a lot of the tourism and have a huge economic impact on the city, especially at times like the festival and during the Christmas period.
‘I think maybe better regulation being brought in would be a good thing, but a complete ban would be a big mistake.’
Taylor Swift performing in Edinburgh on the Eras Tour. The ‘Taylor Swift effect’ is thought to have pushed up prices for both hotels and short term lets
And the Cockburn Association, a civic trust organisation for Edinburgh, says there is no reason for the sector not to exist as long as it is managed carefully.
Terry Levinthal, its executive director, told MailOnline: ‘We’ve always had the view of recognising short-term lets. Festival lets have been with us for decades.
‘Tourism is an important part of the economic sector in the city – but it’s not the only economic sector in the city. It’s about how these things are regulated.
‘We saw a massive push into the market, and the change in housing (availability). Landlords moved from a very heavily regulated environment to one that was not regulated at all where they could make two or three times as much money.’
He added that short-term lets have been subject to ‘chronic under-management’ and that regulation was only now starting to catch up with the market.
‘We are coming to the end of the honeymoon period and it’s taking time for regulation to bed in,’ he added.
‘We have seen this before – we’re looking at a re-run of the house in multiple occupation (HMO) regulations that came in 15, 20 years ago, and there was a big outcry saying it would be the end of the sector but that hasn’t happened.
‘There is a need for regulation and that includes (granting) access into the business as well as the management of it.’
But opponents, including the Association of Scotland’s Self-Caterers (ASSC), say it is driving would-be holiday landlords out of business and forcing those who have been able to operate to push their prices up, to the detriment of those wanting to visit.
Among those is Catherine Sutherland, an Edinburgh Airbnb host who says her short-term let is her sole source of income.
She said: ‘I am at a loss as to what Edinburgh City Council are doing to the tourism industry in our city by allowing big conglomerates to open up soulless glass aparthotels all over the city, whilst they relentlessly shut down small independent operators.’
The ASSC, claims short-term lets represent just 0.7 per cent of Edinburgh’s housing stock, and that there are 10,000 empty properties in the city that could be used to tackle the housing emergency.
Fiona Campbell, chief executive of the Association of Scotland’s Self-Caterers, says any move to ban Airbnb-type rentals would be ‘exceptionally rash’
Airbnb ‘superhost’ Catherine Sutherland claimed professional short-term landlords were being ‘relentlessly shut down’ by Edinburgh City Council’s regulatory scheme
Chief executive Fiona Campbell told MailOnline today: ‘Banning all short-term rentals is exceptionally rash and there is a lack of data underpinning it.
‘Popular visitor cities like Barcelona can strike an appropriate balance between the needs of local people while ensuring the tourism sector continues to flourish in a sustainable manner.’
‘Closer to home, it is highly disingenuous to blame short-term lets for the housing crisis in Edinburgh.
‘There is a desperate need for short-term let accommodation in Edinburgh; if you don’t have it, it will cause huge damage to the economy and its reputation as a world-renowned festival city.’
Airbnb, meanwhile, claims Edinburgh’s imposition of short-term let controls were driving holidaymakers further south and driving up hotel prices.
A report it published in April ahead of Taylor Swift’s concerts in Edinburgh suggested hotel prices surged 84 per cent around the time of her shows.
Room rates for short-term lets rose around 30 per cent in city in the same time period – and some savvy landlords offered rooms right next to Murrayfield Stadium, where the first UK Eras Tour shows were held, for more than £500 a night.
An Airbnb spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘Since short-term rental rules were implemented in Edinburgh, rents have hit a decade high, families have lost vital income, hotel prices have skyrocketed and guests have been priced out of stays and are favouring the north of England instead.
‘The root cause of housing challenges in Edinburgh is a lack of new homes being built.
‘In contrast, Airbnb is an economic lifeline for families and a typical host in Edinburgh shares one home for around five nights a month, with over two-thirds saying the extra income helps them afford their homes and rising living costs.’
This month Edinburgh City Council launched a consultation on the short-term let policy, seeking the views of locals from now until October.
Cllr Neil Ross, the convener of the authority’s regulatory committee, said the policy was ensuring all Airbnb accommodation operating in the city was ‘safe and properly regulated’.
‘The opportunity for everyone to input into how the short term lets licensing scheme is working was a commitment we gave last year and over the coming weeks, we want to hear your views,’ he said.
‘I’m confident this will help us to better understand how people are finding the regulation through licensing of short-term lets in Edinburgh and help inform any future decision making.’
For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel
Source link
