With Barcelona announcing a total ban on short-term rentals from the end of 2028, how will decisions to curb Airbnb and others in the world's major cities change how we travel?

On 21 June, Barcelona mayor Jaume Collboni announced plans to ban short term rentals in the city starting in November 2028. The decision is designed to solve what Collboni described as “Barcelona’s biggest problem” – the housing crisis that has seen residents and workers priced out of the market – by returning the 10,000 apartments currently listed as short-term rentals on Airbnb and other platforms into the housing market.

Barcelona is not the only city to be strongly regulating – or even banning – short-term rentals outright. It has been illegal since September 2023 to rent out an apartment as a short-term let in New York City unless you are registered with the city and you are present in the apartment when someone is staying – a change also made to assuage the city’s housing crisis. Berlin banned Airbnbs and short-term rentals back in 2014, bringing them back under tight restrictions in 2018; and in many of California’s coastal cities, including Santa Monica, short-term rentals are either banned or highly restricted.

In British Columbia, Canada, Premier David Eby put the issue succinctly as he clarified new short-term rental rules: “If you’re flipping homes, if you’re buying places to do short-term rental, if you’re buying a home to leave it vacant, we have consistently, publicly, repeatedly sent the message: Do not compete with families and individuals that are looking for a place to live with your investment dollars.”

  • otpEnglish
    101·
    6 months ago

    In my country, Uber fixed a lot of problems that existed with Taxis.

    • Sometimes taxis wouldn’t show up.
    • Sometimes taxis wouldn’t pick up certain people because of how they look
    • There was no app that’d show you where the nearest taxi was and when it’d arrive. I’m not aware of any taxi company that has such an app now…yet there’s an app that’ll show you where the busses are (even across different transit agencies)
    • You wouldn’t know how much your trip would cost until you arrived at your destination.
    • Drivers would take longer routes or otherwise drive in “favourable ways” to increase the fare meter.
    • In my experience, taxi drivers have been more rude than Uber drivers
    • Taxi drivers would occasionally not accept certain methods of payment upon trip completion (and some would even try to use this trick to scam their passengers and likely their companies or the government by not reporting fares).

    These all could’ve been solved by a regular taxi company, but I guess there was no incentive to make the product any better to the customers.

    • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
      7·
      6 months ago

      Over here in Germany, they ran against a brick wall:

      • Taxi apps already existed. Pioneers were taxi.eu, where a consortium of local dispatchers plain and simply introduced another way to access their services, and what’s now called Free Now, circumventing the old dispatchers, directly connecting clients and individual, licensed, taxi drivers. Both predate uber’s founding, and definitely uber’s introduction into the market here.
      • Regulations exist. Taxis are classed as public transport, prices are regulated, no congestion pricing, no not taking on a passenger to the outskirts because you wouldn’t get a return fare, no nothing. On the flipside you need a license so that there’s few enough taxis around for every driver to still be able to make a living. Uber didn’t care a bit about that kind of stuff, bringing us to
      • Regulations are enforced. Drivers taking uber fares without both taxi and passenger transport license were looking at court orders giving slaps on the wrist, but also threatening 1000 Euro fines for every subsequent passenger transported without proper licensing.

      Oh:

      • Public transport is a thing. Most trips are covered by buses, metros, etc, more rural areas by collect taxis. Needing to hail an individual one is very rare, I think most of their fares are from people with too much money on hand. Also if you need to hail that taxi chances are your health insurance is going to cover the cost they prefer you hauling your broken leg to the doctor with a taxi, transport ambulances are more expensive and it’s not like you need medical supervision on the trip, or the thing would need to accommodate a wheelchair or such.
      • otpEnglish
        21·
        6 months ago

        All that sounds great. I’m not pro-Uber so much as I’m anti-Taxi (as they exist where I live), lol

    • AlligatorBlizzardEnglish
      51·
      6 months ago

      Sometimes taxis wouldn’t pick up certain people because of how they look

      Unfortunately, at least in the US, Uber is just as bad. I’ve got a friend who’s blind and has a service dog - Uber drivers legally can’t decline a ride because he’s got a service dog, but very frequently they’d pull up, see the dog, and cancel the ride. Taxis are more likely to know and follow the law.

    • SeaJ@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      Thankfully taxi services have finally gotten off their ass and most large cities have a taxi app. I used to fucking hate taxis because I never carried cash and the driver would get all huffy when I wanted to use card despite clearly having a card machine. I know most of it was they prefer cash to skirt taxes and also avoid the card fee (which they could add to the charge) but sorry, not sorry.

      Uber came along and card was the default and you knew how much the ride would be before you even called them. No more guessing how much it would cost and having to pay attention to make sure the driver isn’t taking a scenic route to drive up the meter.