In a wish that will be presented on Tuesday, April 13 to the Council of Paris, the City of Paris wants to study the feasibility of quotas for tourist accommodation, or even their ban, “In tense areas” from the capital.
According to this text, the Parisian executive wishes “To experiment, in conjunction with the State, a system of quotas or bans by street or by district in tense areas of Paris”. This text takes up one of the proposals resulting from the consultation of twenty-six citizens, drawn by lot, carried out between January and February.
This “Citizen opinion” is inspired by the example of Barcelona, a pioneer city in the regulation of rental platforms, such as Airbnb, Booking.com, Tripadvisor or Abritel-HomeAway, and targets areas very popular with tourists, such as the center of Paris, the Marais or Montmartre, and faced with a housing shortage.
“The idea is to launch a study on the subject to see what such a system could look like in Paris and to what extent it would be useful”, tempered the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of housing, Ian Brossat (French Communist Party).
“If, at the end of this study, this proves to be relevant, it will in any case require a legislative change”, underlines the Communist deputy of the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo (Socialist Party). “We have a small window with the“ 4D ”law [pour décentralisation, différenciation, déconcentration, décomplexification], which should pass in the summer. “
Within the framework of this bill, the team of the mayor of Paris wants to obtain from the legislator that he “Authorizes the municipalities wishing to have the possibility of adapting the regulation of tourist accommodation to local specificities”.
If he wins his case, the Parisian executive thus plans to “Subject to authorization any tourist rental of accommodation”, instead of the declaration system currently in force.
Illegality, according to Airbnb
“The establishment of quotas for seasonal rentals would be illegal”, reacted Airbnb, which recalls that “Municipalities do not have the legal powers to put in place this type of measure, which discriminates against seasonal rentals”.
“The vast majority of hosts on Airbnb are locals who occasionally rent their own accommodation”, underlines the site, according to which 95% of the entire housing offered on the platform were rented in 2020 for less than 120 days, the ceiling authorized for main residences.
Unscrupulous donors liable to prosecution
The City of Paris won a legal victory in February, the Court of Cassation judging its regulations to comply with European law, allowing it to prosecute hundreds of unscrupulous donors.
With this decision, an apartment can no longer be legally rented for more than 120 days a year through a platform without having requested a very restrictive and, de facto, dissuasive change of use.
The Court of Cassation thus validated the very restrictive mechanism known as ” compensation “ which goes hand in hand: an authorization is issued to the owner wishing to devote a second home to short-term tourist rental only if he buys an equivalent area – or even double in certain areas – to transform it into a dwelling, in order to compensate for the “Loss of housing”.