Historic center ‘hostage’ by Airbnb? For the Modena civica list “the great work carried out in recent years by the administration to make the city even more attractive from a tourist point of view and the parallel increase in appeal for university students has created a distortion of the rental market, with less and less housing available at unaffordable prices for families and young people”.
Making the general picture worse is the boom in short-term rentals available on the Airbnb portal, which – numbers in hand – has seen the solutions present on the platform grow from 643 in 2019 to over 800 currently, with an average occupancy of 58.9% and a stay of 2.7 nights. “It is clear that this phenomenon is worsening the availability of traditional rentals, desperately sought after by families, students and workers – underline Katia Parisi, leader of Modena Civica, and the representatives on the ‘home’ theme Rosario Maragò, Lucia Sassi and Costantino Zara -. Let’s be clear, no one wants to limit the freedom of the market, but it is clear that there is a clear imbalance, especially from the point of view of tax burdens and regulations.” The current market offers single rooms for almost 500 euros a month and apartments, often dated, for over 1200 euros, “unaffordable figures even for families with a double salary”.
In light of current deregulation and a national regulatory framework that is struggling to take a clear direction, Modena Civica proposes “to establish a fixed observatory on the real estate market, which involves associations and all stakeholders to direct housing policies even better of the administration. It could also be an opportunity to think together about a possible Regulation dedicated to short-term rentals, with some fixed points also deriving from the new Pug which establishes rules, for example, on the different minimum sizes of accommodation for the context of the historic centre. (50 square metres) and for the other areas of the city (60 square metres)”. To this – add Parisi, Maragò, Sassi and Zara – we could add “the direct management of the Municipality of Agenzia Casa, the free change of use of offices to homes, the implementation of public housing for students and the establishment of a fund arrears for innocent people”.
