2023-05-07 17:54:18
In part two of this series, Euronews looks at how tourism is exacerbating the housing crisis in Italy and Ireland.
In Italy, competition with tourists
Italy’s beautiful lakes, food, climate and heritage attract millions of tourists every year. Some 56 million people visited the Boot in 2022, a figure close to pre-Covid-19 pandemic levels.
While tourism is one of the main drivers of Europe’s third-largest economy, residents of some of Italy’s most popular cities, such as Milan, Rome, Venice or Naples, sometimes find it difficult to compete with tourists. to find accommodation.
Airbnb, the online accommodation service that allows landlords to rent out their homes or rooms to travellers, was introduced to the country in 2008. According to resident Fabio Scrivanti, who works at the Venice Art Factory, this has resulted in great hardship for residents who needed affordable housing.
“Venetian landlords discovered that it was more profitable to list their property on Airbnb than to rent it to ordinary people”he explains to Euronews.
“It’s complicated because locals can’t afford to pay 80 euros or more for a room per night. That would amount to a monthly rent of over 2,400 euros. It’s crazy, I certainly mightn’t allow it”he says.
“I am 29 years old, I have a master’s degree and I work in the field I studied at university. I have a lot of experience, but despite this, salaries are not high in Italy. Many of my friends still live with their parents, it’s easier.”
“I was lucky with my shared apartment because my landlord gave me my room at a good price, but that’s rare, I know that’s not the reality for a lot of people”concluded Fabio Scrivanti.
In addition to Airbnb, the astronomical rates charged in some major Italian cities are making it increasingly difficult for city dwellers to repay their credit. According to Housing Everywhere, Europe’s largest online rental platform, Milan is one of the most expensive cities in Europe.
Lucia Pizzimenti, a 35-year-old environmental engineer who lives and works in Milan, testifies: “I live with my grandmother who has a free room in her apartment because I don’t want to pay more than 800 euros for a small room here”.
Lucia has been looking for a place to live for seven years, but recently had to widen her search to suburban towns or neighboring towns in order to find an apartment within her budget.
Even tourists struggle to find accommodation in Ireland
While aspiring tenants and owners in Italy continue to struggle with the influx of tourists and soaring accommodation costs, the lack of short-term solutions in Ireland is discouraging even tourists from visiting the country.
The Irish Confederation of the Tourism Industry (ITIC) says rising holiday accommodation prices are having a negative impact on the tourism sector and that a third of tourist beds outside the capital are under contract government housing, serving as international protection housing for refugees and asylum seekers. In County Donegal alone, over 50% of tourist beds are under government contract.
The number of international visitors to Ireland in the first quarter of 2023 was 16% lower than in January-March 2019. As Irish tourism providers struggle to return to pre-Covid-19 levels, many businesses in the sector fear that the continued rise in prices might jeopardize Ireland’s long-term reputation.
This is affecting activity and travel providers across the country as they rely heavily on the ability of hotels, bed and breakfasts, hostels and Airbnb to accommodate visitors during their stay.
Nowhere to go
The migration crisis in Europe also has an effect on refugees as well as on the local population.
According to the Irish Refugee Council, the rapid increase in the number of asylum seekers, particularly Ukrainian refugees, has highlighted the shortcomings of Irish housing policy. Some 73,000 Ukrainian refugees have fled to Ireland since the start of the Russian invasion.
The Irish Red Cross reported that the lack of emergency accommodation in Ireland for Ukrainian refugees reached a critical point in July 2022, despite locals’ best efforts. In March 2022 Irish Red Cross Secretary General Liam O’Dwyer confirmed that around 23,000 places had been put forward by locals for consideration for hosting Ukrainians.
Although Irish residents were hailed for their generosity, this figure was not enough. As a result, some Ukrainian refugees arriving in Ireland have had no choice but to sleep on the ground at Dublin Airport, in hotel lobbies or in temporary encampments.
The Irish government has promised to find solutions to the housing shortage and support local communities, newcomers and asylum seekers, but ITIC says tourism and the income it generates must also be taken into account in the equation.
The decade of lost development
According to Mark Rose, managing director of Rose Properties, Ireland’s economic growth and recovery from the 2008 crisis is largely due to foreign direct investment: “We’ve recovered well, there’s lots of money and lots of jobs in Ireland, but there’s no housing to support all of those we attract. So even though we wanted to attract builders to help relieve the crisis, as many countries are doing, there would be no place to house them.”
“Architects, masons, electricians, builders have all gone abroad, to Australia for example, in search of employment, and these professionals have never returned”, he continues.
While Ireland remains one of the least densely populated countries in Europe, the laws governing building permits create a lot of administrative complications for potential builders, as Roy Dennehy, Director of Dennehy Auctioneers explains: “We are living in a time of lag, because in 2006 we had a population of around four and a half million people, but we were building 90,000 homes.”
“The population is bigger now and we’re only building a fraction of what we were building before”he adds.
The CSO found that some 30,000 residential units were built in Ireland last year, a third of the homes built in the Irish state as a whole in 2006.
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