A European city popular with thousands of Britons has threatened new bans against tourists as tensions soar in several holiday hotspots across the continent.
Activists in Lisbon, Portugal, have started a petition calling on city authorities to hold a referendum on tourist accommodation.
With almost 12,000 signatures so far, they are asking that tourist lets be banned from residential housing blocks due to the cost of housing.
“Short-term rentals take most of the housing space in Lisbon’s historic centre,” Raquel Antunes, a member of Movement for a Housing Referendum, told the Guardian. “We need to put the brakes on this.”
Today (November 8), the petition will be presented to the municipal assembly where it will be debated by members. If the referendum is accepted, it will be held in 2025.
If locals vote in favour of the activists, the city would be forced to phase out 20,000 tourist flats and would bar landlords from putting tourist lets in flat blocks.
This is called for in a city where house prices have nearly doubled in the last ten years, drastically increasing past the rates of local salaries.
“We don’t have to give into despair, which I think in these times is very easy to do,” said Antunes. Locals speak of not knowing anyone in their building or feeling unsafe as a steady stream of strangers ventured in and out, according to the outlet.
About 6,600 of the petition’s signatures are from Lisbon taxpayers. They are bolstered by another 4,400 who aren’t registered in the city.
Many of these signatories are former residents pushed out of the city by rising prices, according to Antunes, who added: “Sometimes you just have to say goodbye to a city you love because you can’t afford to live there.”
The activists emphasised that the aim was not to rid the city of tourist lets altogether. Antunes said they could still happen, but in buildings registered for commercial use such as hotel apartments and hostels.
“It would be a great step in the right direction,” she said. “Not only to listen to people but also to give them hope that we can make a city that is for everyone, not just for those who have money.”