Câmara de Lisboa diz que impedir
criação de novos hotéis travaria riqueza e emprego
POR O CORVO • 24 MAIO, 2017 •
A Câmara Municipal de Lisboa (CML) recusa considerar a
possibilidade de proceder a uma suspensão do licenciamento de novas unidades
hoteleiras, pelo impacto que tal medida teria na criação de riqueza e de
emprego para a cidade. “Não acredito que seja por essa via do congelamento do
licenciamento hoteleiro que vamos resolver o problema da habitação em Lisboa”,
afirmou Manuel Salgado, vereador com o pelouro do Urbanismo, em resposta a uma
interpelação nesse sentido por parte de uma eleita comunista na Assembleia
Municipal de Lisboa (AML), na sessão de perguntas à câmara realizada na tarde
desta terça-feira (23 de maio). A solução para a falta de habitação, garante
Salgado, passa pela criação já anunciada pelo município de bolsas de habitação
a custos controlados.
O comentário do
vereador surgiu em resposta a um diagnóstico devastador, feito pela deputada
municipal Lúcia Gomes (PCP), das condições de acesso à habitação por parte das
classes não privilegiadas economicamente. “Todos os dias, há notícias de novos
despejos em áreas centrais da cidade. As rendas e a especulação imobiliária não
páram de aumentar. Ao mesmo tempo que chegam os ricos de Hollywood, saem os
trabalhadores e as suas famílias”, afirmou a eleita comunista, lamentando que a
Câmara de Lisboa tenha optado “por nada fazer”. Mais que isso, acusou a
autarquia da capital de uma “política do bling-bling, do favorecimento dos
turistas endinheirados”, utilizando as receitas da taxa turística para investir
em medidas que, diz, não só não resolvem como têm “agravado bastante o problema
da carência de habitação acessível”.
Lúcia Gomes recordou,
de seguida, as estatísticas que fundamentam tais acusações. A começar pelos
preços da habitação para arrendamento, que terão subido entre 3% a 36%, nos
últimos quatro anos. Valor que se agrava para 46% quando se fala na compra de
habitação própria – o que terá como consequência uma taxa de esforço entre 40%
a 60% do rendimento familiar com a aquisição desses imóveis. “No que diz
respeito ao arrendamento, a procura era, em 2015, nove vezes superior à oferta.
Há já algumas freguesias em Lisboa em que um quinto das casas é destinada ao
alojamento local, sempre em detrimento do alojamento permanente”, afirmou a
deputada municipal do PCP, lembrando que a aquisição de imóveis por capital
estrangeiro representa já 18%. Lembrando uma recomendação apresentada pelo seu
partido, em 2016, visando limitar os alojamentos locais, a deputada comunista
instou a CML “ a suspender o licenciamento de novas unidades hoteleiras” e a
proceder a uma avaliação de imediato das existentes.
As propostas não foram bem acolhidas por Manuel Salgado.
Lembrando que a maior parte do que é reclamado pelo PCP, sobretudo no que se
refere à limitação do alojamento local, corresponde a competências da
administração central, o vereador mostrou clara discordância com a adopção das
“poucas medidas” sugeridas pelos comunistas que efectivamente dependem da
câmara. Ou seja, travar o licenciamento de hotéis. De acordo com Salgado, nos
últimos dois anos, os seus serviços terão emitido 33 licenças para unidades
hoteleiras na cidade, correspondentes a uma área total de cerca de 150 mil
metros quadrados. “Se parássemos de autorizar hotéis e esta área fosse toda
transformada em habitação, tal corresponderia a 800 fogos”, disse. “É evidente
que tal número é importante. Mas eu pergunto: quantos empregos e quanta riqueza
foi criada em Lisboa pelo facto de termos o turismo que temos?”, lançou.
Desvalorizando a
existência de uma relação directa entre o licenciamento de unidades hoteleiras
e a escassez de habitação permanente, Manuel Salgado garante que a melhor forma
de a CML combater o problema é “investir forte” no Programa Renda Acessível –
apresentado pela autarquia em abril do ano passado, promete a construção de 5 a
7 mil fogos de tipologias T0, T1 e T2, com rendas entre os 250 e os 450 euros,
em 15 localizações da capital. O programa, que apenas deu os primeiros passos
há dois meses, com a aprovação do concurso público para um conjunto de 160
apartamentos na Rua de São Lázaro, é qualificado por Salgado como
“absolutamente essencial”. Sobre o fenómeno do alojamento local, o vereador
alijou responsabilidades. “São edifícios de habitação e o uso que lhes é dado
não depende de licenciamento municipal, nem a lei prevê que dependa. Essa
questão deve ser colocada ao governo central e não à Câmara Municipal de
Lisboa”, afirmou.
Texto: Samuel Alemão
Amsterdam to call a halt to city centre hotel developments
Business August 1, 2015
Amsterdam city
council is to call a halt to the development of new hotels in the city centre,
officials told the Financieele Dagblad. The conversion of the former law courts
on the Prinsengracht into a super luxury hotel is the last major project on the
schedule, the FD said. ‘After 2016, there won’t be many more new hotels in the
city centre. Locals have said ‘enough is enough’,’ a spokesman told the paper.
This year, an extra 3,000 hotel beds are being developed in Amsterdam, on top
of 1,300 in 2014. Despite the growth, hoteliers’ fears that the market would
become saturated would appear to be unfounded. The price of a hotel room rose
4% between 2013 and 2014 to an average €141 a night and the occupancy rate in
August is around 90%, the paper said. There is an ongoing debate in Amsterdam
about the city’s policy on tourism, with city centre residents complaining that
they are being squeezed out. A number of cheaper hotel developments are under
way outside the centre, including the conversion of abandoned office blocks.
The city council sees spreading tourism across the city as one way of reducing
the impact on the centre.
Read more at DutchNews.nl: Amsterdam to call a halt to city
centre hotel developments http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2015/08/amsterdam-to-call-a-halt-to-city-centre-hotel-developments/
Barcelona Bans New Hotels in the City
Center
Amid a crackdown on tourism, these
are the city’s toughest measures yet.
FEARGUS O'SULLIVAN Jan 30, 2017
For Barcelona’s tourism industry, the past week may have
marked the end of an era. While Spain’s second city has seen galloping, almost
uncontrollable growth in tourism since the millennium, the city voted Friday to
adopt the most drastic ban on new vacation accommodations yet seen in any
European city.
In the city center, all new hotel beds are banned, period.
In a small area encircling the city center, new hotel beds will be permitted,
but only to replace those in hotels that have closed. In Barcelona’s suburbs,
new hotel beds will be permitted, but only under strictly limited
conditions—land that has previously been earmarked for housing, for example,
will be completely off limits.
Short of ordering current hotels to close, the new rules are
arguably as tough as the city can get. The new law’s definition of central
Barcelona, as seen in the tweeted map below is expansive. It includes
everywhere from Montjuïc in the west to Poblenou in the east and stretches inland
to encompass the Gràcia neighborhood and much of the Eixample. Over the next
decade or so, the idea is that hotel numbers in this area will steadily
decrease, leaving the streets to return to their former role as a promenade and
shopping space for locals.
The law would be tough on its own, but the city didn’t even
wait a full working day before suggesting even more controls. On Monday,
Barcelona City Hall launched a new strategic plan for tourism, one which
advocates that vacation apartments pay the top rate of property tax. The idea
of this, along with the hotel ban, is to make it harder to convert badly needed
residences into businesses by raising the bar for profit.
If these measures seem extreme, it’s because local
frustration at the excesses of the tourist industry has been bubbling over for
some time. A city of 1.6 million inhabitants, Barcelona received 32 million
visitors last year, most of them concentrated in late spring and summer. These
tourists are of course a cash cow, but they have pushed up the price of rents
and reduced the number of available apartments for locals while providing jobs
that are often poorly paid and merely seasonal. They have also squeezed
businesses catering to locals out of the downtown, leaving a trail of tourist
stores that are dull, generic, and sell goods with little real connection to
the city’s culture. This has given some overburdened parts of the city the air
of a theme park—one where you wait in line a lot and don’t have that much fun.
Locals, especially those living downtown, are none too
pleased. In just the latest sign of public discontent, more than 1,000 people
rallied Saturday on La Rambla, the city’s main pedestrian promenade and a strip
that has steadily turned from a local living room to a tourist trap known for
its (distinctly non-Catalan) “frozen paella and sangria.” Holding banners
saying “Barcelona is not for sale,” the protesters sought to kick-start the
re-occupation of the inner city by locals, a process that would no doubt help
to reinstate some of the charm that attracted tourists to the city in the first
place.
Hoteliers, who understandably feel rather put upon, have
criticized the measures, pointing out that they won’t necessarily stop the
worst excesses of the industry. Millions of visitors, for example, come to
Barcelona only for the day, bused in from the many beach resorts that line the
Mediterranean coast or arriving by cruise ship. It’s possible that, if hotel
bed numbers shrink, then these day-trip visitors, who give relatively less to
the city economy, could actually grow in number.
The new tourism plan seems aware of this, and looks for ways
to manage all sorts of visitors regardless of whether they’re staying or not.
The parking fee for tourist buses in a major car park, for example will rise
from an absurdly cheap €4.50 to €34, as an experiment that could be extended to
the entire city.
The city will also try out a more rigorous form of street control
in the waterfront Barceloneta neighborhood and the area around the Sagrada
Familia. In these areas the city will have the power to close bars that are
causing noise nuisance and to ban scooters and Segways, at least for the summer
season. Neither of these moves will resolve the pressures that tourism places
on the city, but they at least show that the authorities are groping toward a
solution.
But what of the visitors themselves? All this might be
enough to put some people off visiting, sensing that they’re not entirely
wanted. Out of towners should rest assured that there’s still room at the inn.
The city still has 75,000 hotel beds and 50,000 places in vacation apartments.
On top of this, there are an estimated 50,000 more beds available in illegal
Airbnbs, despite attempts to reduce their number. It’s possible that at some
point in the future, visitors might find it slightly harder or more expensive
to visit Barcelona. The new laws should help make sure that the city still
possesses something they actually want to see
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