The City told the platforms that they would be held accountable for such breaches of the rules if community housing continues to be offered.Īirbnb agreed to allow digital registration for hosts, which already exists in countries like France, the Netherlands and Spain, as well to publish figures on Airbnb’s usage in Austria for tax purposesįinally, as reported by local media, in mid-October this year Airbnb removed all Viennese municipal apartments from its site. com to delete all advertisements related to council housing addresses. The subletting of municipal housing was already prohibited, but it took almost two years for City officials to push platforms like Airbnb and Booking. However, as these actions failed to yield promising results, the City last year took legal action against Airbnb listed apartments in community housing. The new rules were meant to oblige Airbnb to cooperate with the City in gathering these taxes. Fines for violating these rules were set at up to €50,000, to be split between the tenant and the owner(s) of the building if they failed to inform the tenant about such restrictions.Īpart from being worried about the deteriorating of neighbourhoods, City officials also complained that those renting out apartments via Airbnb often avoided paying the relevant municipal tax, thus depriving the City of important revenue that would otherwise be used to support domestic tourism. That is to say that a student was permitted to rent a spare room or an entire apartment during the summer break, provided they will return. However, apartments in residential zones were allowed to be rented (even on a short-term basis) if the owner or head tenant continues to use the apartment for their own purposes. The 2018 alteration stated that commercial use for the purposes of short-term leasing does not qualify as residential use, thus prohibiting such rentals. This decision was in line with pre-existing rules stipulating that only up to 20% of a building’s floor space can be used for non-residential purposes in residential areas. This prompted the City, that same year, to amend its Tourism Promotion Act in order to force people to pay taxes on income earned from short-term sub-letting, even if they only did so occasionally.Īlong with writing letters to the EC, by the end of 2018 the City of Vienna had also amended the Vienna Building Code to render short-term letting – including through rental services like Airbnb – illegal across large areas of the city. Back in 2016, over 11,000 apartments in Vienna were already being offered through Airbnb and 2,000 apartments were constantly rented, thus making them inaccessible to normal tenants. The cities also didn’t much like other holiday rental websites, as they felt soaring rental prices were pushing locals out of their own neighbourhoods.Īs an example, Palma de Mallorca voted to ban almost all listings after a 50% increase in tourist letting led to a 40% rise in residential rents. It was more than two years ago that Vienna was among the ten European cities (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Bordeaux, Brussels, Krakow, Munich, Paris and Valencia) that asked the EU for help in fighting the expansion of Airbnb. The love between Airbnb and Vienna is mostly a bitter one. Furthermore, the platform decided to cooperate with the City by revealing data on the number of rented apartments and watching for possible breaches, though it remains to be seen whether this action will be lasting or short-lived After a long fight, the Vienna Housing Councillor has finally won a victory against Airbnb, which is now forced to remove all apartments in the city belonging to social housing from its website.
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