The City Council of Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Barcelonès Nord) has made the decision to suspend the granting of licenses for apartments for tourist uses for one year. Meanwhile, an interdepartmental study commission will be created from which a proposal will emerge so that the plenary session can modify the city's commercial use plan.
Santa Coloma has 82 homes for tourist use, of which 65 are for flats and houses, 17 with an aparthotel license, two hotels and two guest houses. However, in recent years they have begun to receive new requests that, they believe, could cause a strong distortion of the housing market, especially in large cities, increasing rental access prices and promoting gentrification processes. Likewise, there may be effects on the rest and coexistence of neighbors.
In this sense, Barcelona has been a clear example of the distortion that is expanding on the municipalities of the metropolitan environment, through the oil spill effect, thanks to an optimal public transport network. Santa Coloma, just 30 minutes from the center of Barcelona, has received numerous queries regarding tourist activities in recent years, especially referring to establishments for tourist use and shared housing, but also many others related to accommodation.
The city already has a regulation of the rules to obtain this type of licenses, but given the impossibility of this phenomenon becoming a real problem, and in line with the decree approved by the Generalitat that cites this same problem, it is considered necessary to study and analysis of a new local regulation to respond to the risks and threats to the housing situation in the city.
The government chaired by the socialist mayor, Núria Parlon, has paralyzed the new licenses, once the Generalitat has promoted a new regulation in Catalonia that, among other measures, requires the renewal of each of them every five years, through of a permit that will be issued by the town councils themselves. The regulations will come into operation in 262 municipalities that contain 95,000 tourist apartments, 90% of the total.
The new regulations make it a condition for councils to grant more licenses that municipal urban planning justifies that there is enough land for housing. The licenses will be limited to 10 tourist apartments per 100 inhabitants, a limit that is exceeded by almost fifty municipalities. In these 47 saturated towns there are an excess of 28,000 tourist apartments that the norm requires to eliminate.
