scdreamer

There will not be permits enough for every apartment to become legal. That's the point - to have fewer short-term rentals, leaving more housing for local residents. Whether that strategy is successful remains to be seen.

nanabee

ibobi >>As a resident of a tourism city with a severe affordable housing shortage, I welcome such changes.>>

ibobi, I agree, while I like the idea of Airbnb and have used them on occasion myself I have to try to explain why they are a problem when they are allowed to become out of control in a popular tourist destination.

I live in such a town and we have over 5,000 Short Term Vacation Rentals in our three coastal beach communities alone. These Short Term Vacation Rentals (called STVR's) are in residentially zoned neighborhoods meaning they are not legally zoned for transient hotel/motel type use.
As a result:

1. they have impacted the sales and rental markets and now we have a shortage of housing available to people who want to live here on a permanent basis.

2. This drives prices for rentals up considerably.

3. Schools are impacted as fewer and fewer families are able to live in residential neighborhoods -

4. and our school district has taken notice and has warned our city council of the dire consequences to come of school closures.

5. Neighborhoods are less safe and permanent residents have to deal with parking, noise, trash, loud out of control parties day & night, etc.

6. The problem is the city council has advised the police to put these complaints on the back burner and they wont respond. City Code violations are not accepted at city offices and they won't issue citations for zoning violations period.

The group I work with to get this resolved as agreed to allow homeowners who live on their properties to rent out a room or more and if they have legal units those can be rented out as STRV's. But our city council won't resolve this problem.

MmePerdu

While I believe the arguments you make are valid for some communities, they are by no means true everywhere. I won't go into every point you make but suspect that if Airbnb collects & pays local taxes on the short term rentals as they do where I live, 10% added to the community coffers here, it may explain the reluctance to interfere.

AJPeabody

Nanabee: Could neighbors of the offending STVR's mount a civil suit against the owners of the offending houses?

jayne1973

hpeabbody-- whatever happened? Did you find an apartment after all?

hpeabody

Thanks for asking. I thought I had posted this, but YES, I was able to quickly find another apartment through Booking.Com. It does have a registration number and the contact with the owner has been very good. The drawback for me is that it is not in my preferred location in the Latin Quarter 5th and I could find nothing at all in that area. The apartment I found is nearby (several blocks) from my preferred area. It is basically on the border between Latin Quarter 5th and St Germain Des Pres 6th. I will be able to make it work just fine. But, I will still miss my other little studio

Christina

I remember you saying you found one that way.

I read an article recently that Berlin has softened their regulations a bit on this type of thing. The details were a little unclear to me, but somehow they are allowing somewhat more vacation rentals than before, I can't reclal if it was the time allowed or what.

I don't know why someone couldn't understand a limit but not outright ban. The whole point of these laws are mainly to prevent people from buying and renting apts solely to vacationers, and taking them out of the housing market. So they want to make sure someone actually lives in a place and it is a residence most of the time. A total ban would prevent people from renting them even if they were gone just a few weeks on vacation. That isn't the main problem with these, it's investors and nonresident landlords solely renting to vacationers. Where I live, they had to pass laws because some people were doing that even when their apts they were protected by rent control laws, which are solely meant to protect local residents, not vacationers.

hpeabody

Here is the apartment website
https://www.booking.com/hotel/fr/studio-art-deco.html

jayne1973

Glad it worked out. Sometimes change can be good! We have reserved one for September through VRBO/Homeaway and hope everything goes smoothly.

jpie

And you might find that you you now have a new preferred area. The location of the new place is really nice and Odeon is a great metro stop. And it puts you closer to our favorite "pizza street" in Paris rue des Canettes-only about 1/2 mile walk-just enough distance to walk off the pizza Our favorite is Positano, but Santa Lucia has a larger space and is usually easier to get into. Sorry for the food detour, but that is one of my main Paris past times.

janisj

Close to Odéon and Saint-Michel so great transport connections. And close to the river / 5th / 6th / 4th / Île de la Cité etc etc . . . so walking distance to just about everything.

MmePerdu

Everything as defined by so many and why I love the 18th.

kerouac

I understand you completely, MmePerdu. And yet the 18th is the arrondissement with the greatest number of Airbnb listings. They are banned from my building, but friends who visit us are not.

MmePerdu

There are more visitors and consequent changes in the 18th every time I visit. But maybe the Airbnb listings are more prevalent because there are fewer hotels, at least it seems so. And parts still seem "normal", not a tat shop in sight. That's true all over the city away from 1-7 but it was my first home so that's where I go.

FrenchMystiqueTours

I have no dog in this fight and I see that there is a need for short term apartment rentals and actually tourists aren't the primary reason why. There are lots of reasons people need to rent short term: for business, for school, internship and a whole host of other reasons, including tourists. But the way that things were going prior to enforcement of the short term rental law (which is not a new law) was having an adverse effect on the city and thus the reason for enforcement. I don't believe it is a perfect law the way it is written but at present it is what it is. Maybe there will be modifications made to the law after some time has passed when there will be the benefit of hindsight to see where changes could be made.

With all that being said, there is a comment I frequently see being made by posters who say they always used to rent apartments in Paris and now won't come back because they can't rent an apartment. That is not true. There were legal short term rentals prior to enforcement but they were the vast minority of the total inventory and despite all the negative criticism levied against AirBnB, their original business model of an owner renting out their own property (not investors) was well suited to the current aspect of the law allowing owners of a primary residence to lease for 120 days a year. Now that enforcement is going into effect there is a noticeable increase on rental websites (most notably on AirBnB) of properties listed with the 13 digit registration number and I would expect this trend to continue but it will take some time. So there's no reason not to come back to Paris if you think you can't rent an apartment. You most certainly can but your available short term rental choices will be much more limited than in the past, at least for the short term.

Macross

hpeabody, tell me how that sink works sitting on top of the washer.

It is amazing how they can squeeze everything in. I loved the cutting board that slid across our sink in the apartment we rented in Feb. You had more counter space instantly. Happy you found a place. I love renting apartments but our houses this trip in France were so special and made our trip more enjoyable.

hpeabody

Yes, I noticed that too, LOL. it should be interesting. In the prior apartment the washer was under the kitchen counter, but not sink portion. The more I look into this "new" apartment the happier I am with this find. I will be there, In Paris in about 60 days.