Valencia calls on Madrid to solve the problem of tourist apartments

The Generalitat Valenciana is holding the Government of Spain responsible for the situation regarding the regulation of tourist accommodation which features in the current Housing Act, regretting the “disastrous” state of affairs that has evolved with respect to the removal of property from the market available to young people and those most vulnerable.

In his speech at the Sectoral Conference on Housing, Urban Planning and Land in Madrid, the regional secretary for Housing, Sebastián Fernández, accused Central Government of passing the Housing Act “without any consensus” from the autonomous communities, criticizing it of failing to address the true impact of the Housing Act on the real estate market and accusing it of using the issue of tourist housing as a “smoke screen” in order to ignore the real situation of access to housing in Spain.

He confirmed that the Generalitat Valenciana is committed to a policy that provides a solution to young people and the most vulnerable who currently suffer a problem with access to housing, referring to the Plan Vive initiative through which the Valencian government is aiming to put 10,000 subsidised homes on the market in the Comunidad Valenciana, including in Xàbia.

Fernández emphasized the need to promote subsidized housing as a solution to the lack of supply and claimed that the Housing Act fails to address the seriousness of the problem and aggravates the problem that many autonomous communities are facing with regards to tourist accommodation.

He added that responsibility for addressing tourist accommodation should be the Tourism Ministry whilst respecting the exclusive powers of the autonomous communities who have their own regulations, and that a tourism conference for all the autonomous communities should be held to discuss issues relating to tourist accommodation and agree a roadmap for the new European regulations on the matter.

Fernández concluded that the Generalitat Valenciana works with the tourism sector in its region to develop “good practices for the tourist use of housing” and that it is planning to develop a new regional standard with a range of laws to specifically regulating accommodation for use by tourists. He added that it was important for local councils to have the power to decide what development model they want to follow and be able to limit the use of property as tourist accommodation.