Lisbon residents organize referendum on the future of holiday homes and Airbnb

After more than a decade of tourism, short-term stays and unbearable housing price growth, the limit has been reached for Lisbon residents. Thousands protested and took to the streets to demand an end to evictions and to demand the right to live and the city. However, the Portuguese government has consistently refused to take action. The local population is not taken into account. It is being pushed away and has to move due to pressure from both national and international real estate and tourism investors.

Since 2014, more than 20,000 apartments have been granted permanent holiday rental permits by the city council, making house prices completely unaffordable for Lisbon's locals. The tourist use of housing has reached an alarming level because Lisbon is now the European capital with the most temporary rental apartments per number of inhabitants. This prevents the people of Lisbon from accessing decent housing. This leads to the displacement of residents, the disappearance of social cohesion and the sterilization of entire urban areas. These areas are deprived of local daily life to make way for tourist consumption.

To tackle both the housing crisis and the transformation of entire residential areas into tourist enclaves, the residents of Lisbon now want to organize and win a popular referendum to permanently abolish holiday rentals and Airbnb. Under the name 'Movimento Referendo pela Habitação', which translates into Housing Referendum Movement, citizens have collected the legally required number of signatures to hold the referendum. The signatures will soon be delivered to the city's municipal council. If all goes according to plan, in a few months the people of Lisbon will be able to participate in the first exercise of direct democracy through citizens' initiative in the country's history.

If the referendum is won, the Lisbon city council will have to scrap all holiday rental permits and houses will have to be used as residential properties again. This goes hand in hand with an oft-ignored ruling from the Portuguese Supreme Court, which declared in 2022 that residential buildings are intended for living in and not for holiday rentals. The abolition of the thousands of existing holiday homes means a reduction in house prices across the capital, the 'de-touristification' of neighborhoods and a new beginning for locals to live and live in Lisbon. It could also mean the end of Airbnb, booking.com and other similar platforms in the city.