[simonbarker87]

At the risk of sounding insensitive, I know Lisbon is going through a big change at the moment, but this isn’t a short term rental problem. This is a big city developing to the next stage problem and this is Lisbon’s version of it.

London, New York, Paris, Madrid, LA, etc all became too expensive for locals at some point in their history. Lisbon is next up and in a few years there will be other cities this happens to.

I’m not saying it’s right but it seems, inevitable?

[kranke155]

Its not inevitable. In Lisbon's case, could have been preventing with legislation controlling airbnb saturation. Which is now in place, and will likely save Porto from the same dystopia.

[simonbarker87]

Sure, this version of the problem could have been avoided with legislation but something else would cause it. Let’s take Porto as the example, automotive industry in the region grows suddenly, people move to the area, buy and rent property in Porto which drives up prices and drives out locals.

Which is basically what happened in all those other cities I listed and whatever the requisite industry is.

[kranke155]

Theres a quantum leap difference between growing industries and tourism. Tourism is an inequality industry, where the owners of the hotels/homes for rent make everything, and the staff makes very little to nothing. It is almost the worst industry you can have in a developing country.

[simonbarker87]

That’s a fair point.

Perhaps Lisbon (and PT in general) should focus its efforts on levelling up its economic activity in to higher value areas. The time I’ve spent in PT all people talk about is the negative impacts of tourism and not improving the wider economy. There seems to be a very conservative mindset.

But that’s probably from a thin slice of exposure.

[kranke155]

No I would say thats largely correct.

The country de industrialised way too early (I would argue no country should ever de industrialise to begin with, but that's another cup of tea entirely) And now has created lots of low quality jobs in the tourism sector through mass tourism and benevolent expat laws to people from richer countries.

The whole thing is a tragedy, but it helps those with capital already (homeowners in central Porto and Lisbon have likely seen their capital 3x to 10x) so the government let it happen.

The whole 2nd tier of the eurozone is completely in tatters anyway. Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. The eurozone doesn't work when there are two tiers of countries in it. Joseph Stiglitz had a great book about it.

[jimbokun]

Sounds like a “nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded” kind of problem.