“No cause is lost
as long as there is at least
a lawyer fighting for her.”
– Edward Bennett Williams
What truly constitutes Local Accommodation and what its implications are for residents, especially when authorized in excess, is an issue that has been brought up in municipal election campaigns and, regardless of whether or not they managed to capture votes, is then forgotten.
After several jurisprudential hesitations, the majority guidance of the courts considers that the use given to properties under the Local Accommodation regime assumes the legal nature of housing, not constituting, for example, a commercial use.
It is also not unknown that, after the fire in Mouraria, the then PS Government gave birth to a legislative package that, among many others, placed this activity in the spotlight of a lack of housing properties.
All, of course, after, years before, several people faced unemployment and invested their compensation in recovering properties and then converting them into Local Accommodation and, thus, taking advantage of the boom of tourism, to survive.
The conversion of properties, which were degraded, into Local Accommodation was even highly encouraged, in times of crisis, when every unemployed person was looking for a designated entrepreneur.
No matter what one says, the use given to a property in Local Accommodation is not, by the very nature of things, exactly the same as residential use, either because tourists come and go at very different times, causing noise, or because the care and modesty is different from those who use their property for housing.
If, on the one hand, the investment it represented was, not necessarily the main one, but also one of those responsible for washing the face of Lisbon, which was aged and with a dirty air, on the other it creates a clear margin of insecurity for residents of the main neighborhoods where Local Accommodation proliferates, such as Alfama or Mouraria.
You only need to visit one of these neighborhoods at a time that is less suitable for tourism to realize that there is an atmosphere of insecurity, made up of empty streets and dirt. Given that most of the previous inhabitants were replaced by this type of tourism, their absence generates a feeling of isolation for those who live there, with the danger that this represents.
However, when we are faced with the opposite, that is, with tourist levels close to maximum, what stands out is the hell that residents are faced with, whether stuck in rubbish and waste, or putting up with music and noise late at night, hours before they have to go to work. This will have to be associated with another type of crime often related to tourism, such as drug sales or robberies.
Once here, it is important to bear in mind that having historic neighborhoods full of Local Accommodation units is ungrateful for those who still resist living there, but, above all, it is risky from the point of view of security and management of the city itself, firstly because it distorts the city’s character and kills the vein of gold that feeds it.
Lisbon’s main charm is still its authenticity and that’s what we should focus on. Keeping everything as it was before is not recognizing the state of degradation in which the city found itself. However, ignoring the signs that we are becoming a mass, plastic product, which lacks naturalness and authenticity, is not understanding that we should not focus all our money on Tourism and that our best and most “sellable” characteristic is that we are Lisboners.
It is not acceptable that, for example, a resident of Mouraria, just to go have a coffee, has to overcome a circuit of rubbish and drunk people sleeping on the floor or watch sexual acts on public roads, just because they have convinced us that we should allow everything in Tourism.
The secret, as in everything, will have to be in a position of balance that we have been trying, now and only now, to obtain, but that cannot be achieved just by removing units that broke the rules from the permitted list. There is a long way to go.
One of the ideas could be based, for example, on the creation of maximum rates that are calculated based, not on the number of specific dwellings, but on the true number of residents and on simplifying processes with each municipality so that the respective license is lost in case of non-compliance. And, of course, serious and competent supervision, in addition to safety.
Not allowing others to visit us more than we allow ourselves is one of those basic rules that we have forgotten. And, seeing what is happening in historic neighborhoods, it is really worth thinking about this and launching the debate. The challenge remains.
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