It is half past twelve in the very lively center of the old town of Annecy. Under the cool sun of early autumn, a young woman leaves an old building on Passage Nemours, a large shopping bag on her shoulder, filled with spray cleaning products. She has just cleaned a tourist rental. “Here, there is an Airbnb on the ground floor facing the street and one facing the courtyard, one on the first floor and the entire third floor, these are furnished”she explains, while another young girl slips into the narrow courtyard with a bundle of clean linen to change the bedding. Of the eight mailboxes, only two have a label with a name. The others, ajar, house five key boxes, characteristic of Airbnbs.
In this historic heart of the Haute-Savoie prefecture, renowned for its pastel-colored houses, its cobbled streets, its canals, its access to the lake and its view of the mountains, the municipality estimates that between 25% and 30% of accommodation has become furnished tourist accommodation. “The old town becomes a big hotelsummarizes François Astorg, mayor (various left) of Annecy, while we need housing, the municipality, businesses, restaurants have difficulty recruiting due to lack of housing. »
A lifelong resident of this area which has become so popular with Instagrammers, Brigitte Cottet, president of the Association of Residents of the Old Town of Annecy, walks the streets pointing out the new shops. “Airbnb powers take-aways [services de restauration à emporter]fast fashion, bars, so-called traditional restaurants that serve cheese in plastic”she complains. Overtourism has turned his neighborhood upside down in less than ten years. “It was a village, full of local shops, we all knew each other, people from all social classes and all origins. It has become a party district where it is impossible to find accommodationshe continues. So this text on Airbnb which has just been voted on in Parliament is truly a moral law. »
Highly anticipated text
After the Senate at the beginning of the week, it was the National Assembly which definitively adopted, Thursday, November 7, the bill “aiming to strengthen the regulatory tools for furnished tourist accommodation at the local level” deputies Annaïg Le Meur (Renaissance, Finistère) and Iñaki Echaniz (Socialist Party, Pyrénées-Atlantiques). A transpartisan text, eagerly awaited by many local elected officials from the right and the left, keen to stem the proliferation of seasonal rentals, the number of which has increased from 300,000 in 2016 to 1.2 million today. The law will provide mayors with new tools for regulating the furnished apartment market. In particular, they will be able to set up seasonal rental quotas in their municipality.
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