In a recent tweet, Mayor of Florence Dario Nardella announced his administration’s plan to stem the rise of illegal leases in the city. “An official register of apartments, with a mandatory identification code. {This is} one instrument for combatting evasion and encouraging those who respect the rules in their work,” he wrote, referring to his plan to curb a practice primarily seen in tourist rentals, though the standards are expected to be applied across the board. The required ID code assigned to each apartment will be inserted into the various websites offering rental services, a first step in transparent management of a booming but tough-to-regulate sector.
Every subject, be it a physical person, legal representative or company, that rents a property or a portion of one for tourism purposes will be required to communicate its location to the municipality beginning January 1, 2019. Anyone renting a space for the first time will be given 30 days to present the required information from the date of the first contract. Each one will then be required to submit their reservation data to ISTAT, as all non-hotel accommodations have already been legally obliged to do.
The move is a critical step in tackling the potentially negative impact tourist rentals can have on Florence, where in recent years, the rise of non-hotel rentals has increasingly restricted housing options for residents seeking long-term contracts, as landlords opt for the more lucrative option of renting to tourists.
At publication of this article, the consequences for not presenting one’s information to authorities have not been made public.
