By John Francis
I gave a talk to the Men’s Breakfast group yesterday, about our 2019 visit to Venice and what Wanda and I learned from that. It reminded me that things have changed both here and in Venice.
That 2019 trip was the first time off the North American continent for both of us. We deliberately visited some of the destinations that are having problems with too many tourists — we wanted to see what it looked like on the ground and how the people feel about it.
The Portuguese Algarve coast is lovely to visit, and a lot like our peninsula. It’s not particularly crowded; there’s lots of space between the towns and you are definitely conscious that this is a community and you are a visitor.
Barcelona was a lot more crowded and tourism was all there was. The only people you saw were tourists or servers and everybody was busy-busy.
Venice was even more extreme. All the people in the streets were either tourists or tour guides. The locals were all working. At night, the place was deserted, which came as a complete surprise to us. You would expect a world-famous destination to have a vibrant night-life, wouldn’t you?
But no. The stunning part was that the vast majority of the people walking around Venice are day-trippers. Well over a hundred thousand people arrive by bus/train/ferry every day. And when they leave in the early evening, the whole place shuts down. The tourists take the train or ferry back to their luxury hotels or cruise ships; the workers take the bus back to their homes on the nearby mainland.
Venice is actually more like a theme park than a city. It still looks like a city, but the population has dropped from over 200,000 sixty years ago to under 50,000 now.
Why? Properties have become so valuable that people who work there can’t afford them. So they live in nearby bedroom communities and commute to work by bus or train. The city’s economy is entirely hollowed out by tourism.
A lot of the nicest properties have been bought by the very rich, to be occupied a few days a year. Many other properties have been bought by speculators and they too sit empty for years on end.
There are no apartments for workers to rent — the ground floors have all been converted to retail or warehouse space; the upstairs space has all been turned into hotels or short-term rentals for tourists.
There are also no businesses or services to support a local population — no hardware stores, dentists’ offices, food markets, pet food stores, veterinarians, drugstores — just an endlessly recurring stream of tourist traps. Trattorias, restaurants, Venetian glass stores, women’s fashions, luxury luggage, high end chocolate; high end baked goods; gelato; gifts; pizza; and of course, souvenir stalls everywhere you look.
The people riding in the gondolas are all tourists; the people poling the gondolas aren’t residents either — they come to Venice by commuter bus.
We had the good fortune to book a room in an old, family-run hotel. The owner/manager, Alberto Bico, grew up in Venice back when it was a vibrant city. But as the property values kept rising, the people had to leave. You couldn’t afford to live in Venice on the amount of money you could earn in Venice.
Sound familiar?
Alberto told me about another problem. The government of Venice has trouble generating enough revenue to fund the services it must offer. Hotels and other licenced accommodations pay the government a fee of four Euros per day per person. (They’re trying to clamp down on unlicenced STAs which avoid paying this tax.)
But day-trippers are a dead weight. They use the city’s services — washrooms, garbage, parks — but pay nothing. I read recently that Venice has implemented a system whereby day visitors have to register online and pay a 4 Euro fee before arriving. This was put in place just before the pandemic hit, so the success or failure of the new tax has yet to be determined.
But it’s a stimulating idea, isn’t it?
However: even if it’s fabulously successful, the visitor tax won’t turn Venice back into a thriving community. It will just turn it into a properly funded theme park.
The only way to turn Venice back into a community is to find a way that people can afford to live in Venice on the amount of money they can earn in Venice. Alberto Bico says there is nothing that can be done. Thirty years ago, they might have been able to change things but it’s too late now. It’s going to turn into “Veniceland” whether he likes it or not.
I think we’re at an inflexion point here on the peninsula, much like Venice was 30 years ago. Property values have more than doubled in the last two years and we need to find a way for people to live in our community on the amount of money they can earn in our community.
Paid Parking and the Municipal Accommodation Tax may help make our municipal services viable, but they do nothing to make housing more affordable.
There’s an excellent report in the Sept 12 Council Agenda from MNBP’s Attainable Housing task force. An excerpt:
“• Recommendation 1: Create a strategy to build water and sewer infrastructure in Tobermory and Lion’s Head.
• Recommendation 2: Create a strategy to create “nonmarket” attainable housing (priced at near market).”
Otherwise, I think we’re heading towards “Tobermoryland”. We should ask our Council candidates what they propose to do to make housing affordable.
