Adrien Escourido is a child of the country. With his wife, they earn a little over 2000 euros net per month and they have a hard time finding accommodation. After months of searching, they found this 35 square meter studio near Biarritz last February for 650 euros per month. For this furnished accommodation, the couple signed a one-year lease during which the owner cannot, in principle, kick them out. However, they will have to pack their bags next month, after only 4 months of rental.
This condition was imposed on them by the owner when handing over the keys. Adrien Escourido says he was forced to sign in advance, last February, a departure notice written by the owner himself, and which he dated May 30 next “I had no choice, otherwise we wouldn’t didn’t have the apartment”.
This family discovered at their expense, by logging on to this seasonal rental site, why the owner was so keen to recover his accommodation before the summer. On Airbnb, weekly rental costs 800 euros per month, the tenant is sorry “how are we going to do it, where are we going to sleep?”, He worries.
Are these practices questionable? “It’s in bad faith, it’s not fair, and above all not in line with reality,” says Julien Claudel, lawyer in Saint-Jean-De-Luz. According to the lawyer, the owner should not have have this type of departure notice signed.
We contacted the owner of Adrien Escourido. He claims that the tenants knowingly accepted his conditions. “We had agreed from the start. Unfortunately, I am not a social worker, my accommodation does not serve as a foster home, so anyway, I get my property back at the beginning of July”, defends himself the owner.
In the Basque Country, this association for the defense of tenants has identified 150 suspicious leases that it considers fraudulent, this year alone. That day, activists set up tents in front of the sub-prefecture of Bayonne to alert. “We have up to three fraudulent leases a day. It is not normal for the law to be violated like that, in the homeless, it is people who work and who pay rent”, regrets Txetx Etcheverry, spokesperson for the ALDA association.
In the Basque Country, in 5 years, the number of tourist accommodation advertisements has increased by 130%.