The document "For the right to housing: local power, global politics", quoted by the Spanish agency EFE, is signed by the head of New York City Councilwoman responsible for affordable housing, Brad Lander, by the Housing Councilwoman Lisbon, Paula Marques, and deputy mayor of Social Rights of Barcelona, Laia Ortiz. These councilmen believe that more rental price regulation is essential if cities are to set benchmarks, prohibiting homeowners from raising prices above those ceilings.
The document comes at a time when tourist pressure has been a major driver of city prices, with more apartments to be placed on the local housing market, at the expense of the traditional lease. "The proliferation of short-term rental companies, such as Airbnb, is a shared problem among the cities that have signed this article", it says in the article of newspaper Negócios. Consequences of this phenomenon are, according to the subscribers, the increase of the residential exclusion, as more families moved to the peripheries or more extreme cases of homeless.
The article signed by the three cities concludes that "our cities are not a commodity, but a very diverse community of people who wish to live and prosper together, in common (...) where the right to the city, the right to housing, is guaranteed".