Greece plans fines of up to 10,000 euros for renting beds in Athens flats

The draft provision

The Citizen Protection ministry is drafting a provision that would ban the systematic rental, subletting or granting of individual beds or sleeping places in properties zoned for residential use. Ministry sources said the draft sets administrative fines of up to 10,000 euros for people who run such spaces, along with the option of temporary or permanent sealing of premises under set conditions. A sleeping place is defined as any built fixture meant for lodging or rest, such as a bed, bunk, mattress or other structure. On Thursday, 15 October, Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis had pre-announced a rule to prohibit all leases and subleases of flats where dozens of migrants live together. The proposal is expected to be submitted in the week of 19 October.

Who would be covered

A violation would require at least three cumulative criteria. These include offering sleeping places bed by bed, frequent or periodic turnover of occupants, direct or indirect payment in return, and a layout or use that resembles collective lodging or a mass-accommodation facility. Licensed tourist accommodation, short-term lets carried out under current law, and institutional structures serving homeless people, dependent people or those in psychosocial rehabilitation would be exempt. The ministry's proposal argues that the practice endangers public health and safety, degrades life for other residents of apartment blocks, and enables tax evasion and unfair competition with licensed hotels. The ban would apply whether beds are offered through digital platforms or through a conventional lease, sublease or grant of use.

The minister's case

Speaking on the Parapolitika 90.1 radio station on Friday, 16 October, Chrysochoidis said the target is the owner and the tenant who converts a flat, not the people sleeping there.

The provision does not concern the people who sleep in these apartments.

He said an ordinary person pays the exploiter 20-30 euros a night for a bed, and that one flat can host many people at once. He listed three problems: exploitation of people who need a roof for the night, legal questions for the tax authority AADE, and families with children living in the same blocks, many of them migrants, who leave for work each morning. He asked how such conditions could exist without hygiene rules or safety, and how one person could exploit 20 or 30 people.

Opposition and owners

New Left issued a statement accusing the minister of preparing to recast the police in a harsher mould and of whitewashing far-right anti-immigration initiatives. The party said vulnerable people would be pushed out of substandard accommodation and arrested and deported on the spot.

The minister is planning, in effect, to turn the police into a peculiar 'Greek ICE'. What he announces foreshadows scenes of violence in Athens neighbourhoods.

Chrysochoidis answered that the party had a lot of nerve, rejecting its charges. The property owners federation POMIDA has received complaints about the practice only occasionally, according to its president Stratos Paradias.

We have no members who knowingly rent to people who will then sublet the flat to dozens of migrants.

Paradias said the phenomenon in Agios Panteleimonas and Kato Patisia must stop, but that criminal consequences should fall only on those directly involved, not on owners who do not know what happens in their property. Owners and brokers welcomed the government's intent but are waiting for concrete measures.

What comes next

On Thursday morning, 15 October, the minister told SKAI that the provision would be voted in the coming period. He said police operations inside these flats would run alongside a stronger police presence in squares to remove illegal foreigners.

The draft still has to be submitted, and the fines and sealing powers would apply only once the provision is passed.