‘No Airbnb’, ‘tourists go home’, ‘migrants welcome’

Since 2016, many newly-arrived migrants found housing in the area of Ano Poli. Some were hosted by allies or found accommodation in apartments through the UNHCR housing schemes; others found cheap houses to rent or occupied abandoned buildings. There was also a shelter for unaccompanied minors in the area. This comes as no surprise, as the neighbourhood of Ano Poli has been inextricably linked with refugee history since 1922, while a significant part of its population are young people who lead alternative lifestyles and embrace leftist and anti-authoritarian ideologies. As a result, many Ano Poli residents have a positive and welcoming attitude towards migrants.

On the other hand, over this same period the area was also becoming increasingly ‘touristified’ and gentrified. Until the 2000s, Thessaloniki was considered a peripheral tourist destination relying mostly on the appeal of Chalkidiki, but from the beginning of the 2010s and until the pandemic, the city emerged as a major tourist attraction in its own right. This was the result of municipal policies aimed at utilising the multicultural, multi-religious and multiethnic past of the city in order to attract tourists from new places, such as the Balkans, Turkey and Israel. Indicatively, from 2010 to 2019, there was a 76% increase in passenger traffic at the city’s airport, reaching almost 7 million people. From 2012 to 2018, there was also a 50% rise in hotel stays to 2,4 million, while in 2019 there were 3,185 active rental units in the city recorded on the Airbnb platform.

Specifically in Ano Poli, according to the AirDNA database, there are about 250 apartments and rooms available on the Airbnb platform, with small inns and hostels also cropping up in the area. In addition, Ano Poli has been featuring more and more prominently in tourist guides and life style magazines, emerging as an attractive destination for tourists visiting Thessaloniki. As a result, rents in the area have risen significantly over the past few years. This has led to a heated debate over who has the right to live in Ano Poli, with the controversy spreading to the neighbourhood’s walls through slogans and graffiti, as can be seen in the photographic evidence presented.