HomeMy WebLinkAbout100323 Housing shortage exacerbated by unregulated short term rentalsALERT: BE CAUTIOUS This email originated outside the organization. Do not open attachments or click on links if you are not expecting them.
Commissioners,
From the attached article: “the huge number of homes lost to short term lets booked on digital platforms is inextricably linked to the housing crisis”
Similarly, see https://mrsc.org/stay-informed/mrsc-insight/december-2021/affordable-housing-and-the-impact-of-short-term-re <https://mrsc.org/stay-informed/mrsc-insight/december-2021/affordable-housi
ng-and-the-impact-of-short-term-re>
“(I)n aggregate, the growth in home-sharing through Airbnb contributes to about one-fifth [or 20%] of the average annual increase in U.S. rents and about one-seventh [or 14%] of the
average annual increase in U.S. housing prices.”
Jefferson County’s efforts to address the housing shortage have not, to date, addressed the impact of VBRO, AirBnB, and others.
The county is not collecting lodging / transient taxes on the many, many properties that are being rented through less formal means, including newspaper classifieds, Hipcamp, Craigslist,
Facebook, Nextdoor, …, or simply word of mouth. The state is similarly not collecting its share of taxes.
How many such unlicensed rentals? All of them in this county! But the actual number is not knowable because privacy rules prevent the Treasurer from reporting the revenue from rental
agencies, even at a summary level. How many rentals are not reported at all? Commissioner Dean recently expressed doubts about the magnitude of that number.
Well, I know for a fact that several of the 24 properties (all zoned RR 1:x) on my road are owned and operated as multiple rentals by non-residents. Note that our existing code requires
that the owner occupy either the main residence or the single permissible ADU in order to legally rent the ADU or the main residence. Many / most of the rentals around here appear to
be short-term, and many of them are clearly legal. But of course the county does nothing to enforce the code, so violations abound.
If you are serious about addressing the housing problem (still a declared “emergency”, as I recall), you’ll need to do a lot more than has been done so far.
1. Change the County Code to require licensing of all rentals, both short and long term. Ample examples of such codes exist in other areas (see MRSC et al), so you should be able to
readily adapt others’ work. e.g. https://www.codepublishing.com/WA/WallaWalla/#!/WallaWalla20/WallaWalla20139.html <https://www.codepublishing.com/WA/WallaWalla/#!/WallaWalla20/WallaWalla20139.html>
2. Enforce the Code, proactively not reactively.
Thank you,
Tom Thiersch
Jefferson County, WA