this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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Unfortunately, I don't know too much - most of the contact has been initiated by our sales tax staff to whatever department handles tax collection on the company side, but from what they've told me, they just don't get a response. Our municipal code only allows us to go after owners if they fail to get licensed (and even that is a nightmare for us to try to do) but there's nothing about the actual companies.
It's kind of the wild west at the moment - the problem isn't evenly distributed, so there's not one catch-all solution. One of the mountain towns here said they have 700+ rentals and their official population is only like 500 people. We have <100 in a city of about 40k. It's still a problem here, but nowhere near as bad as ski towns have it. Most of the laws I've seen are aimed at the owners, not at the companies facilitating the rentals, and they range from things designed to just make sure someone's actually inspecting the rentals so no one dies all the way to making it unaffordable to rent multiple properties by charging a fuckton of taxes and fees. I'd kill for something forcing airbnb, vrbo, etc to actually cooperate.
I'll go one step further, I'd pay taxes to the government that actually regulates shitty business practices. How is it easier to have a 12% increase in homelessness last year than it is to regulate fucking airbnb? Airbnb is not northrup grumman. It's not allied steel. it can go the fuck away.
Oh I 100% agree - when I finally managed to finish my degree a few years ago, I did my capstone research on suburban/rural homelessness, and I'm now an even bigger proponent of housing-first policies. Supportive housing works better than piecemeal programs, and outcomes are better for sobriety and mental health treatment than they are for programs that require those things as a condition of getting housing.
Unfortunately, people fucking love to hate the homeless. Everyone wants to put conditions on every scrap you give them because "I worked for what I have, they should have to, too!" There's not a lot of political support to be found for policies that are based on meeting people where they are. Saying we should use housing that's already vacant to help people get off the streets would get you booed right out of the room a lot of the time.