AUSTIN, Texas — Austin city leaders gathered feedback from members of the community on Tuesday afternoon about a proposal to change the rules for Airbnb properties and other short-term vacation rentals in the city.
They heard public comments during a special joint City Council and Planning Commission meeting at city hall.
This isn’t Austin’s first attempt at regulating short-term rentals (STRs). Previous rules approved in 2016 were struck down by a court, which ruled that “the ability to lease property is a fundamental privilege of property ownership.”
“These amendments are intended to promote responsible STR ownership, to help manage affordability issues and to prove improve our hotel occupancy tax collection,” Patricia Link with the city of Austin said.
There are around 2,200 licensed short-term rentals in the city of Austin, but estimates are that there are thousands more in the area.
“Currently, we spend the majority of our time chasing the licenses, effectively playing whack-a-mole, trying to locate the properties that are operating, that put up an advertisement, then take it down, but then put it right back up,” Daniel Word, assistant director with Austin’s Development Services Department, said. “If we can get to a much better place from compliance with licensing, I believe it can turn how we can focus our enforcement efforts.”
The city of Austin defines a short-term rental as a property rented for less than 30 days. The proposed rules could regulate short-term rental owners and require rental platforms to collect hotel occupancy taxes.
Roland Robinson has been licensed and running an STR in his backyard.
“Eighty cents of every dollar that makes stays right here in Austin,” Robinson said. “More importantly, it helps all of us continue to survive to live here in Austin, a city that we love. Regulations and restrictions like these push out locals. They push out mom and pops that are barely hanging on to the Austin dream.”
Other changes include making short-term rentals accessory use in all residential zoning districts. This means that rather than operating as a stand-alone type of land use, the city would shift most of the short-term rental regulations into the business code. As a result, short-term rental operators will be regulated as businesses rather than land uses.
The city also wants to impose density caps on how close two properties owned by the same owner can be. If an individual wants to operate more than one STR in Austin, the rentals must be spaced apart by at least 1,000 feet, to prevent entire city blocks being taken over by one individual and operating them all as a short-term rental. For a property with four or more units, operations would be capped at the greater of one unit or 25% of the total units.
People who currently own a licensed short-term rental would be allowed to continue operating so long as their property does not become a nuisance.
There would be requirements for the host to complete an online training course, submit a self-certified safety checklist to ensure that critical pieces of safety equipment like smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are operating in the dwelling, a posted evacuation plan showing the exits and location of fire extinguishers and fire alarms in the kitchen and a minimum of $1 million in liability insurance.
“You’re threatening to or asking to have the permission to de-platform people without any specifications of why, and then opening the mitigations that are basically opening up to say that you could find and regulate an STR out of existence,” Ryan Saunders, another STR owner said. “You’re also requiring $1 million in liability insurance rescue owners, and neither food trucks, bars or restaurants have any liability insurance requirements.”
Darrell Guest, another STR owner, said he has concerns with provisions that would require the owner to have a local contact has to be able to respond either to the phone call or the location, if necessary, within two hours. If they don’t respond in two hours, it could become a revocable offense to one’s license.
“I would ask that there be a justifiable excuse provision addressed in the ordinance,” Guest said. “My wife and I frequently traveled when we had guests in our house, and that’s more than two hours away, so we can’t be present in two hours.”
Guest also has concerns about regulation to require that license numbers be displayed in the advertisement online.
“We are not asking the platforms to validate whether that license number is active or not, just that there is a field present to enter it so that a number of license has to be entered in order to be displayed online,” Word said.
Guest said he has privacy and safety concerns about doing that.
“I would request that the license number be on the platform and appear at the same time that the address appears, which is after you book the residence,” he said.
He also said that Airbnb provides a $1 million insurance liability policy for hosts and wanted to know if that would satisfy the liability insurance concern.
City staff say these could help address issues like noise and parking at short-term rentals while looking at how those properties affect housing costs.
Several people who spoke at the hearing on Tuesday said they feel too many short term rentals destabilize neighborhoods. Rose Ballard said she feels like her neighborhood in East Austin is overrun by “unstaffed hotels.”
“They’re not compatible with their neighborhood. They bring safety issues, violence, potential sex offenders in the neighborhood, noise, traffic, school enrollment issues, bear burden on 911, APD, fire department, city of Austin, officials, 311 and our neighbors,” she said. “Our quality of life is diminishing. We have shots fired in the street right in front of our house.”
Representatives for Vrbo, a major short-term rental company headquartered in Austin said they support the changes, but are working with city staff to clarify and iron out some of the specific language.
“The ordinance presented today contains the core characteristics needed to achieve the highest level of compliance and enforcement, which includes the mandatory field for hosts to list permit numbers and on the platform side, the mandatory takedown provisions, which require all platforms to remove hosts from websites upon proper notice from the city,” a representative for Vrbo said.
Airbnb would support a hotel occupancy tax, similar to the company’s existing agreements with Houston, Corpus Christi, Plano and several other Texas cities. Since its establishment in 2019, Houston’s hotel occupancy taxes have raised more than $25 million.
“We are reviewing the proposed changes and look forward to working with the city of Austin to develop fair, balanced short-term rental rules,” said Luis Briones, senior policy manager at Airbnb. “We have long advocated for platforms to collect and remit local tourism taxes on behalf of hosts in Austin and support all efforts that respect the rights of Austin residents to earn extra money by sharing their home.”
The planning commission will discuss the possible changes at its meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 11, at 6 p.m. City council members are expected to vote on the proposed changes before the end of February.