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HomeMy WebLinkAbout10-13-23 Public Comment - J. Mitchell - Airbnb Letter to Bozeman City CommissionOctober 12,2023 Bozeman City Commission Re:Short-term rental ordinance Dear Commissioners, On behalf of Airbnb,I am writing to share our appreciation of the Community Development Board’s recommendation to protect existing Type 3 short-term rental Hosts who rely on home sharing,and to express our strong concerns with other aspects of the draft ordinance that we cannot support. As you are aware,the City’s STR Assessment report found that prohibiting or severely limiting short-term rentals would not guarantee an increase in housing stock,and would have limited impact on the long-term rental market.Additionally,these severe restrictions would eliminate a signicant portion of the lodging needed to accommodate the millions of visitors, who in turn support local businesses and the tourism industry while generating valuable tax revenue for the City.Committee Chairman Henry Happel reiterated this point at the Development Board meeting on October 2:“I haven’t seen anyone make a cogent argument that elimination of Type 3 short-term rentals is going to move the needle on aordable housing.” We want to be good partners to local ocials by supporting real solutions that help address the City’s housing aordability challenges.However,we have strong concerns about prohibiting or severely limiting short-term rentals in Bozeman based on the perceived impact of short-term rentals on local housing supply. First,we ask Commissioners to consider maintaining the residency requirement for Type 2 Hosts at its current 50 percent.Committee Board members specically asked where the 70 percent gure came from during their October 2 meeting,and City Staacknowledged publicly that it was an arbitrary number taken from legislation during the 2023 session that failed.There is no evidence that this change will create any additional aordable housing.If the purpose of this ordinance is to do just that,it should be limited to balanced actions that have a clear nexus to creating aordable housing. Lastly,the Board recommended an open-ended moratorium on issuing new Type 3 permits to give the City time to “re-examine”the impacts of short-term rentals “at an appropriate time in the future.”Respectfully,both the time frame and direction are too broad.The City’s STR Assessment has determined that further STR restrictions provide no guarantees of additional aordable housing stock.To preserve the economic benets of STRs,we believe a clear timeline and plan to further examine the impact of STRs in Bozeman is critical. If the City Commission supports further studying this issue,so do we.But we would ask,at the very least,that the direction of any moratorium be more clear,and that specic provisions be included to give short-term rental hosts and platforms some clarity.We believe any moratorium to re-examine the impacts must also include the impacts on local hosts, which was not included in the Committee’s recommendation.Such a moratorium also needs a specic time period for that work to be completed.It should specically state that the moratorium will end unless clear and convincing evidence exists that it has had positive impacts on aordable housing that far outweigh the negative impacts on local communities that rely on tourism. We remain committed to working with local leaders on fair and reasonable solutions that preserve the signicant benets short-term rentals provide to the Bozeman community. Thank you for the consideration of our comments. Sincerely, Jordan Mitchell Airbnb Public Policy cc:Bozeman Community Development Board,Mayor Cyndy Andrus,City Manager Je Mihelich