Boise mayor wants to license short-term rental homes. Why some council members resist
Short-term rentals once again proved to be a divisive issue during a Boise City Council workshop.
Council members gave mixed reactions Tuesday when Mayor Lauren McLean asked them to consider an ordinance that would require all short-term rentalsto maintain an annual license with the city. Boise now has no regulations specific to short-term rentals.
“For so long, we’ve heard folks express concern about short-term rentals,” said McLean, who promised during her 2019 campaign to pursue licensing to “address serious neighborhood issues that come from short-term rentals.”
“(The ordinance will) provide us the information that we need to better understand if there are in fact policy changes that need to be made,” she said Tuesday.
A short-term rental is any room, living space or accessory dwelling unit rented out for 30 consecutive days or less. Such units have proliferated thanks to services like Airbnb and Vrbo. Some critics have cited short-term rentals as worsening affordable housing shortages nationwide.
Boise has more than 1,000 short-term rentals, according to AirDNA, a service that tracks vacation rentals.
The ordinance would require operators of short-term rentals to providenames, physical addresses, contact information, a map of the rental, where the rental is advertised, and proof of insurance. The license would cost about $80 a year for each location, according to a city presentation.
A copy of the proposed ordinance was not made available publicly.
Nicki Hellenkamp, a housing adviser in the mayor’s office, told council members that such information as how many short-term rentals a person owns is notavailable to the public. The ordinance, if approved, would seek to address that.
“That’s not information that we would likely be able to pull off of a platform,” Hellenkamp said.
Councilors, though, disagreed about the effectiveness of the proposed ordinance.
Council member Patrick Bageant said he thought the ordinance was attempting to address a problem that might not exist and asked why an operator’s insurance would be required. He said he wanted the city to illustrate a harm created by the short-term rental industry before implementing a regulation.
“It sounds like we’re conceding that we can’t point to a harm here,” Bageant said. “We’re just asking the public to turn over information about their private dealings.”
Council member Holli Woodings also said she wanted more information before moving forward with the ordinance.
McLean said the city doesn’t have access to data to show there is harm caused by short-term rentals.
“We aren’t really able to prove or disprove that issue if we don’t have the basics covered,” she said.
Councilor Jimmy Hallyburton said he supported having an ordinance to figure out if singular entities own multiple short-term rentals around the city.
“Somebody who might own 10 properties in town that could potentially be available to long-term rentals is a problem,” Hallyburton said.
Ultimately, McLean told Chief of Staff Courtney Washburn to return with additional details about the ordinance at a later date.
It’s not the first time the city has introduced a short-term rental ordinance. Former Boise Mayor David Bieter recommended the council adopt regulations for new short-term rental units in 2019. He eventually withdrew the recommendation after a survey showed 67% of local residents opposed new regulations.
Multiple real estate associations also said they were against Bieter’s proposed ordinance.
By comparison, McLean’s proposed ordinance would apply to a wider swath of short-term rentals, while not including some requirements under Bieter’s plan, such as mandating that short-term rental owners live on the property they rent.
Idaho law stops cities from prohibiting short-term rentals outright, but it grants a city power to regulate them “as it deems necessary to safeguard the public health, safety and general welfare in order to protect the integrity of residential neighborhoods.”
This story was originally published October 12, 2021 at 7:45 PM.
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