“The DC Council will vote Tuesday on legislation that would place severe restrictions on short-term rentals in DC.”

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Jim Havard lives in Hill East. PoP-Ed. posts may be written about anything related to the District and submitted via email to princeofpetworth(at)gmail please include PoP-Ed. in the subject line.

Open Letter to DC Communities and the DC Council
By Jim Havard

DC Short-Term Rental Legislation – An Allowance Should be Made for “Plus One” Properties, Without “Caps”

The DC Council will vote Tuesday on legislation that would place severe restrictions on short-term rentals in DC. The bill on the table would, among other things, ban any short-term rentals from properties outside of the primary residence, and limit owners pursuing short-term rentals when away from primary residences to 90 days a year. To be clear, the primary impact of this legislation for DC would not be to regulate some big corporation (like AirBnB or VRBO); rather, it would be to cripple short-term rental small businesses in DC, including those owned by local people – like widows, seniors, and parents with challenging medical conditions – who are renting out their small “plus one” properties in an effort to make ends meet. These folks should be allowed to keep their businesses; this bill is too restrictive and should be amended.

As it stands, Council Chairman Mendelson’s bill – like Councilman McDuffie’s earlier bill – would ban these businesses entirely. Owners have testified to the DC Council that short-term rental businesses provide owners the flexibility to create income when faced with serious medical, economic and other challenges. These businesses help to buttress family incomes, allowing property owners to make ends meet and remain in DC. This is true of my wife, who suffers from Crohn’s disease, and finds the short-term rental business to be a viable business in light of her health restrictions. Together, she and I live on my government salary in Hill East, with our 8-year-old daughter, who goes to a DC Public School.

I believe it is appropriate to develop additional and targeted regulation for short-term rentals in DC. Importantly, short-term rentals are not “completely unregulated” in DC. I know firsthand that my wife secured inspection certificates and a business license, and has persevered through significant DC red tape in order to pay substantial occupancy taxes (14.8%) on her short-term rental. Instead of banning them, DC should encourage these small businesses as ambassadors for our city.

A more appropriate approach would be to limit the opportunity to pursue short-term rental businesses to “plus one” – one property in addition to the primary residence. This limitation would prevent the assemblage of multiple properties to create a large-scale short-term rental business, and help to ensure that short-term rental operators are truly small businesses invested in local communities. The option for “plus one” properties should be permitted without any “caps,” which have the effect of restricting competition for the hotel industry, and keep these small businesses from being viable. This approach would maintain the many important benefits that short-term rentals can provide to DC.

DC as a whole also benefits from small business short-term rentals. Short-term rentals bring money and jobs to local DC neighborhoods. Tourists stay in neighborhoods and patronize our local businesses; and small businesses are needed to repair and maintain short-term rental properties. Families that otherwise would not have been able to afford to make the trip here get to experience what life is like for DC residents as they become a part of our neighborhoods for a few days. They leave DC not only with an impression of its amazing monuments, architecture, museums and Capitol, but also with the knowledge that it is a city full of friends and neighbors, a pretzel bakery, a library, a game store, a pizza place, a park with a playground and cherry trees. DC is not just government buildings and national treasures, hotels and tour buses – it’s a vibrant city full of lives being lived. In the current climate, where DC is fighting so hard for statehood and independence, this ambassador role local owners can provide is important. Each guest leaves our city knowing and feeling the pride and richness of DC; guest by guest this makes a difference.

The full-ban approach of the current draft legislation amounts to corporate welfare for the hotel industry. Using aliases like “Share Better DC,” the national hotel industry lobby has for years aggressively been opposing short-term rental opportunities in DC, spending large sums of money on commercials and campaign contributions (including to the sponsors of these bills), and using specious arguments and scare tactics. Versions of this “Share Better” group have popped up all over the country, seeking to fashion themselves as local grassroots groups concerned about impacts of short-term rentals. But don’t be fooled: Share Better DC is shadowed and funded by the real underlying interests — the hotel lobby and the hotel trade group (e.g., hotel workers union).

Short-term rental opponents claim that local community members sometimes feel like outsiders in their own neighborhoods, as people from outside DC visit their community and stay in short-term rentals. An advertisement run by Share Better DC last year purported to show a woman in Anacostia saying she doesn’t know her own neighborhood anymore, but local news uncovered the sham: The woman in the advertisement wasn’t even from DC, but rather was an actress from NYC. The local news instead interviewed a real-life local short-term rental host in Anacostia who had witnessed and cultivated neighborhood support for visitors, and who was outraged that a smear campaign funded by nation-wide industry interests would seek to deceive DC communities.

I’ve heard from a number of hosts who explain that neighbors next to or near short-term rental properties enjoy having families from around the country and the world visit, families that learn about, and spend money in local communities. Hosts and neighbors enjoy being ambassadors for DC. Neighbors enjoy meeting people from different places; several owners have reported instances of immediate neighbors making lasting friendships with visitors staying at short-term rentals.

Opponents have jumped on a handful of negative experiences for neighbors from short-term rentals (e.g., party houses). But these are the exceptions and can be addressed, e.g., by a two-night minimum requirement. And a “plus one” property allowance would help ensure that owners are local small businesses invested in the community.

The hotel industry has asserted concerns about potential impacts of the short-term rental market on low-income housing challenges in DC. The causes of and solutions for these challenges are complex. Numerous studies have sought to catalogue the causes of low-income housing challenges in DC — including population growth, stagnant wages, and the fact that many of the new housing opportunities in DC are properties that are not in the low-price range.

Here’s an idea: Taxes from short-term rental small businesses can be dedicated to promote affordable housing (e.g., the Housing Production Trust Fund). A “plus one” approach without arbitrary “caps” can help raise dedicated tax revenue for affordable housing; this would be better than banning these local small businesses altogether.

DC should not support corporate welfare for the hotel industry. Rather, the Council should work to regulate carefully short-term rental local businesses. It should support and harness a modernizing economy and populous economic initiatives. People from around the country and around the world love to travel to DC to live as we live, shop at our local markets, cook a meal, drink tea on a front porch and soak in all DC has to offer. The DC Council should support a “plus one” amendment to the current bill, without “caps.”