Regulating Airbnb down to earth in Worcester
PHOTO/SAM BONACCI
Amanda Wilson, the city's director of housing and health inspections, is part of the team working on Worcester's Airbnb regulations.
City Manager Edward Augustus will oversee the creation of Worcester’s Airbnb regulations.
The Worcester City Council has charged City Manager Edward Augustus and his team at City Hall with the unenviable task of establishing local regulations around the services provided by San Francisco technology firm Airbnb.
This latest council order, passed down in late June, puts the city at odds with the emerging disruptive industry, where unlicensed residents can make money by renting out their homes or – in the case of Uber and Lyft – driving people around in their cars, previously underground ventures now brought to light by these technology companies. Because of the disorderly nature of this sharing economy, regulations are hard to draft and even harder to enforce.
“I wouldn't want to regulate it out of existence because I feel – just like Uber – there is a place for it in society,” City Councilor-at-Large Moe Bergman said of Airbnb. “Capitalism works; and there's a niche to this, and that's why it's popular.”
Regulatory efforts by other cities are being closely watched by Amanda Wilson, the city's director of housing and health inspections, who is part of the team examining current city ordinances that apply to Airbnb and spearheading the creation of those that could regulate short-term rentals in Worcester. The council requested specifically that members of the city look into restricting rental through the service to commercially-zoned areas and require people looking to list their homes to get a license with the city.
Business support
Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Timothy Murray said the city council is prompting good discussions and asking fair questions around Airbnb.
While the council has taken steps recently that have not been the most business friendly – such as increasing the gap in the property tax rates paid by businesses and residents – he said there are serious questions about Airbnb operators that need to be address.
“Technology is changing everything in every sector of our lives, but if someone is abusing Airbnb in that they are encroaching on the residential feel of a neighborhood, the city council is well within their right to see if they are complying… with the laws on the books,” Murray said.
Even Uber, another disruptive technology aimed at matching drivers with passengers, is not adverse to regulation, said Cathy Zhou, Uber's New England expansion general manager.
However, the company would greatly prefer to see statewide regulation as opposed to a collection of local ordinances. With a network of local regulations, things would become very complicated very quickly, especially for a transportation service, she said.
“We are really supportive with regulation. We specifically think having a statewide framework is important,” said Zhou. “Having a framework that gives riders and drivers clarity across the state would be a positive outcome.”
Regulations and legal action
Airbnb did not respond to multiple requests for comment on these potential regulations but has made public statements in regard to regulations put forward by San Francisco. The company stated in a blog post on the organization's AirbnbAction website that there is a need for policies to protect the city's housing stock and ensure collection of hotel taxes but also enable residents to make use of the service.
However, despite these diplomatic words, in response to tightening regulations requiring the company prove to the city that renters have registered with San Francisco before displaying their ads online, the company has sued the city in federal court.
“This is an unprecedented step for Airbnb, and one we do not take lightly, but we believe it's the best way to protect our community of hosts and guests,” the company stated in the blog post.
Above all, none of the Worcester city officials wanted to create regulations that would lead to a court case. In June, it was announced the city would have to pay $2.1 million in a civil rights lawsuit against the police department and a number of other cases have come down against the city in the last few years.
“I don't want anymore litigation,” District 5 City Councilor Gary Rosen, who proposed regulating Airbnb, said. “The taxpayers can't afford to pay for cases we lose.”
A glass slipper
That all leaves the city looking for the perfect regulation that will protect neighborhoods while allowing people to continue to rent out their homes, all while not running afoul of Airbnb's legal department.
For instance, Councilor Bergman cannot see these rentals being regulated just to commercial zones, where they would be competing with the city's current crop of 845 hotels. While an additional 360 rooms are set to come online by 2017, this still marks a huge shortfall compared to communities such as Providence that has just under 2,300 rooms as of last year.
With around 300 Airbnb listings in and around Worcester at any time, these listings are clearly filling a need, Bergman said.
However, he said the laws must catch up with the new technology and maintain the residential flavor of neighborhoods the short-term rentals are taking place in.
Additional resources would likely be required if the city were to actually enforce regulations surrounding Airbnb, Wilson said.
Currently there are five inspectors responsible for housing complaints, as well as construction-related and all other inspections.
Even with the proper resources, tracking short-term rentals would be difficult, she said.
“Monday is going to be different than Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday, and then by the time you need to bring that in front of a court, it is going to be very different in terms of the number of people that are there,” Wilson said.
Current ordinances
These would be the first ordinances specifically geared towards short-term rentals, Wilson said. Under current city ordinances, renting your home is allowed by right in any district, only being restricted by the boarding house ordinance that limits the number of unrelated occupants of a by-right rental building to no more than three people.
The city had been attempting to regulate Airbnb rentals the same as a bed and breakfast. However, a judge has rejected that view in a Worcester Housing Court case regarding a property on Zenith Drive, which prompted the recent request for regulation. So now the city is left with an entirely new kind of renting to regulate that cannot rely on current ordinances and is going through a process of examining all the rental ordinances in the city.
Local impact
Although Airbnb has been in operation since 2008 and in Worcester for the last few years, the first complaint was received this year from neighbors who had been disturbed by knocks at their door and increased traffic in the neighborhood. City Councilor Rosen is the representative of those neighbors and the councilor that drafted up the initial proposed language.
While currently allowed, these Airbnb rentals are fundamentally different than renting for a month or a year, said Rosen.
“Having someone rent for a long-term must be different than different folks coming through,” he said. “To me, this is a commercial venture. I think it's hard to argue with that. It's a money maker.”
Rosen spearheaded the effort as it fell within his representation area, but he intended the order to begin the discussion, not be a guide to the final ordinance that the city manager will present to the council.
Ultimately, though, Rosen sees allowing Airbnb as a slippery slope of letting businesses enter into residential zones, eschewing the zoning that has been put in place.
However, Worcester resident Katie O'Connor said as well intentioned as the conversation-starter may have been, it misses the point of Airbnb. When she rented a room in her two-bedroom apartment out on the service, she not only found great demand, but people who preferred being located in a residential neighborhood or in a part of the city away from hotels.
One couple who stayed with O'Connor were visiting their grandchild at Clark University, right down the road from O'Connor's Airbnb apartment, and they found it refreshing to be able to stay at a residential, affordable location within walking distance of the school, she said, as previously they had needed to stay in Auburn
“To say you can only do this in a commercial area, that is kind of defeating the purpose,” said O'Connor.“The point is that it is in all these areas that don't have hotels.”
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