Prepare to be regulated, Airbnb and other short-term rental providers - or not

Airbnb became a company allegedly worth more than $20 billion on a simple model: set up a website where travellers can find rooms, houses, apartments, and even boats to lay their heads, and take a cut when a transaction is made. But traditional hotels complaining about safety, regulation and reputation, plus a little bit of reported peeing in Savannah yards, have put the industry on the Georgia’s regulations radar.
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? People use Airbnb for “unique local experiences,” the company’s public policy director, Jillian Irvin, told a state House study committee on Tuesday morning. Airbnb organizes what they call “home-sharing.” The typical Airbnb offering is a home or part of a home outside of a traditional tourist area, Irvin said. That means revenue not just for the property owner but for nearby businesses, she said.
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? There are more than 300 listings on Airbnb alone around the core of Downtown Atlanta. Further out, there's a house available across the street from the PGA Tour stop in East Lake this week.
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? But the state House of Representatives is holding the hearings http://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/en-US/Display/20152016/HR/810/atlanta/airbnb-meet-the-georgia-general-assembly/Content?oid=15220278because it wants to figure out if something needs to be done either for guest safety or for tax collections or both.
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? ??? Holly McHaggee owns an inn in Rome and is president of Georgia Inkeepers’ Association. Fire safety and health inspectors have the right to peer into her five-bedroom Victorian home business, and they do. She told the committee that she has a significant insurance burden besides the fees and taxes her business pays.
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? Informal hoteliers dodge much of that. Irvin said insurance up to $1 million is available to its hosts, but it’s a relatively new program and she doesn’t have any data on how many people use it.
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? She also said her company supports “smart, sensible” regulation on things like safety, occupancy levels and taxes. What regulations the company has seen work in other jurisdictions, Irvin said, are things like requiring smoke alarms or limiting occupancy to a certain number of people per room. She said the company believes it is appropriate for hosts to pay their taxes, and that the easiest way to do that is how it’s done in places like Rhode Island and North Carolina. There, Airbnb collects the taxes from the host and passes the cash on to the state.
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? Full-time bed-and-breakfast hotels are competing in the same market space as short-term rentals, but at a disadvantage due to the costs of complying with the law, said Jim Sprouse, executive director of the Georgia Hotel and Lodging Association. He lists even more laws hoteliers have to think about: making sure employees are safe and legal, zoning and noise ordinances, liquor licenses, trash collection and parking rules.
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? But if lawmakers decide to do anything, they will also have to contend with the many differences that exist between short-term rentals. Someone in Athens renting out the house they live in for six game-day weekends is different from someone who buys a house or apartment with the aim of renting it out as much as possible. And what about the man or woman who rents out a spare room once or twice a month to help pay the bills?  
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? Sprouse said that football weekend rental is "very different from someone who's making this a continual business." 
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? Savannah is the only place in Georgia so far to define a short-term rental: a home available for 30 days or less at a time. Only homes in certain zoning districts can get a short-term rental certificate, and owners have to sign up with the city, pay taxes, and leave someone’s number on file that police can contact when they get a call.
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? Since they opened the registry this year, Savannah has received 410 applications for certification and have approved most of them, Savannah’s director of tourism management and ambassadorship department, Bridget Lidy, told the committee.
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? She also said about 330 emergency calls, the vast majority to the police, have been made about happenings at short-term rental properties this year. She said the number of noise complaints is down compared to the previous year.
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? When the city was writing the regulation, they took public comment. Lidy said complaints included boisterous guests, clogged parking, public urination, and drinking and drug use on the homes’ elegant lawns and courtyards.
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? “I’m the guy who lives next door to all these,” said Jim Renner, of St. Simons Island, also complaining about too many people packing into nearby rental houses, and hauling their campers, boats, trailers and racket with them. Wedding parties are the worst, he said.
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? “The unlevel playing field that exists for the residents is the management companies and the owners get all the income. The state and the county may get tax income and the residents get the noise and the traffic and the creepy people and the disruption and a general degradation in the neighborhood,” said Renner.
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? A lot of property managers are just not responsive to neighbors who object to boisterous guests and overstuffed houses, he said.
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? It’s not clear if the Legislature will do anything either. The chair of the ponderously-named House Study Committee on Short-Term Rental Providers, state Rep. Terry Rogers, R-Clarkesville, said the group will meet a few more times this year, but any recommendations it makes are not binding on their fellow lawmakers. The next legislative session begins in January.