Dear Council
I am requesting that you direct the contracting firm HdL to include certain additional information about short term rentals in its report.
Regards
Soody Tronson
Menlo Park resident.
Last May the City Council finally authorized the signing of a contract with HdL Companies for the administration and enforcement of the Transient Occupancy Tax Ordinance. The contract started on 7/1/2021. This includes identification and compliance of “Airbnb” type activities within the city limits. The contactor began developing the database in early July and is almost finished with the report as I understand it.
A 2020 report (”Investment and Disinvestment as Neighbors”) commissioned by the City of Menlo Park described how the use of home as short term rentals deprives the residents from housing.
My informal information indicates that the report will include numbers of properties which are use for short term rental and how many are owned by non-natural entities.
I would like to request that the Council direct HdL to enhance the report to provide the following so that the city can consider whether an ordinance, similar to that in San Francisco is required to curb and further the usage of this practice, as this is a bigger issue than collecting taxes.
1) Which neighborhood (e.g., Sharon Heights, Allied Arts) the properties are located?
2) Duration of rental during the year (San Francisco has a 90 days per year maximum limit)?
3) The nature of property owners (not the unique names)? San Francisco limits to properties where the owner lives permanently in the property at least 275 days a year.
4) Are they registered with the City as a short term rental?
5) Number of unhoused nights per year (same as #2)?
6) Are they what San Francisco would consider (I understand Menlo Park does not have this, but if we were to apply SF laws) ineligible for short time rental?
7) The nature of renters: are they natural persons or business (e.g., Facebook)? There’s been rumors that companies are using Airbnb to rent for their visitors, etc.
There has been a lot of discussion around whether private equity firms and companies like Zillow are buying properties usurping natural residents from either ownership opportunity and/or rentals.
All of this information is really relevant to these discussions and would be a shame not to be included in the report that we have already paid for.
Here is a link to the San Francisco Planning Page.
https://sfplanning.org/str/faqs-short-term-rentals
