I reviewed the agenda packet, and I wanted to inform you that I was very quickly able to confirm that Ethan Lawton has significantly underestimated the number of active STVRs in Crescent City in his report. He states that "the actual number of operating SRT in the City looks to be approximately 54."
With a minute's work on my phone, I was able to find 65 "entire homes" available on Airbnb within a subset of the City (see attached). This is clearly an undercount for the following reasons:
-As you can see from the map, this map search is only for a geographical subset of the City, as I did not want to include a single STVR outside of City limits. There are more "entire home" listings on Airbnb that are inside of the City limits but outside of the subset of the City that I mapped.
-This only includes STVRs listed on Airbnb, and not those listed solely on VRBO or other platforms.
-I searched for "entire homes" currently available on any weekend in November as searching for earlier months would not include STVRs that are already booked for all weekends in busier tourism months. However, I know from my personal experience searching for temporary furnished rentals that many STVR operators also completely block off November through March as unavailable on Airbnb and VRBO far in advance and instead shift to offering their homes exclusively as monthly rentals on Furnished Finder to maximize rental income during the slow season for vacation rentals.
In summary, I cannot quantify the total number of STVRs operating within City limits without doing a significant amount of research. But with only one minute's research, I was able to confirm that the actual number clearly exceeds 65, and likely by a significant margin. As "there are currently 53 STRs that maintain an active business license and submit TOT to the City", it is clear that the City is missing out on a significant amount of TOT revenue from unlicensed taxevaders. Given how limited the City's budget is, I strongly feel that the Council's first priority with STVR regulation should be to take cost-effective steps to ensure that the City collects maximum tax revenue to compensate for the housing stock that is removed from the market by STVRs.
Ethan could advise as to what other small cities have done in this regard, but it seems that two simple steps that can be taken to increase compliance would be to require that all STVR operators post their license number on their online listings in the property description (many cities require this) and to impose significant fines on TOT-evaders.
While I also think that it is important to limit the total number of STVRs from a housing affordability standpoint, as I discussed previously, I think that that would only be effective if done in coordination with the County. I have been told in private conversation with a County Supervisor that the BOS has no appetite to limit STVRs within their jurisdiction (mainly due to Supervisors owning STVRs themselves), so any restrictions would likely need to come from ballot initiative.
All the best,
David Lebowitz