Tim rents his home as a short-term rental on summer weekends.

Why is this so scary to everyone else?

We discuss eleven fears about short-term rentals, one of which is legitimate. Fear not, we have a non-governmental solution for that one. All others will be #ASSUAGED!!!

11 Fears About Short Term Home Rentals

Fear #1 - Home rentals hurt a town's "character"
Fear #2 - Home rentals make housing less affordable
Fear #3 - Home rentals are unsafe
Fear #4 - Home rentals are not in compliance with building codes
Fear #5 - Home rentals are not licensed and inspected as lodging places
Fear #6 - Home rentals are preparing and serving food without a license
Fear #7 - Home rentals are not ADA / FHA compliant for accessibility for people with disabilities
Fear #8 - Home rentals do not have adequate insurance
Fear #9 - Home rentals are not paying taxes
Fear #10 - Home rentals are unfair competition to hotels
Fear #11 - Home rentals are creating nuisances

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View full show notes at http://anarchitecturepodcast.com/ana027.----more----Intro

Tim rents his home as a short-term rental on summer weekends. Why is this so scary to everyone else?

We discuss eleven fears about short-term rentals, one of which is legitimate. Fear not, we have a non-governmental solution for that one.

Discussion

Tim's experiences renting his primary residence as a short-term rental on Airbnb
- Initial setup
- Moving out every weekend
- Strangers in your house
- Reputations on AirBNB
- Piercings, tattoos, and hardcore music
- Faith in humanity - people tend to be respectful of other people and of their property
Airbnb facilitates peer-to-peer exchanges
- Fully utilize real capital assets
- Much more personal experience
- Short-term rental is nothing new, but it has become much easier
Setting up a listing
Airbnb bans
- Transient occupancy - less than 30 days
ADUs and STRs
- Accessory dwelling units - a loophole to allow affordable forms of housing in restrictive single-family residence zones
- Presenting 20 minutes of deeply researched content in three minutes
11 Fears About Short Term Home Rentals
- Fear #1 - Home rentals hurt a town's "character"
- Fear #2 - Home rentals make housing less affordable
- Fear #3 - Home rentals are unsafe
- Fear #4 - Home rentals are not in compliance with building codes
- Fear #5 - Home rentals are not licensed and inspected as lodging places
- Fear #6 - Home rentals are preparing and serving food without a license
- Fear #7 - Home rentals are not ADA / FHA compliant for accessibility for people with disabilities
- Fear #8 - Home rentals do not have adequate insurance
- Fear #9 - Home rentals are not paying taxes
- Fear #10 - Home rentals are unfair competition to hotels
- Fear #11 - Home rentals are creating nuisances
Fear #1 - Home rentals hurt a town's "character"
- Character - "The main or essential nature, especially as strongly marked or serving to distinguish"
- Joe is now a NIMBY
- "Character" is the free space in the middle of the board in NIMBY Bingo
- Apart from a potential increase in nuisances (discussed later), is a short-term rental use of a single-family home substantially different from long-term occupancy?
- Vacation rentals are out of character in... Vacationland...?
- Maine was built around vacationers
  - 15% of homes in Maine are vacation homes. This is the highest percentage of vacation homes in the United States, and five times the national average of about 3%. This has been true every decade as far back as 1940 when 10% of homes in Maine were vacation homes.
  - There were 3,700 AirBNB listings in Maine in 2016, which is less than 1% of homes and less than 5% of vacation homes.
- As long as there have been vacation homes, there has been short-term rental of vacation homes
- Homes used to be used in more flexible ways
- The ability to rent one's home on a short-term basis is a long-established property right. Removing this right should be considered a form of regulatory taking
- Visitors reinforce many of the things that are essential to maintaining a town's character
Fear #2 - Short-term rentals make housing less affordable
- Maine - Less than 1% of homes are on Airbnb, less than 5% of vacation homes
- 2018 Study in Santa Monica CA - Short-term rental ban has had no significant impact on long-term rental prices
- 2015 NYC study
  - AirDNA - problems with data
  - Zillow - reliable data?
  - Statistical analysis, not direct comparison
  - Built-in bias - Investors may tend to buy properties for short-term rentals in areas that are already appreciating
  - In NYC, short-term rentals have taken 5,000+ units off the rental market in a city of 3 million housing units with 25,000 housing starts a year, resulting in an increase of a whopping 0.5% per year in rent.
  - Researcher was cherry-picked to get the same results he got in Canada by NYC's powerful hotel union who funded the study
  - These results are not transferable outside of NYC
- Primary residences rented short-term, rooms in a primary residence rented short-term, and vacation homes rented short term would not come back on to the housing market if STRs are banned
- Kea Wilson at Strong Towns - renting one unit short-term allows her to keep her other units affordable.
- Short-term rentals optimize inefficiencies and vacancies in the housing market
- How Airbnb got started - subsidizing the founders' rent
- Tim covers 60-70% of his annual mortgage by renting during the summer season
- Tim's town could change one number in the zoning ordinance to double the potential capacity for housing to be built incrementally, yet they think short-term rentals are causing housing unaffordability?
Fear #3 - Short-term rentals are unsafe
- Safety of homes vs. hotels
  - There are approximately 91 million single-family dwellings in the US and about 2,200 deaths from fire each year. That’s one fire death per 41,000 single family dwellings.
  - Hotels are relatively safer, with only 15 fire deaths out of about 4.8 million hotel rooms in the US. That’s 1 fire death per 320,000 hotel rooms.
  - There are also 48 deaths from carbon monoxide from heating appliances in US homes, which is 1 death in 2.8 million homes annually.
  - Hotels, even brand name chains, have had carbon monoxide poisonings as well. A 2012 USA Today investigation found eight carbon monoxide deaths in hotels over a three-year period. This averages to 1 carbon monoxide death in 1.8 million hotel rooms per year, which is more risky than the rate of 1 carbon monoxide death in 2.8 million homes.
- Short-term rentals have a different risk profile than single-family homes:
  - Smoking is one of the leading causes of deadly residential fires, and most home rental hosts probably don’t allow smoking.
  - Home rentals owners are also more likely to have smoke detectors. Only about 67% of single-family homes have smoke detectors, while a recent study showed that at least 80% of AirBNB hosts reported having smoke detectors (there may be more who have them but didn’t report it). While this is not perfect, it is more comparable to multi-family housing in which 88% of units have smoke detectors.
  - AirBNB hosts can advertise smoke detectors and other safety features on their listing.
  - AirBNB provides free smoke and carbon monoxide detectors to its hosts.
  - In Maine, most short-term rentals probably happen in the summer when people aren’t using heating equipment or making fires in the fireplace.
  - In Maine, Title 22 2501 requires one-family rental hosts to post signage in every bedroom notifying renters that the unit is not inspected by the DHHS, so the renters should be aware that the risks are commensurate with a single-family home, not a licensed lodging facility.
  - Insurers issuing policies for short-term home rental units may require safety features like smoke detectors.
  - The primary concern with a transient occupancy is unfamiliarity with the building and egress paths. Most single-family dwellings have fairly simple layouts with obvious egress paths.
- Deaths in short-term rentals?
  - One death in Taiwan from CO poisoning
  - Family of four died in gas leak in Mexico
  - One death in an Airbnb in the USA - from a rope swing
  - If we conservatively assume that rope swings may claim the lives of one AirBNB guest per year, that’s one death per 550,000 AirBNB listings in America. That is almost twice as safe as the 1 fire death per 320,000 hotel rooms.
  - Of course these numbers are too small to justify these types of comparisons. The reality is that hotels are generally very safe, and so are short-term home rentals.
- Making your short-term rental safe
  - Maintain smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, provide fire extinguishers, provide emergency contact information, and provide first aid kits.
Fear #4 - Home rentals are not in compliance with building codes
- The Maine State Fire Marshal has the following statement on their “Bed & Breakfast Life Saf...