By Bob Christie | Daily Independent (abridged)
Efforts to allow Arizona cities and towns to limit the number of new Airbnb’s and other short-term rentals have failed in the Legislature amid industry opposition.
But the lawmaker backing the bill — mainly aimed at helping Sedona and other tourist towns overwhelmed by the surging number of short-term rentals but also urban cities like Scottsdale with large number of short-term rentals — is cheering the fact that her legislation is advancing in some form.
Rep. Selina Bliss, R-Prescott, said she has failed for the past three legislative sessions to get lawmakers to back any new regulations on short-term rentals.
But she said she was able to pull proponents of new limits and industry representatives together and get them to agree on a proposal giving cities and towns some new tools to regulate short-term rentals.
“I brought together to the table last week the (Arizona) Realtors Association, Airbnb and the League of Cities and Towns,” Bliss said in an interview with Capitol Media Services on Tuesday.
“And I said, ‘This is it people, we’ve got to do something,’” she said. “And this is what the parties could agree to.”
Short-term rental companies are shielded from being regulated by cities, towns and counties under a law championed in 2016 by Republican former Gov. Doug Ducey.
Since then, only minor changes have been made by the GOP-controlled Legislature. They mainly allow cities to address complaints about “party houses” by requiring basic contact information be provided and rules allowing cities to act if there are repeated complaints about a property.
That hasn’t slowed criticism about the proliferation of short-tern rentals, whose numbers have exploded across the state in both urban and rural areas like Sedona.
“We love Airbnbs and Vrbos, but we hate them as well because of the effect on our communities,” Bliss told the House Commerce Committee on Tuesday. “So watching the evolution of the effects of the short-term rental industry on communities in Arizona has been somewhat painful.’
The Realtors and Airbnb have successfully fought to stop almost all new regulations since the 2016 law went into effect. This year, they would not agree to Bliss’s initial proposal, which would have let cities limit the number of new short-term rentals.
Bliss said she told the Leagues lobbyist that something was better than nothing.
She amended her bill Tuesday to strip out the part allowing cities to limit new short-term rentals and inserted a series of limited new rules. It passed the Commerce Committee on an 8-2 vote and now heads to the full House for consideration.
The new rules in the bill include limiting occupancy to 2 people per bedroom plus 2 more adults, with children excluded. That should help ease complaints about excessive vehicles parking at the rental homes, Bliss said.
Also included were changes to current rules letting cities suspend a local license if there are three violations in 12 months; the amended bill now says three violations in 24 months, giving time for courts to act before the clock runs out.
Cities could also immediately act if there is just one serious health and safety violation, refuse a permit if there are unpaid fines and allow cities to require renters be checked for sex offender status.
Read more (subscriber content)
Some stories may only appear as partial reprints because of publisher restrictions.