As rents rise out of control, Tim Burgess snaps into action to protect the hotel industry.

@1 has it.

Choosing long-term residents over short-term residents seems like a tricky line to walk from an affordability perspective. One person's service for a cheap non-hotel room for a vacation is another person's service for an emergency couch to sleep on when they lose their lease.

I don't see any reason why a guest at a hotel (or the hotel itself) should have to pay hotel taxes, but a guest at an Air BnB (or the owner) shouldn't.

@2 I'm less worried about the entire neighborhood being converted to a hotel district (it's not that great of a location to stay) than I am about luxury apartments with 400 subterranean parking spaces. I'm not saying AirBnB is great for a neighborhood or is a good model for a business (they're a leech on both a neighborhood and as a business). It's just Tim Burgess could start picking a fight with landlords over rents and he won't because they're too scary so he goes after individual people using AirBnB to make ends meet in a neighborhood that's fast outpricing everyone.

@ 6
I love the concept of rents getting so high that everyone has to leave.
Kinda one of those Yogi Berra lines.

AirBnB guests do pay sales and occupancy taxes in WA - http://publicpolicy.airbnb.com/paying-fa…

Things change.
People resist if they don't like the change and use political coercion to do what they can.p to stop change.
Everyone does it if they can get away with it.
What else is new?

Air BnB will be screwing over the arts, and programs for homeless youths. As soon as the hotel taxes payoff CenturyLink those taxes are returned to county control, with a hefty chunk going directly to the arts, in 2021. So, stop this before the sidestepping of these taxes becomes another bullshit pet of the hipster class.

@7 Take a look at where this trend came from. Before AirBnB there was a fairly long history of Internet couch-surfing. This became formalized in websites like couchsurfing.com, and soon there were more couch surfers than couches. Then someone comes along with an idea to charge for couches (and rooms). Which of these levels do you tax? At what point is this a benefit to the poor, at what point is it a luxury service? If you remove all of the $20 rooms for the night and leave only $150 hotel rooms whom are you benefiting?

Tim is a clueless Seattle Council moron playing political points. We don't need more regulation on peoples freedom to use their land as they please. More regulation, more taxes, more Seattle council nonsense.

@5 gets it. If you ban airbnb it just encourages more new hotel projects rather than new condos/apartments. Supply and demand still applies.

"The problem with Seattle's current system is that evicting longterm tenants for short-term rentals may be legal, but whether it’s fair is another matter entirely."

Yes, it is fair. When you own a property you should get to decide what to do with that property (within reason.) I am willing to entertain arguments surrounding negative impacts to the neighborhood but the opposition is mostly stemming from an incorrect assumption that these units are somehow contributing to the affordable housing crisis which is almost certainly bullshit.

@1 study what AirBnB is doing to rents in places like NOLA before you comment.

@15 Burgess isn't saying ban AirBnB. Regulate is not "ban."

@12 The average AirBnB price in Seattle is already $115.

Currently there are no AirBNB rooms in Seattle less than $25. Increasing that to $35 with a ten dollar occupancy tax is not going to break anybodies budget.

AirBnB only exists because it's a distributed virtual hotel system that skirts all the labor, safety regulations and taxes actual hotels have to pay. It's untenable and unethical and can impact rents. (http://nolarentalreport.com/#/)

The units that will rent through AirBnB are going to be entirely too ritzy to be considered to be a loss to "affordable housing" in Seattle. Their owners will not be older people trying to rent basement bedrooms to make enough to remain in their houses. This is a business; tax and regulate the business, just as other businesses are. .

Personally, I think it looks like a butt.

@19/20 So this legislation is to only regulate AirBnB? Couchsurfing.com (et.al.) will be able to continue unregulated? Of course not - you tax one, you tax them all. This might end up as a very regressive tax in the name of affordability.

If we're going to design a new tax, let's look at the gray zones in between. Should be we taxing 1 year leases? I think you'll say no. How about 3 month leases? month-to-month leases? 2 week leases? At what point is it "hotel", versus "apartment"?

Now let's look at those labor and safety standards you're worried about. Should 2 week leases have labor and safety standards? Etc. Where on this scale are labor and safety standards no longer important?

I think when the dust settles we'll end up with less regulation on hotels instead of more regulation on rentals. We tax the hell out of hotel rooms because we can - those visitors won't know the difference and they'll be gone soon. But how many visitors are we turning away?

@24 So you would ban them. Ban couch surfing too? Remind me of the benefits that justify all this added cost.

So you'll allow them, but only where hotels are allowed? My empty guest room says that's a ban.

For an "engineer" this guy sure is panicky, reflexive, has poor reading comprehension and is not very attune to details.

Regulation is not banning. A ten dollar occupancy fee is not going to hurt anybody and there are already rules in place to determine if people exceed length of stay exceptions.

And the deregulation in hotels is happening - it's called union busting. And hotel workers are getting abused and exploited as a result. Incomes are falling all over that industry.

(Side Note: But another issue with hotels is that they are no longer really in the "rent out rooms to visitors" business. They are in the real-estate investment business.

Most hotels are not owned by singular companies like we used to think- most they're merely franchises now that lease brands like Hilton, etc. They're in a shuffle game of property investor groups. Individual hotel owners switch around all over. Making it very hard to regulate. And probably why you've noticed most hotels are pretty terrible.)