Losing our city to short-term rentals
Watching and presenting to the Senate Business and Commerce Committee in Boise Capitol on Thursday was an exercise that saw citizens and voters get the shaft.
The senators voted in favor of short-term rentals (STRs), allowing the takeover of our streets and homes with a free pass, silencing our Idaho cities. They stalled the existing, much-reduced Senate Bill 1263 to track where short-term rentals exist, license their use as they do for my home-based business, and ignore local life-safety measures we see in new or renovated homes.
Meanwhile, House Bill 583 will be presented Tuesday, March 3, and would cut out Idaho cities entirely. No sharing of addresses, safety protocols or licensing of STRs by any Idaho cities, particularly resort cities, which will feel the greatest impact.
Our city is becoming a large hotel, with house keys throughout our residential blocks that hold no voters, no schoolchildren and no local citizens. As they stalled a softened Bill 1263 on Life safety and registration by Idaho cities, our senators voted in favor of House Bill 583, which gives all the power to the owners and operators, whether local or absent.
It's a corporate takeover by short-term rental companies, Airbnb, VRBO, Home to Go, CozyCozy, Zillow and private enterprises, erasing any responsibility to the city they are profiting from. They will not share addresses, locations, parking requirements or any occupancy information with local city, fire or police departments. Good neighbor platforms are not a concern to these business-focused senators, half of whom own STRs.
We have 800 new hotel rooms coming to Coeur d'Alene in two years, and local STR operators feel threatened by longer stay hotels. They have funded Sen. Jordan Redman with political contributions to front this takeover.
STRs are fine in small doses, but what we see in our downtown historic areas is an avalanche. Pretty facades, but a rolling occupancy in summer and no one in winter of these empty structures that were former homes.
Meanwhile, the homeowners unwittingly become stewards of late-night parties, cornhole tournaments until 2 a.m., illegal parking and frat-house hijinks.
If you are good with the selling off your neighborhood and city, so be it.
If not, call your senator and let them know that a high-profit business takeover of our residential areas is not OK. Stop House Bill 583.
When only porch lights are on in winter, and nobody is home, it will be too late.
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Lynn Fleming is a member of the Coeur d'Alene Planning and Zoning Commission.