WALSH BATS BACK AT AIRBNB
Mayor slams service’s radio ads, letter
Airbnb and its critics are gearing up for a final push next week, as the City Council prepares to vote on strict new short-term rental regulations — but Mayor Martin J. Walsh is slamming the latest PR efforts from the home-sharing giant as “ginning up opposition” against city officials.
The council will hold a public hearing on Monday to discuss Walsh’s proposed short-term rental law, which would ban anyone who does not live in their property from renting it via Airbnb or other services. A previous hearing led to hours of testimony from industry members, advocates and residents, some of whom said Airbnb rentals help them pay their own mortgages while others claim the service is driving up rents and driving out longtime Hub dwellers.
The council could vote on Walsh’s law as early as next Wednesday and industry groups have been stepping up their advocacy. Airbnb previously asked its users to email Walsh and councilors to oppose the new regulations, and on Tuesday sent a letter directly to officials saying they were “discouraged” by the proposal and calling for a law that lets both absentee landlords and tenants rent out their space through the service.
Airbnb is also running radio ads that have users calling Walsh out by name, asking him to change the proposal. Walsh criticized the company for the ads, saying the indirect approach wouldn’t work.
“I wish Airbnb’s approach was a little different. They should have
‘Airbnb should probably pick up the phone rather than sending letters out to people to try to gin up opposition to us.’ — MAYOR MARTIN J. WALSH
more of a conversational approach than running radio ads against myself and the council — it’s not the way to go,” Walsh said yesterday. “Airbnb should probably pick up the phone rather than sending letters out to people to try to gin up opposition to us.”
Airbnbwatch, an advocacy group funded by the hotel industry, sent out a press release Tuesday claiming Boston Airbnb hosts were “gouging” people looking to rent this weekend, during many colleges’ commencement ceremonies. The release listed a snapshot of 13 users with higher rental prices for that weekend than their regular list price, but did not show how those users’ prices had increased to similar prices on other non-graduation weekends.
“We’re not taking into account every single price fluctuation,” Airbnbwatch spokeswoman Lauren Windsor said.
But Airbnb spokeswoman Crystal Davis said the numbers were cherry-picked and “misleading.”
Davis said Airbnb would continue to push for looser restrictions next week.
“We’ve been working with the city of Boston for over two years, sharing data and offering other data they should consider. We are just looking forward to continue working with the city and hoping our feedback and concerns are heard,” she said.
At Large City Councilor Michelle Wu, who supports the strict regulations and was targeted in Airbnb’s earlier email campaign, said she wants to see action on the proposal but said it was not geared at any specific business or advocacy group.
“We’re aiming for a vision for what we want to see for Boston residents, separate from any particular business or entity,” Wu said. “We’ve been talking about this for many months at this point. It could come out as soon as the next meeting.”