City wasting $24,806 to regulate short-term rentals

Hello, Annapolis. I have a number for you: $24,806.

The City of Annapolis probably thought this number was too small to be noticed. After all, the city is worried about a $10 million budget shortfall in 2022. What is $24,806 compared to that? Surely not even the after-school sports programs or student scholarship funds would take notice.

So why not spend it on policing the unlicensed five-star Airbnbs, instead?

RFP 20-12 (“Short Term Housing Rental Compliance”) has been awarded to Host Compliance for $24,806. This Californiabased software engineering firm uses artificial intelligence software to crawl through online rental listings to match addresses with owners. And for what?

Airbnb and VRBO already automatically collect and remit the hotel tax to the proper authorities. Anne Arundel County and the City of Annapolis are already receiving every cent of tax revenue they are owed from those platforms. So why exactly did the city shell out $24,806 in themiddle of a pandemic? Licensing. Wait, what? Why does the City of Annapolis care if the five-star publicly peer-reviewed Airbnbs are licensed or not? Why are they spending $24,806 to findout?

In the July 17, 2019 Finance Committee meeting, one prominent Eastport resident testified that he didn’t like to see strangers walking in front of his house while drinking martinis on his front porch. According to this resident, licensing was about making an easy process more difficult and creating a “barrier to entry”.

Andthat’s what licensing is. A “barrier to entry”. Since its inception, Airbnb has allowed retirees or and over-worked teachers to take pictures of their spare guest rooms on a Tuesday, and have guests in to stay by the weekend. Most cities (like Boston and San Francisco) have created a simple online form that hosts fill out as part of listing their home.

They don’t have to get their paper application notarized. They don’t have to remove all “portable heating devices” from their home, and ensure that their garage doors are “self-closing”. They don’t have to have a home inspector out to look over the space, and they don’t have toget amyriad of tax IDs that bog down the works. There is no “barrier to entry”.

Howmany widowers/retirees who only host for seven days a year while visiting their grand children will actually apply for a tax ID? And have Big Brother over for a home inspection? Isn’t it more likely that they will simply drop off Airbnb, and post only in the private Facebook groups that exist to serve special communities, like Navy families?

The City of Annapolis won’t get a hotel tax on those rentals, and affordable travel will become a privilege accessible only to those who know where to look. In the middle of the pandemic, when businesses and homeowners need every penny of tourist dollars they can get, the city is spending $24,806 to drive revenue away.

Here is the real joke (on us, fellow tax-paying Annapolitans). Airbnb has already initiated a scrub of its listings. ByFeb. 21, 2021, Airbnb will no longer post unlicensed listings anywhere in Anne Arundel County. Our city has paid Host Compliance $24,806 to do a job in December that will be done for free by February.

While $24,806 may be a miniscule number compared to the projected $10 million budget shortfall, it represents the gargantuan influence a few wealthy residents have on Annapolis.

Here is the thought that should give us all pause: Even a pandemic couldn’t alter theway the lines of power flowin our city. Susan Margulies is the co-administrator of Support Annapolis STVR and a “Little Airbnb” coalition representative. She lives in Annapolis, where she works as a Naval Academy professor.