Host community welcomes oversight, taxing mechanism

hundreds of hosts, Columbus is now the top Airbnb destination in Ohio.

Last year, I cofounded the Columbus Hosts Alliance to serve as a liaison between city policymakers and the home-sharing community. To be clear, we fully support regulation of short-term rentals. The current regulatory environment is ambiguous and doesn’t account for short-term rentals. Establishing clear rules and guidelines will benefit all stakeholders.

Launching a model regulatory framework is possible only if the city and host community partner in good faith, and the rules must be fair and enforceable. To that end, following months of research, collaboration and conversations with the city, the Hosts Alliance proposes the following vision for home-sharing regulations in Columbus:

• Host registration: We support a simple registration system for hosts to provide their names and addresses to city regulators.

• Taxes: Some local hosts are aware that the Columbus excise tax applies to home sharing, and some have no idea. To correct this issue, we ask the city to enter into a tax agreement with Airbnb that authorizes the platform to collect the taxes automatically on behalf of hosts and deliver new revenue to Columbus, as Airbnb currently does for more than 400 local governments.

• Enforcement: We support inspections of home-sharing properties if complaints arise. Our alliance is dedicated to a Good Neighbor Policy to work with our neighbors and alleviate concerns on the front end.

• Owner-occupied properties: These are properties where the owner lives there the majority of the time — either an extra, unused room or a whole home when the owner is out of town. We believe that aside from registration, the city should take a light touch to these hosts.

• Nonowneroccupied properties: Other homes are dedicated more exclusively to welcoming groups or families looking to stay under one roof. Our alliance fully supports additional scrutiny and registration standards for these properties. However, we reject the suggestion of some regarding caps on how many days these listings could be rented. Such caps are arbitrary. Depleting the economic value of a wholehome rental would be an effective ban. Consider the impact of a ban on guests in need of longer-term accommodations — like families of patients undergoing medical treatment or visiting academics. Not to mention the secondary effect on merchants who count on revenue from Columbus’ ongoing tourism boom.

With fair shortterm-rental rules and the partnership of the local host community, Columbus can harness the economic power of the sharing economy and serve as a model for cities across the Midwest.