Fresh call to regulate Airbnbs
Motel owner Stacie Warren spent two years attempting to get the Nelson City Council to create an ‘‘equal playing field’’ between accommodation providers and Airbnbs.
Together with Hospitality New Zealand, the Century Park Motor Lodge owner and about 30 fellow accommodation providers presented their concerns to the council in September 2020. They were liable for commercial rates, commercial insurances, and inspections for a building warrant of fitness. Why weren’t Airbnbs?
Two years on, little has changed with regulation of the short-term rental industry. Warren is still seeking answers.
‘‘We’re really frustrated, because if [the council] were just to action this, they would open up more houses to the rental pool, which would house the evacuees that have nowhere to live at the moment (from the impacts of the August floods),’’ she said.
The issue is also topical as tourists return and backpackers find themselves rubbing shoulders with the homeless in accommodation that has turned into social housing because of a shortage of available homes.
Hospitality NZ chief executive Julie White said that if a landlord’s home didn’t meet Healthy Homes regulations, they could list it online for a shortterm let. ‘‘Where is the duty of care? They’re earning an income from this – where is their contribution?’’
In New Zealand, where tourists are in homes and the locals are living in motels, there is back and forth over who is best to regulate the industry.
White said a conversation was needed about the role of central Government. Hospitality NZ wasn’t saying ‘no’ to Airbnbs, she said – it was the choice of some customers, and Airbnbs ‘‘played a role in the ecosystem’’ – but the country had a housing affordability crisis.
‘‘I would argue that by regulating at a national level, we would actually find properties come back into the long-term market.’’
White said a minimum ‘‘code of conduct’’ was needed as a starting point, and a national framework would make it much easier for the local governments to monitor the situation.
White said that prior to Covid-19, there had been discussions with central Government policy makers around shortterm rentals, but the work came to a halt during Covid and hadn’t resumed.
It was now the time to bring it to the forefront again, she said.
However, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has said it is a ‘‘localised issue’’ that elected local authorities are best placed to deal with.
In March, the Nelson council voted to direct staff to initiate proactive enforcement of existing Nelson Regional Management Plan rules against online accommodation providers. Since then, however, only five resource consent applications were submitted in the past year.
This year Hospitality NZ sent about 150 complaints about short-term rentals to the council.
NCC group manager environmental management Dennis Bush-King said that under council rules, any property which was not a primary residence, where there would be paying guests staying at any given time, required a resource consent, as it did not meet the definition of ‘‘residential activity’’.
He said the council was expecting an assessment later in November from a holiday accommodation company that managed around 200 properties, a significant percentage of the approximately 325 online accommodation providers in Nelson that could potentially require a resource consent.
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) acting manager tourism policy Sally Page said the ministry’s tourism policy branch established the Short-term Rental Accommodation (STRA) working group in early 2020, which included members from Te
Tūāpapa Kura Kāinga – Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Internal Affairs.
The main purpose of the group was to ‘‘analyse STRA issues to develop a better understanding of their impact on tourism and the rental market, and their contribution to overall economic activity’’, Page said.
This work stream was paused ‘‘due to the Covid-19 pandemic and other priorities’’.
In a statement to Stuff, the ministry said it was aware of the issue, and it regularly reviewed its priorities, though there were ‘‘currently no plans to restart this work.’’
A Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) spokesperson said the effects of short-term rental accommodation (STRA), which includes Airbnb, in New Zealand were ‘‘geographically uneven and concentrated in popular yearround tourist locations’’.
‘‘Given this is a primarily localised issue, elected local authorities are best placed to make decisions on behalf of, and in consultation with, their communities regarding restrictions of STRA in their local areas.’’
HUD said local councils in popular tourist locations such as Queenstown and Rotorua had already responded to community concerns by introducing district plan rule changes which placed restrictions on STRA providers, an approach consistent with that taken overseas. ‘‘Where communities overseas have experienced negative housing outcomes due to rapid growth in the STRA sector, restrictions have been introduced in a localised way at the city/district level rather than through national policy settings.’’