Short-term rental limits questioned

Public gives earful before city councilors embark on lengthy late-night discussion

Santa Fe city councilors were still debating a contentious proposal late Wednesday to add new restrictions for shortterm rental owners who rent rooms and homes through popular tech platforms such as Airbnb.

City councilors listened to lengthy public discussion and their own sustained debate in a meeting that stretched late into the night on whether the city should impose measures meant to rein in illegal rentals and cut back on permitted ones in historic, residential neighborhoods where people have complained of an endless parade of tourists where neighbors once lived.

Against the backdrop of the discussion is an extremely tight housing market in Santa Fe, where many testify to the great difficulty of finding a vacant, affordable apartment.

The policy, if enacted, would limit the number of shortterm rentals to one per person and require that owners do not rent properties to more than one person every seven days in residential areas. It would also add new reporting requirements meant to help find and crack down on illegal rentals and clarify existing rules, supporters said.

It keeps the existing citywide cap of 1,000 short-term rentals and requires local managers to be available to respond to complaints 24/7, among other changes.

It allows current legal owners with more than one property to keep all of their short-term rental properties.

During public testimony Wednesday, people participating in a videoconference City Council meeting decried the proposal as not going far enough to stop what some see as Airbnb’s onslaught on Santa Fe’s historic neighborhoods, which some believe also thwart city efforts to offer more affordable housing. They urged councilors to add an amendment that would require short-term rental owners to prove Santa Fe residency.

No councilor offered any such amendment.

One woman who spoke up during the public comment period said short-term rental owners are ”taking housing out of the market for local people.”

Another resident, Pat Lillis, who also argued councilors should add a residency requirement for owners, said services like Airbnb have “gone from a couch to an industry that displaces people from homes. It has become a serious problem worldwide.”

Councilor Carol Romero-Wirth defended the decision to leave out a residency requirement. She argued the councilors were attempting to balance the “competing interests”

of keeping the historic flavor of Santa Fe’s neighborhoods while not being hostile to a platform that many tourists choose in a city economically reliant on tourists.

Others criticized the proposal for being too restrictive and punitive to small-business owners when short-term rental owners already are suffering from a slumped tourism economy.

Susan Orth, a Santa Fe real estate agent, said the “city should pause taking action on the ordinance to allow for the short-term rental industry to recover.”

She called the proposal “burdensome

and unfair” to property owners.

Councilors also engaged in lengthy debate over a series of amendments mostly meant to scale back the restrictions.

A motion to table the amendment from Councilor Michael Garcia failed in a 6-3 vote, with Garcia and councilors JoAnne Vigil Coppler and Chris Rivera voting in favor of the amendment.

Explaining his motion, which summarized most of the detractors’ criticisms, Garcia said the proposal would hurt small-business owners when the city should instead be beefing up the number of city officials who can enforce Santa Fe’s existing ordinances on short-term rentals.

Garcia argued that about 40 percent of the short-term rentals

in the city are illegal and called enforcement the “No. 1 priority.”

Santa Fe Planning and Land Use Director Elias Isaacson said that number is likely lower: About 250 of around 975 shortterm rentals have city permits or registration to do business.

But the criticism that the city doesn’t enforce its existing rules was echoed again by Vigil Coppler, who questioned Isaacson about the number of city rental inspectors and argued more are needed.

“This is not a good time during COVID to be doing this kind of thing,” she said. “This council has taken all kinds of measures to protect our residents from COVID hardships and the like, and I know there’s a stereotype about short-term rentals … [but] not everybody is a rich Texan.