What you’re saying makes a lot of sense … in theory.
But you have to ask yourself why, despite having the largest number of apartment buildings in the country in their bailiwick, City of Sydney Council proposed the policy that could soon be the backbone of holiday letting legislation: that holiday lets be “complying developments” .
The simple answer is that they – and all the other councils that currently turn a blind eye to illegal holiday lets – don’t have the resources to police any licensing that might be brought in. And because of the nature of the beast – too many people operating outside the law at the same time – the revenue is unlikely to cover the additional cost.
Airbnb hosts operate outside planning laws in this state (and many others), just as Uber did with taxi licensing laws. The explosion of online holiday letting – something like 23,000 listings in Sydney at the moment – has caught the authorities with their pants down.
So we have a bunch of Airbnb hosts that have been given “permission” by social media to breach planning and strata by-laws. Airbnb pays lip service to their hosts being compliant with local laws but they do absolutely zero when they get evidence that planning laws or by-laws have been breached, except to dob in the complainer to the miscreant.
So, bring in a licensing system and you will have more people breaching than paying the licence. In short, the bigger the problem, the less money you will have to fund counter measures.
Also, the usage of online holiday letting agencies is incredibly localised around the inner city, beach and harbourside suburbs. This means that the majority of NSW MPs won’t give a hoot, because it doesn’t affect them. However, local councils could fear that any major push against holiday letting could be a big vote loser if they are expected to disrupt the mythical hug-fest that Airbnb and its ilk purport to be.
In other words, who wants to be the nasty guy taking the free money from “ordinary people” who are just paying off their student loans, saving up so they can have children or buy Auntie Mabel a new wooden leg.
So while what you are suggesting makes eminent sense, it represents something that could cost councils a lot of money and votes. Let’s not forget that it was the threat of massive fines to illegal B&Bs in the inner west that prompted the government inquiry in the first place.
That’s why many councils have quietly imposed a moratorium on pursuing illegal holiday lets. What happened to those million-dollar fines? When was the last time you heard of someone being breached for running holiday lets in a residential zone? It’s not like they are hard to find.
Councils don’t want to have a bar of this because it’s too hard. There is a compelling argument for leaving things the way they are and letting councils enforce their own planning regulations. But they don’t want to and we can’t make them and that’s why I believe licensing isn’t even on the table.
The only truly effective way is for individual buildings to be able to choose for themselves and police it accordingly. After all, they will have to do that anyway under proposed legislation, so they may as well enforce their own rules rather than some cockamamie half-baked notion cooked up in Macquarie St to keep a bunch of American billionaires happy.
By the way, I think the government’s keenness to validate illegal beahviour by changing the laws to accommodate it could come back to bite them on the bum.
If enough people can ignore road traffic and planning laws, and strata by-laws, to get the law changed in their favour, how likely is it that owners corporations will start cutting off power and access keys on even less dubious grounds than the holiday let landlords used when they set up in the first place?