What can we do about short term rentals?

Some of these recommendations are intended to enlist the public’s help in enforcement, since next-door neighbors are more likely than anyone else to be aware of violations.

What can residents do?

Advice for residents is so important that it has a page of its own.

What can organizations do?

1. Publish a website that helps residents report violations (like this one but better).

2. Help residents report violations by advising them through a hotline, web chat interface, email, etc.

3. Act as an advocate when residents report violations and the city doesn’t act.

4. Provide speakers to attend meetings of homeowners associations and other groups by invitation to give information and answer questions.

5. Send frequent press releases to local media about STR issues: news stories about specific cases of violations, information about policy changes, interviews with city officials, etc. Ask editors what they would be interested in receiving.

6. Provide legal assistance to amend owners association documents to prohibit short term rentals.

7. Help council members with constituent service requests related to enforcement of rental violations.

8. Propose and lobby for changes in the law.

9. Become informed about the city’s license-granting and enforcement procedures and then propose and advocate changes. Talk to the city officials involved (at all levels; not just high-ranking ones) and try as much as possible to propose changes that they find helpful.

10. Talk to people and organizations in other cities and policy experts who are involved in short term rental issues. Find out how other cities have been coping.

What can politically inclined individuals do?

1. Start a grassroots organization to restrict and oppose rentals.

What can homeowners and condominium associations do?

1. Amend documents to prohibit short term rentals. (Organizations should offer legal assistance for this purpose.) Be aware that the city enforcement office (call 505–955–6336) will enforce such prohibitions by revoking or denying licenses to owners in your association.

What can the city do?

1. Use software to scrape/scan ads on Airbnb, VRBO, etc., to look for anomalies such as license numbers used for more than one unit, license numbers that don’t match addresses, etc.

2. Publish a list and map of STR licenses like those on this website but keep them current (something we cannot do).

3. Notify neighbors of newly licensed houses by email when a license is granted. I presume the city can get the necessary information from its STR license database, the tax assessor’s database, and commercial geocode services. The STR ordinance requires new licensees to make written notifications but that provision is unenforced, widely ignored, and probably unenforceable. It would probably be more practical and effective for the city to make the notifications automatically by software than to attempt to force owners to do it as required by the ordinance.

4. Maintain a public database of complaints about short term rentals where the public can look to see progress and dispositions. To protect the innocent it need not show anything more than the fact that a complaint of a certain kind was made on a certain date, concerning which license, whether an inspector has been assigned, etc., and how the complaint was eventually resolved. Maybe the existing constituent services software can be used for this purpose.

5. Require license applicants and licensees to prove they meet requirements. Put the burden of proof on them. For example, if an owner applies for a license under the accessory-dwelling-unit exception to the proximity rule, make them prove they live in that house before the license is granted and, periodically, during the time they are renting. If they fail to do so, revoke the permit.

6. Consider having inspectors check rental buildings on an occasional, random basis. (However I think the public will accomplish the same aim for free if the other measures recommended here are implemented.)

7. When a licensee is known to be out of compliance his or her license should be revoked immediately. Currently the city sometimes takes no immediate action but instead waits until the end of the year and then blocks a renewal. This isn’t good enough.

Suggestions for amending the law

1. Add a provision that bans an owner from receiving a STR license for any building for some number of years if they lie on a STR application or violate the STR ordinance.

2. Do whatever is necessary to fully enforce the short term rental ordinance. If necessary, hire more people, and if necessary, increase fines, fees, and STR taxes to make these measures self-funding.

3. As a condition of receiving a rental license, require all ads to show the address of the rental unit. (Currently owners can attempt to hide the fact that they are renting from neighbors and the city by not showing addresses on their ads.)

4. As a general rule, when opposed interests collide in public policy, I think compromise is the best solution. But after living for several years in Santa Fe next to houses that are defacto Airbnb hotels, I have gradually come to believe that in this case, compromise is unwise. I think short term rentals are incompatible with residential neighborhoods. (I would include any rental shorter than a year in the short term category.) I think short term rentals should be banned completely in residential neighborhoods and allowed only in areas zoned for commercial lodging.

Of course I realize that this viewpoint is radical and that for economic reasons, Santa Fe will almost certainly continue to go in the opposite direction from what I advocate. But for completeness I include this suggestion. In the unlikely event that Santa Fe decides to eliminate short term rentals in residential neighborhoods, grants of new licenses in those neighborhoods should stop immediately but in order to treat existing licensees fairly, they should be allowed to renew their licenses annually for a fixed number of years (perhaps seven) before their licenses expire forever. This would prevent the present value of their houses from dropping suddenly due to the change in the law.

This page was first published on September 4, 2022 and last republished on December 13, 2024.