City Council Special Called Meeting Transcript – 2/4/2025 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 2/4/2025 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 2/4/2025 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. 1:05:02 PM Everyone. It is 100 and 4 P.M. On February 4th, 2025, and I will call to order the Austin city council for this joint meeting of the Austin city council and our Austin planning commission. I will also at this time, without objection, we will open the public hearing that we will conduct. I'll talk more about that in just a second. Without objection, the public hearing is now open and I will call on the chair of our Austin planning commission, chair hempel, to call to order the planning commission and open the public hearing. 1:05:39 PM Good afternoon everyone. Now that we have a quorum present of our planning commissioners, I'll call the planning commission portion of this meeting open at 1:05 P.M. 1:05:51 PM Thank you very much. And the public hearing is now it's a joint public hearing for those that are watching and paying attention to this, the purpose of this joint hearing between the Austin city council and the Austin planning commission is to review the proposed short term rental regulations and to conduct a public hearing regarding those changes. The notice went out of this hearing to all utility account holders and property owners in the city of Austin. The joint meeting process is one way for local governments to consider zoning changes and to notify property owners of those changes. It's also a requirement under state law, and this joint meeting is for updates to chapter 25 of the land development code. We're going to start today with a brief presentation from city staff, and then move on to the public hearings that have been opened. Council members and commissioners are encouraged to ask questions that you might 1:06:51 PM have about different things that we hear today during the public hearing or the presentation that we hear by going to the question and answer board and or emailing Katy powers in the clerk's office. That's similar to the way we did it during the home initiative. Those questions will be posted on a public website for the council, the commission and the public to review. For those that are paying attention to this. And we'll have a presentation just in a second. As you may or may not know, the city of Austin has a history with short term regulations. Austin attempted to regulate short term rentals using land use policies as a regulatory tool, and the previous council even attempted to prohibit strs at one point in the city. Those regulations were challenged in court and found to be unlawful. Now, the city of Austin is in the position where we're revisiting those str regulations. It's important to note that we're also engaging in this process during a 1:07:53 PM legislative session, and we know that there will be bills filed and potentially passed in relationship to short term rentals or strs. We will monitor that, and we will have a better idea of what the state plans to do as we continue throughout this process. Also, this will not be the last time the public has an opportunity to engage on this topic. The planning commission will meet on February 11th, 2025 at 6 P.M. Here in the council chambers and the city council will discuss the ordinances at the February 27th, 2025 meeting. With that, I will now turn to our assistant city manager, Veronica Briseno, for an introduction of the presentation. 1:08:44 PM We're happy to be here with you today. The mayor is done a great job at outlining how we got to be here today. I quickly, on behalf of staff, wanted to thank staff for their hard work in getting us here. They've had a series of information that they've shared with the community. They've also had information sessions to make sure that we're communicating the potential changes that the two bodies will consider. In particular, we have two staff members here that are going to walk you through these these this presentation at this time. I'm going to turn it over to Trish link in our law department, and Danielle ward, our assistant co director, assistant development services director. Thank you. 1:09:19 PM Thank you. 1:09:23 PM Mayor and council members of the planning commission. I am Trish link with the law department and we will go through this presentation. I'm going to there will be three parts. I'm going to walk you through the background. Mr. Ward is going to talk to you about the proposal itself and what our next steps are. So the purpose our brief here today is to explain what we're proposing. And these amendments are intended to promote responsible str ownership, to help manage affordability issues and to improve our hotel occupancy tax collection. So many of you probably know, in 2012, the Austin city council established a short term rental use. It was a standalone use, and they created two classifications. One is the type one, which is an owner occupied str. Someone establishes that they are an owner occupied str by providing us with an evidence of a homestead exemption, driver's license, or their voting registration card. The other type that council created at 1:10:23 PM that time as well is the type two, which is for non-owner occupied. The council also imposed a density cap for those type two strs. So essentially it was on the census track level and it was a 3% cap for the number of type two. So you could have about a year later, council actually created a third classification for strs, and that's for multi-family dwellings that are not owner occupied in that ordinance as well. Council imposed some density caps for the type three. If your property was zoned is zoned noncommercial, then you could have up to 3%. If the property is zoned commercial, you could have 25% of your units used as strs. A few years later, we were learning some hard lessons about regulating strs and enforcing str regulations. So council in 2015 took up this issue of short term rentals. Again in 2016, the council took some steps, three of which are 1:11:25 PM particularly important. The first was to phase out existing type two strs. If you had a type two str license at that time, you were going to be given five years to continue operating. Provided you maintained your license, you could continue to operate. The next is that council prohibited new type two strs in residential zoning districts, and lastly, council limited occupancy and regulated noise. A couple years later, the city was sued. The third court of appeals ruled that the city's phase out of existing type two strs and occupancy limits were invalid. What we've taken from za'atari is that for existing strs, we cannot adopt a blanket prohibition against existing strs. Essentially, our tools are to revoke licenses when we have irresponsible ownership. Let's go a few years down the road again, and the city of new Orleans was also addressing short term rental regulations, and they ended up in some litigation in the federal courts. And the spring of 2022, the city of New Orleans, the 1:12:28 PM sorry, the fifth circuit and new Orleans ruled that the city of New Orleans requirement that property must be homesteaded to operate an str violated the constitution. Essentially, it discriminated against out-of-state property owners. A few months later, council kind of, I think, recognizing where we were kind of headed from a challenges we were having with strs, they passed a resolution asking the manager to create an ordinance that would prohibit our str platforms for from collecting fees from unlicensed str owners. About a year later, under the theory for the new Orleans case, the city of Austin was sued again, challenging our prohibition on new type twos. Essentially, the court ruled that that prohibition, because it treated type two differently from type one, was unlawful. And what we've learned from that is that the city cannot limit ownership to those who reside in the Austin area. In February and 1:13:32 PM April or the spring of 2024, three city commissions actually took up this issue of short term rentals as well. The tourism commission recommended that the council emphasized supporting neighborhood alignment and preservation of local character and promoting responsible growth, and proposed partnering with platforms to improve our accountability or recovery of hotel occupancy tax, along with accountability for str owners. In the spring of 2024, the arts and music commissions took up similar recommendations and they proposed improving and streamlining our licensing process and compliance process again, also wanting the platforms to collect and remit hotel occupancy tax. So the proposal that we have created in this for the short term rentals addresses five city goals, three council goals, in particular of making strs more compatible with neighborhoods. That was the part of the impetus for the zoning regulations, and it's been part of what council has been 1:14:33 PM concerned about to ensure that individuals who live next to strs are able to live in, to coexist with short term rentals. The second would be to recover hotel occupancy tax, and the third would be to avoid the further exacerbation of affordability issues. And for council, that's been a two sided issue. One has been folks who own their property being able to earn income to help them pay their taxes or keep up their property, age in place, that kind of thing. But the other side, the other concern that council had was ensuring that our housing stock was used for long term housing, and not having everything become a short term rental. Two other goals that the regulations will address, which are city goals generally is improving our compliance rates and enforcement outcomes, and the last, which is to regulate consistent with the recent court decisions. And just as a reminder for existing strs, we cannot have a blanket prohibition. Our options are to revoke licenses for bad 1:15:34 PM behavior. And then all strs. We cannot limit ownership to those who reside in the Austin area. And now I will turn this over to Daniel. 1:15:48 PM Good afternoon. I will now walk us through the proposal that we've put forward. We'll focus on four key areas regarding the new new proposed regulations, license eligibility, host requirements, platform regulations, and enforcement enhancement. As has already been discussed a little bit, short term rentals are currently treated as a specific use in our land use code. Given the impacts from the recent court decisions on short term rental regulations, we are proposing to move the majority of the short term rental regulations from title 25 to the zoning code to title four, which is the city's business code. The piece that will remain in zoning would be that all short term rentals would become an accessory use for all residential uses, provided that they obtain a license. I think 1:16:51 PM it's important to understand that with the recent court cases, while on paper, having short term rentals become an accessory, use to all residential uses is a big movement on paper. I think it's important to understand that with the court cases taken into account today, as it stands, type one meaning owner occupied short term rentals and type two meaning non-owner occupied short term rentals are allowed in all zoning districts now. On properties with three or fewer dwellings. So we're talking single family context. We will limit license eligibility to individuals. Individuals will be defined in three different ways. An individual can be a natural person, meaning a human being. So you own the property in your name. An individual can also be a trust, provided that all beneficiaries of the trust are 1:17:52 PM human beings. And thirdly, a company can operate a short term rental in single family context, provided that all members of the LLC are human beings, what would not be allowed would be for corporations to purchase a property under another LLC, and then operate it as a short term rental in single family context. Additionally, in that single family context and I'm talking three, three, or four year units on one lot, there will be a restriction that if someone wants to operate more than one str in Austin, they would have to space their short term rentals at least 1000ft apart from another short term rental that they operate in multi-family context, meaning four or more dwelling units on a property. An owner wouldlwlways be able to operate ateast one unit as a short term rental, but not more than 25% of the units 1:18:54 PM that they control on that multifamily property. So, by way of example, let's presume that there's a 100 unit apartment complex that is all owned by one single entity. Under this proposal, 25 of those units could be operated as a short term rental. Now, let's take that same 100 unit apartment complex. But it's owned in a condominium regime. So each individual unit is individually owned. Each individual owner could choose to operate their unit that they control as a short term rental. But if an individual owner purchases more than one unit in that 100 unit apartment complex, they would be bound by the 25% cap. So if that individual owns eight units in that complex, they would only be able to operate two of them as a short term rental. I'll speak a little bit about those with existing licenses, as has been 1:19:57 PM explained through some of the court cases, we can't regulate away someone's short term rental license. So those that already have an active short term rental license will be able to keep and maintain that license and operation, provided that they renew timely. Don't become a nuisance and their ownership structure does not change. But if they have a license today but they don't meet the new ownersp restrictions, or they don't meet the current 1000 foot rule from another short term rental that they currently operate, they would still be able to continue to operate those they already have. Host requirements. To operate a short term rental, we are going require that the host complete an online training course. They'll also be required to submit a self-certified safety checklist. This would be a high level life safety checklist to ensure that certain critical 1:20:58 PM pieces of safety equipment are operating in the dwelling. I'm talking smoke detectors work. If they have gas burning appliances, there's a carbon monoxide detector present. The egress windows in the bedrooms are operable and open. We would also require that hosts post an evacuation plan, showing the exits and the location of fire extinguishers and fire alarms in the kitchen of the dwelling. And finally, we'd also require that a host maintain a minimum of $1 million in liability insurance. Additionally, there will be a requirement when you receive a short term rental license that the owner will have to designate someone as a local contact, and that local contact can be the owner if they would meet the requirement. But that local contact has to be able to respond either to a phone call or perhaps even being called to the location if necessary. Within two hours. There is a similar requirement in our 1:21:59 PM ordinance today around the local contact. What is changing with this is that we are putting some teeth behind the local contact requirement. Under this proposal. If you fail to respond in two hours, that becomes a revokable offense to your license. Platform. Regulations. One proposal in in this ordinance draft would be that platforms would be required, or would have to require that license numbers be displayed in the advertisement. On our side of things, we call this a mandatory field where there would be, you know, in the template that people use to fill out their listing on the platforms. There would be a specific data field where they could enter the license number into. We are not asking the platforms to validate whether that license number is active or not, just that there is a field present to enter it, and so that 1:23:00 PM a number, you know, a license has to be entered in order to be displayed online. Additionally, we will be asking that the platforms collect and remit the hotel occupancy tax directly to the city of Austin for any listings booked through their platforms. This would be a change from today. Right now that responsibility is on the individual property owners to collect and remit the hotel occupancy tax to the city. This would shift that requirement to the platforms. I think another element to point out with this is that would serve to help level the playing field to a certain extent, where today you have licensed short term rental operators that do pay that hotel occupancy tax. But we have a we think a majority of short term rental operators that are unlicensed, and by and large, they are not paying the hotel occupancy tax to the city. To support those property owners. The platforms would also be required to provide 1:24:02 PM documentation to the host, at least quarterly. That would indicate the amount of hotel occupancy tax that had been collected on their behalf, and then that remitted to the city. Additionally, following some guidance from city council in December of 2022, platforms would be it would be unlawful for a platform to collect a fee from an unlicensed short term rental. To aid in compliance. Platforms would be required to delist advertisements upon request from the city, so this would be situations where the city finds an advertisement that does not have a valid license for one reason or another. A notice would be sent from the city to the platform. Platform would then be required to take that advertisement down until whatever issue was cured. Along with this, we're also creating what we call a safe harbor provision, such that if 1:25:02 PM platforms are requiring that the license numbers be displayed and are listing those advertisements upon request from the city, it is presumed that they are coming with these requirements and they are not collecting fees from unlicensed platforms. So enhanced enforcement. There are several elements in this proposal that we believe will enhance our enforcement capabilities. One element that ware proposing to add would be the ability for the director to impose mitigation requirements to address recurring issues at property. This examples of this could be overflowing trash cans, for example, under under this provision, as a condition of renewal, staff could require the license holder to either upgrade to a larger trash can, obtain additional trash cans. But that's just one example of what a mitigation requirement could be as a condition of renewing that license. Additionally, the 1:26:04 PM director would have the ability to deny and revoke licenses when an operator has been designated as a nuisance, the director would have that authority to declare the property a nuisance. We could revoke the license and then send that delist notice to the platforms to have that, have that advertisement taken down. Enforcement on short term rentals has been challenging up to this point. I'll walk you through a few examples of that. One challenge we have initially is just verifying the address of the advertisement. If you're familiar with the hosting platforms, you'll recognize that when you look at a listing, the address of that property is not anywhere displayed. You don't find out the address until you actually book the listing. And so from the city side, we on the enforcement side, we're dependent upon the photos in those advertisements to try to figure out what the real world address of that listing is. As we've moved through this 1:27:05 PM process, we're finding more and more often that the photos provided tend to be interior photos pictures of the kitchen, pictures of the bathroom, which makes it exceptionally difficult to determine what the real address of that property is. Additionally, proving up operation is a challenge that requires a human to human interaction. So if we receive a complaint regarding a property potentially operating as a short term rental that does not have a license, we will respond to the location, we'll knock on the door and we'll hope someone answers the door. That's the first barrier. If someone does answer the door, we will enter into a conversation with them to try to determine if they are the property owner or guest, and if they disclose they're a guest. Then we'll also ask, oh great, how long are you staying to try to determine if they're less than 30 days? If the guest will admit to us that they are not the owner booked for less than 30 days, we now have the 1:28:05 PM evidence we need to move forward with enforcement. But until those boxes are checked, we can't really prove that someone is operating as a short term rental. We've also found that even in instances where we've been able to move forward with enforcement actions, we see that a lot of times that property still continues to operate regardless. And then with nuisance issues with short term rentals, we've been taking a proactive approach in trying to address some of these concerns. We maintain a list of properties that we will visit on a Thursday afternoon or a Friday afternoon, trying to catch guests as they check in so that we can have a conversation with them to remind them of our local codes and ordinances, and to be respectful of neighbors. While we don't have access to direct data that will tell us how many short term rentals are operating in Austin, we know we have about 2200 that are licensed. We do believe the majority of short term rentals in Austin, however, are 1:29:05 PM operating without a license. One bit of data that we've seens that of the 311 complaints we receive that are related to a short term rental, 94% of those involve a property that is unlicensed. So what that suggests to me is that licensed properties tend to have better behaviors than unlicensed properties. Now, there could be other elements at play in that. So I can't say that that's a complete absolute certain fact, but that's at least what it suggests in my opinion. And we also believe that if we can get to a place where we have better with the licensing requirement, that will allow our code compliance teams to focus more on the nuisance issues that some of these short term rentals can create inside neighborhoods. Currently, we spend the majority of our time chasing the licenses, effectively playing whack a mole, trying to locate the properties that are 1:30:06 PM operating that put up an advertisent, then take it down, but then put it right back up. And that's where a lot of our time is spent. And so if we can get to a much better place from compliance with licensing, I believe it can turn how we can focus our enforcement efforts as well. Two additional tools that we're looking to leverage as we move forward with this process. We are in the fy 25 budget. City council approved monies for the development services department to seek two different contracts, one of which would assist us in the licensing process. The licensing process for short term rentals is currently online, but it's not a seamless experience. We're looking for a third party vendor who can provide software that will make that a much more user friendly process, where you would have users would have their own username and password and can log in themselves. They could update their contact information if they needed to, without ever having to touch staff to make that happen. Additionally, we're also seeking 1:31:06 PM a contract to assist us with enforcement. There are companies out there that use data scraping techniques off of the major platforms, and they are able to much more efficiently identify the address of that listing compared to how we operate. And so that would allow us to more rapidly advance our enforcement efforts on those that are advertising without a license. To change direction a little bit. Community information sessions. We've hosted four different community information sessions. The first one was a zoom call. This was held on January 21st, which was the ice ice day. We actually had 215 people. Log on to that call. The in-person meetings were less attended. We ended up having a total of 36 people attend the three in-person sessions between montopolis recreation center, the permitting and development center in north Austin by the old highland mall, and then the 1:32:08 PM central library downtown. In those sessions, we found some recurring themes show up. Now we are still actively receiving, categorizing and summarizing feedback as it comes in, because we've also stood up a public input webpage where people can go to learn more about this proposal and provide feedback through that venue as well. But in the information sessions, some of the main themes we see involve questions about how these proposals would would impact existing licenses, how the city would enforce these violations. And then also, we've received a lot of questions regarding the 1000 foot distance requirement and questions regarding the two hour response time requirement for the local contact. Finally, to summarize the timeline for action, we're all here now at the joint planning commission and council meeting. As has been mentioned, 1:33:09 PM we will be at the planning commission on February 11th, and then we will return to city council on February 27th. That would be the earliest date at which council could take action onhis proposal. And with that, I conclude our presentation. Thank you very much for your time. 1:33:24 PM Thank you, and thank you for a good presentation. And I want to reiterate what the assistant city manager said. Thank you to staff for all the hard work that's gone into this. We're we're all both the planning commission and the council are very appreciative of that. Members that we have already, without objection, opened the public the joint public hearing between the Austin city council and the planning commission. So I'm going to now turn to the city clerk's office and ask them to help us with this process. Members of the public that are here to speak, we welcome you. We've put two podiums in place so that will make things more efficient for you. If your name is called even, even if my name was called before you, please start making your way to the front so that you'll be ready to go. And if there's an open microphone, feel free to step to that and utilize it. Just state your name for the record and I'll now turn it to the city clerk. 1:34:22 PM Thank you mayor. We'll begin with remote speakers. First speaker is Barbara Macarthur. 1:34:30 PM Hi. My name is Barbara Macarthur and I live in district seven. Several years ago, we had a speaker from the city come to the Austin neighborhood council and talk about short term rentals. He told us there were around 2000 registered strs and 18,000 unregistered strs. He also said that enough enforcement staff wasn't available to respond to calls about nuisance stars, because most of those calls were on the weekends and in the evening. So here we are, the city council deregulating strs so that on every residential lot there can be an str. If you haven't been able to control the unlicensed strs in the past, how will you be able to control them now? And how will that not cost money? The fiscal note says this item has no fiscal impact. How will you monitor the strs on websites? Will that be free? How will you review the prescribed quarterly reports and documenting? Will that be free? How are you going to enforce the rules? A person may not advertise or promote, or allow another to advertise or promote a short term rental. If the 1:35:31 PM housing unit is not subject to a valid operator's license. An older city report said that strs had doubled the 911 calls as regular residents. Doesn't 911 response cost money? And what about your concern for affordable housing? Do you think strs increase affordable housing in 2020? An academic paper assessed the effects of an str ban in New Orleans and found that housing prices dropped by 30% in regulated areas bordering the popular French quarter, with strs everywhere, communities are being sacrificed for profit. The ordinance limits the use of an affordable unit as a short term rental this means you are willing to restrict strs, so why not study how you can further reduce the proliferation of strs? To restore these units to our permanent housing stock? This ordinance seems more focused on collected taxes than benefiting the community. If you care about affordable housing, you won't vote for this ordinance the way it is written now. Thank you very much. 1:36:34 PM Next speaker is Michael curry. 1:36:40 PM Hi. My name is Michael curry. Appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. The stated rationale for these amendments is to bring our str regulations in line with recent court decisions. However, what you have before you badly overshoots the target and undermines city policy. Many of you ran on a policy of increasing housing in the city of Austin. This str proposal is antithetical to that policy. This proposal will reduce avale housing in Austin. The proposal permits an str in every residential lot. Each str eliminates a home for Austin families and residents. If you adopt this, you are prioritizing the interests of tourists over the interests of austinites who live and work here and want to raise their families in a residential neighborhood. It is important that the city conform its ordinances andractices to the law. But the three court 1:37:42 PM decisions referenced in the backup materials do not dictate the str permissive ordinance. You are presenting. Those cases prohibit the distinction between type one and type two schools, including the sunsetting of existing type two strs, but they do not hold that an str must be allowed on every single family lot. These court decisions allow limitations on short term rentals that the city is not availing itself of. For example, the cases discussed the ability to place caps on the number of stars, and it seems clear that the city could limit the availability of strs for those who purchase of property. After this ordinance goes into effect, the city is giving the impression that this proposed ordinance is the result of constraints placed by these court decisions. When it is not, the ordinance works hard to make sure the city can collect hotel occupancy taxes and makes operators more responsive, which 1:38:43 PM are worthy goals. 1:38:44 PM Thank you. 1:38:44 PM But we. 1:38:45 PM Need a greater emphasis. 1:38:47 PM On preserving the. 1:38:52 PM Next speaker is Jacqueline Turley. 1:38:59 PM Good afternoon, chair, city council. 1:39:01 PM Members and planning commission members. My name is Jacqueline tirz and I'm the regional manager of government affairs for expedia group here to speak to the platform regulations in these ordinances on behalf of the expedia group family of brands, including leading vacation rental site. Com I'd like to thank you, city legal staff and the code department for your leadership in drafting effective short term rental regulations for the city of Austin. We were grateful for the extensive stakeholder engagement the entire team has done so far throughout this process. Vrbo is proud to be headquartered in Austin and along with other expedia group brands, proud to play a key role in Austin's economy by helping travelers research, plad book a wide range of lodging, airline and car rental and destination experiences in the city. We encourage responsible short term rental regulations because a diversity of lodging options is an integral part of any thriving tourism ecosystem. We believe a professional, well regulated market for short term 1:40:02 PM rentals benefits our partners, travelers and neighbors. Expedia has worked with countless governments to craft and implement regulations that meet local needs, while maximizing the benefits of tourism activity in communities across Texas and around the globe. While every community is different, short term rental regulations that achieve the highest level of compliance across the country generally share the characteristics encompassed in the draft ordinances in front of you. As drafted, the requirements for short term rental home owners, operators, and platforms are clear and without prohibitive barriers to compliance, and we are hopeful that the draft and attachment a is considered favorably by both the planning commission and the city council. We are also prepared to become tax responsible in the city of Austin. We have some remaining concerns and requested changes to the tax language that we are working on with staff at this time. As stated before, we appreciate the effort in making responsible, balanced, short term rental ordinances, and we greatly appreciate not only the work that has gone into these in front of you, but also the 1:41:02 PM opportunit to provide feedback. 1:41:04 PM Your time has expired. Thank you mayor. We will now. We will now go to in person speakers. First on deck is Michael Whalen, followed by Ryan Saunders, Christopher Paige, Brad Massengill, and Roland Robinson. If your name has been called, please take your place at the podium. 1:41:28 PM Thank you. Michael Whalen, on behalf of expedia group, which includes, as you just as was just noted, the leading vacation rental site, vrbo. Com first and foremost, I would like to thank Daniel word for really conducting a robust stakeholder process for month that receive meaningful feedback, which was translated ultimately into a workable ordinance. Also, a thank you to Patricia link, who compiled the feedback, the precedents from other cities, and case law to prepare the ordinance that is before you today. Of course, there may be, and there probably will be additional tweaks based on continuing feedback. Expedia has been clear a well-regulated market for short term rentals benefits everyone the hosts, travelers, neighbors. As Jacqueline tyrwhitt just noted, the ordinance presented today contains the core characteristics needed to achieve the highest level of compliance and enforcement, which includes the mandatory field for hosts to list permit numbers, and on the platform 1:42:29 PM side, the mandatory takedown provisions, which require the platforms all platforms to remove hosts from websites upon proper notice from the city. It is, of course, important that the ordinance contain platform provisions so that all platforms have to comply. This will help with, as I mentioned, uniformity and enforcement because so many other jurisdictions now have mandatory fields for permits. This requirement is not one that is expected to create a burden for the platforms. Expedia is also prepared to collect and remit hotel occupancy tax, as it has done for years. On behalf of the state of Texas, we have shared some concerns, as was mentioned with the city, on the language, which differs from how other jurisdictions manage the collection and remittance process, and I expect that an updated draft will be seen once additional feedback from others is received. Thank you so much. 1:43:23 PM Let me go ahead and start. 1:43:24 PM Please just state your name for the record. 1:43:27 PM Ryan Saunders. I'm a resident in district three. I own a two story duplex upstairs downstairs duplex in my upstairs unit is operated as a short term rental, and I'm here to speak against the increased regulations of stairs, because I think it's hypocrisy of how the city handles the interaction between businesses and residents, and how you're targeting short term rentals. I average that. I have 128 visitors to my house each year, and if they spend $50 a piece at a local business, it will contribute $27,000 to small, local businesses versus a hotel visiting Starbucks and national chains. And I'm also meeting the cultural or the standards of the compatibility with the 100 year old house that I invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into renovating and upkeeping the hypocrisy of how the city treats businesses versus residential and then targeting says there's a vacant lot that operates as a food truck park, and the city doesn't require any any permitting, 1:44:27 PM doesn't consider that a change of use. Yet you're applyi an accessory use for an str. You're threatening to or asking to have the permission to de-platform people without any specifications of why, and then open ended mitigations that are basically opening up to say that you could find and regulate an str in or out of existence. You're also requiring 1 million in liability insurance for city owners, and the city has given me by email that neither food trucks, bars, or restaurants have any liability insurance requirements. And then if you're also going to try to maintain the quality of life for residents, and you have to look at the abandoned buildings that are covered in graffiti, broken glass and wood that you say is private property, but then you're going to want to interfere with my private property and tell me what I can do with my private property. And then the harm reduction clinic is located on our street, and council member Fuentes got 1:45:27 PM involved in I said I was only two minutes. I only have three minutes. 1:45:32 PM No, you have two minutes. But thank you, sir. Appreciate you being here and your comments. 1:45:52 PM Chris Paige from district one I think many of you are elected or appointed based on this theory of increasing housing supply and making housing more affordable, I it was, you know, described to the public. There's currently about 16,000 units in our market that are already built and not being used for housing. The majority of those 16,000 are also not paying hotel hotel occupancy taxes. And I don't think their misconduct justifies the powerful voice that they're bringing today or have brought in the months previous in defining the policy that's going to regulate their industry. If you want to increase affordable housing, you should think about resident. That was in my neighborhood. She was a renter from a large corporation that owns a large real estate portfolio. She was de facto evicted when they arbitrarily increased her rent, turned her home into a short 1:46:52 PM term rental. She no longer lives in the city. Her kids no longer live in the city, and our community now misses her deeply. But that house has sat vacant since then, and in fact, in the years afterwards, I think within about the last two years, there was a shooting there at one of their unlicensed short term rental parties that was going on. A miner died, two other people were shot. It's a mess. The homes next to it don't like what's going on there. But code enforcement doesn't show up at night because they're not staffed for it. You should think about who's going to pay for these problems. You should think about mandatory disclosure of the data because it's cheap for these companies to press a button and give you that data. I'd like to know if anyone on this council or in the city has requested that data, and if it's been refused, who refused it? If you're serious about affordable housing, you don't offer the opportunity for corporations to 1:47:52 PM make every neighborhood into a decentralized hotel. 1:47:56 PM Thank you sir. 1:48:00 PM Hello, I'm Roland Robinson, district four, first time at a city council meeting. I moved to Austin out of school in 2005. My first apartment at 51st and Lamar was $300 a month. Today, $300 won't cover three days of my property taxes. Not kidding. You do the math. It would be an understatement to call this massive overreach a huge win for corporate hospitality. And it's locking out locals. What happened to keep Austin weird? My str has been fully licensed for 11 years. It's a 400 square foot Adu in my backyard that helps to pay for all of my taxes. I take pride in the work that it takes to give someone a safe and comfortable place to spend the night from out of town, I've hosted thousands of people from hundreds of 1:49:01 PM countries over 11 years, almost since the very beginning of this program. I'm one of the oldest super hosts on airbnb, by the way, $0.80 of every dollar that I make stays right here in Austin. More importantly, it helps all of us continue to survive to live here in Austin, a city that we love. Regulations and restrictions like these push out locals. They push out mom and pops that are barely hanging on to the Austin dream. These amendments will funnel our hard earned dollars to hotels. We could always just change the city tagline to keep Austin corporate. I never thought I'd see the day when people starve on the streets, and our representatives here are trying to take my job and take our jobs away. This is a job for me. I earn an income from this. This would put me out of business. I read this, this is ridiculous. 1:50:03 PM We need you to fight for us, against us. 1:50:07 PM Thank you sir. 1:50:10 PM Thank you. I gotta get back to work. 1:50:12 PM Brad. 1:50:13 PM Massingill. Craig. Nasir, Monica Guzman, Francis. Jenkinson, Daryl. Guest. Rose Ballard. 1:50:26 PM Miss Schenck, and I promise we're going to get your name right one of these days. It was close. 1:50:35 PM Good afternoon, mayor and council. I'm Monica Guzman, policy director at go Austin. Vamos. Austin reading a resident statement. We applaud the Austin city council's effort to create platform accountability for short term rentals. Strs in Austin by requiring the listing platform to post the str license and to collect all applicable hotel occupancy taxes. Thank you. The biggest issues we face in our quiet, friendly, diverse and peaceful neighborhoods are noise from people and vehicular traffic at all hours of the day and night, and overflowing trash. Since the city of Austin has decided that hotels, motels, convention centers in a small residential home is the way forward, neighbors of these stars must have recourse for immediate resolution. Of all such disturbances, hotels are required to have a 24 over seven manager on duty to which guests can report complaints and get immediate action. Austin has no such mechanism for strs. It is vital for str neighbors to have a 24 over seven mechanism for 1:51:36 PM which we can get immediate action, especially for noise complaints. Oh, I think I already read that we have no recourse,ther the Austin police department nor code enforcement will send someone out in the middle of the night when loud music, loud drunken people or loud cars and street racing wake us up along with our children and pets in the middle of the night, disturbing our sleep and disturbing our peace. Neighbors of the str should not have to function as management, code and law enforcement over the str next door, but that is our reality. Please do the right thing and create one touch reporting hotline, app or another mechanism to enable us at all hours to get in touch with the str manager. Code enforcement or APD for swift and timely enforcement. We are tired, weary and sick from having our lives upended by a hotel and convention center two doors down in a 1500 square foot, three bedroom home. Thank you, Deborah and Bruce blumentritt, district four. Thank you. 1:52:35 PM Hello, Craig Naser, I'm on the zero waste advisory commission, district seven. To many, my observations are that too many short term rentals destabilize neighborhoods. Neighborhoods groups are struggling already because of increased costs. People hav less time to attend them. And you get more people in neighborhood, more short term rentals. There's fewer people who may have the time and interest to be on a neighborhood group. Hotel occupancy tax. What use is that in a neighborhood? We need more parks is that could go down to the new convention center. I mean, I don't understand how that's a plus. I have been awarded by keep Austin beautiful for creek cleanups. We have a lot of trash in our creeks. This only works if you can get enough people, volunteers from the neighborhood to clean up the creeks. More short term rentals means fewer people to be involved in activities like that. There's other activities, too, that this impacts. Then there's the thing 1:53:37 PM about trash. Already we are throwing away more trash now, the citizens of Austin than we used to in the past. That's going up. That's supposed to go down. I spent a lot of time trying to talk to neighbors about how to sort trash properly, because that's not done extremely well yet. How does sewer short term rentals deal with this? I've seen the one at the end of our street. They just throw all the trash in the brown can and it all gets hauled out there. Something needs to be done about that, about educating short term rental people, how we do it in Austin. We sort our trash. And so that's sometngng that might you want to include in here. So short term rentals are here. We can't do a lot about them, but we need to do as much as possible. So that's why I say support please. It looks like some good ideas, but please keep working on it because this is not good for Austin. Thank you. 1:54:42 PM Good afternoon. My name is Francis schenken. You have to kind of slur it and sort of forget the double K's in the ends. I have three points. There are good things in this ordinance, but three things concern me. Lack of information on the fiscal impact. Here we talk about how we're going to do some contracts with people who might do data scraping. I don't see much here about increased enforcement. And everybody who has spoken today has talked about enforcement. My second point is I'm concerned about all the unregistered ones. Now, why are we not going after them? Why are they grandfathered? I must not understand something in this of why we can't go after 20,000 people in the city who are running these but don't have a license. So I just don't understand that. And I don't understand how this connects to 1:55:46 PM the idea that we are making short term rentals more compatible with neighborhoods. If we don't enforce what we have and we don't collect a hotel tax from people who are unregistered, how exactly are we making a short term rental more compatible with our neighborhoods? What what are the neighborhoods getting from this? Thank you. 1:56:17 PM Good afternoon. My name is Daryl guest. I live in district nine and together with my wife, we are owner operators of a short term rental. Since 2014, we've been licensed and have paid hotel taxes since that time. Four items in this ordinance concern me. The first one is where the license number is displayed on the website. I have privacy and safety concerns. If that number is on the opening page. So I would request that the license number be on the platform and appear at the same time that the address appears, which is after you book a residence, the local contact presence being available within two hours of a city request at the property. I would ask that there be a justifiable excuse provision addressed in the ordinance. My wife and I frequently travel when we have guests in our house, and that's 1:57:20 PM more than two hours away, so we can't be present at two hours, especially since that can be a revocable offense. Now, the liability insurance. I am still waiting on quotes for that, but again, that adds an expense. We have the license fee, we have the hotel tax, and now we have a liability insurance premium. Airbnb provides a $1 million policy for liability for hosts. So I would ask staff to look into whether or not the provision of that policy could satisfy the liability insurance concern. Finally, there's a provision in here that requires theost to ensure that the guest complies with federal, state and local law. That is very vague and open ended. I mean, how can I ensure that my brother, that my guest is going to comply with the law? 1:58:23 PM Thank you. 1:58:28 PM Hi, everyone. I'm rose Ballard here from district one on the east side where we are overrun with strs in November. On November 22nd, there was a shooting in front of my home from a from an str. There were 7 to 8 shots fired at 6 A.M. In the morning, which stemmed from an argument that was in the street. And to this day the str is now they've been granted their license renewal. So if a shooting in the street doesn't constitute a revokable offense, then I don't really know what will. You know, a year prior. So I'm really nervous. 1:59:11 PM You're you're right. 1:59:13 PM A year prior there was a murder which Chris had mentioned just a couple blocks away at an str. Our our neighborhood on the east side is overrun by unstaffed hotels. They're not compatible with our neighborhood. They bring safety issues, violence, potential sex offenders into the neighborhood, noise, traffic, school enrollment issues. They're a burden on 911 APD fire department. City of Austin officials 311 and our neighbors. Most importantly, our quality of life is diminishing when we have shots fired in the street right in front of our house. Following the shooting, we learned that there was a disconnect between the department. This is something that my neighbors and I have been working very hard to try to connect the dots. We've talked to APD, the code officials, our district, everyone we possibly can to let them know about this incident because we're learning that the licensing department doesn't 2:00:14 PM actually have the information from APD. They were not made aware of the shooting. They are not in contact at all with any issues that happen. So with our limited time, I will move on to that. The rules are not strict enough. We need a lot more rules that I will. 2:00:34 PM Thank you. Mr. Massengale. Your name was called, so if you want to come to the microphone, you can do that. Please feel free to call other nam. 2:00:49 PM Actually, mayor, that concludes all the speakers. 2:00:51 PM Mr. Massengale, you barely made it. I'm sorry. What's your name? Is lorettalier, registered to speak? 2:01:03 PM No, mayor. 2:01:04 PM I'm sorry your name wasn't on the list. Mr. Massengill, wrap us up. 2:01:09 PM Okay. 2:01:10 PM Slightly out of breath here, y'all. Sorry I'm running late. The purple card. Thanks for someone for leaving this here. This whole idea of changing the rules on the strs is a good thing, but we need to make sure that we're taking the whole city and all of its residents into consideration when doing this. There's a problem with with not enough housing apparently in town enough to trigger some of the development code, code development things we've been seeing lately as far as db9's and the homes initiative. But excuse me, homes initiative and all that, when we have a lot of homes that are tied up in strs and this is home stock that should be available to everyone, there's other towns that have actually have really strict 2:02:12 PM rules on this kind of stuff, and it does have an effect on the on the housing supply and people's quality of life, including. Like holly neighborhood, for instance. People can't even park in their own neighborhood. There's parties all night long, and it seems to be geared more toward a certain lifestyle. That's in contrast to the people that actually live there. It reminds me of the frat parties and the frat houses that used to be all around UT, and it's just an extension of that in my. Opinion, this is a long overdue look at this, but please keep in mind that these neighborhoods are very fragile and we're losing our character of all our neighborhoods by giving up mor and more things to development and code. Thank you. Sorry about 2:03:13 PM the breathlessness. 2:03:15 PM Thank you members. As you heard, that's all the people that have signed up to speak at this public hearing. So without objection, we will close the joint public hearing between the planning that's involving the planning commission of the city of Austin and the Austin city council, let me remind everybody of a couple of things. First of all, thank you. For those of the people, those that have provided testimony and provided suggestions on how best to address this, they will we will take those under advisement. And I know city staff will as well. A couple of things to remind people of. The planning commission is going to meet on February 11th, 2025 at 6 P.M. Here in the Austin city council chambers. And there will be another opportunity for public input. At that time, the city council will discuss the ordinances at at the February 27th 20. I'm sorry, February 27th, 2025 meeting and there will be an opportunity for 2:04:15 PM public input at that time as well. If you want to monitor how questions and answers are being addressed, including. My guess is many of the questions and answers. Some people came to the podium and had. What we're going to do is have council be able to put questions, and then we'll get answers from staff. On the q&a side, let me give you that site. And for those of you all that don't want to write that down right now, what we'll do, what my office will do is as soon as this meeting is over, I will post to the message board for all of the council to be able to get it out in whatever ways they do this site. So for members of the public, if you want to see this, go to the message board, get that url and you'll be able to utilize it. But let me read it quickly into the record. It's services dot 2:05:16 PM Austin, texas.gov slash budget. Slash land dev code. Let me spell that L a N D. D E V C O D E 25 land dev code 25 dot index dot C F M M. Services dot Austin, Texas. Dot gov slash budget slash land dev code 25 dot index dot C. And like I say, I'll make sure we post that on the message board as soon as I can after this meeting so that everybody can see that and copy it and paste it and do whatever else you want with it. Again, I want to say one more time February 11th, 2025 at 6 P.M. 2:06:17 PM Here in the council chambers, the city planning commission will have public comment and take this item up. And then on February 27th, 2025, the city council here at the council chambers will do the same. There being no further business to come before the Austin city council at this special called meeting. Without objection, the Austin city council is adjourned at 2:06 P.M. I will recognize