Dear Councilperson,                                            

Your constituents are facing an extreme housing crisis: skyrocketing rents facing tenants, high prices for first-time home-buyers, and entire neighborhoods eroding due to gentrification. Many of these issues are being exacerbated by unregulated vacation rentals.

Absentee investors come into town and buy up our housing so they can make a quick profit off these vacation rentals - which are short-term rentals where the owner lives off-site. This shrinks the available housing supply for long term residents, drives up rents, and turns our residential neighborhoods into unregulated hotel districts.

We are proposing common sense regulations that would put an end to vacation rentals, and create a registration and permitting system for owner-occupied short-term rentals. These regulations don't punish people who want to rent out a spare bedroom in their home to help pay the bills.

Local governments must act to protect housing affordability and  the character of our residential neighborhoods, and affirm that our homes are not hotels. We urge you and your colleagues to act to protect residents by passing short-term rental regulation.