The city of Portland has launched an online application system for short-term rental permits on platforms like Airbnb, hoping to significantly improve turnaround times and address a backlog that has stymied its ability to regulate both scofflaw hosts and the online platforms themselves.
The portal is for hosts of smaller rentals to apply for so called Type A permits, which are for rentals with less than three bedrooms or that offer accommodations for five or fewer guests. Owners of larger rentals are still required to go through a land-use process with the city to obtain a Type B permit, a more involved and expensive process.
Despite being one of the first cities in the country to require licenses, Portland’s regulation of short-term rentals has been a fundamental failure for the last decade, an investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive revealed last fall.
Just last month, as the newsroom was preparing a follow-up to that story, the city made its first concerted attempt to crack down on illegal rentals, threatening to levy big fines on Airbnb if it failed to remove more than 100 listings that did not have a valid permit in the city’s official short-term rental registry. That was a fraction of the number of listings identified by the newsroom that were operating with invalid or fake permit numbers or claiming an exemption to city regulation without obtaining a necessary occupancy change.
On Thursday, the city sent another warning letter to Airbnb requesting that it remove exempt listings that have not received such a change in occupancy permit from the city.
“Airbnb, Inc. has until May 15, 2024, to remedy this apparent Code violation by removing or otherwise addressing these listings as explained above,” wrote Scott Karter, audit and accounting manager for the Bureau of Revenue and Financial Services. “The potential daily penalty for failure to remove or otherwise address these listings is $1,000 per violation per day. If we find that there are future violations of City Code, we may assess penalties without further warning notices.”
Airbnb has previously said it would comply with the city’s requests.
Part of the city’s difficulty in policing illegal listings has been its massive permitting backlog and a cumbersome paper-based process that a short-staffed Bureau of Development Services could never get on top of. The automated portal should expedite that process, officials say, and help keep the registry, which was previously littered with incomplete applications and expired permits, up to date.
“I hope, within a month or two, we’ll be able to demonstrate significant improvements in the turnaround times on permits,” Ken Ray, a spokesperson for the bureau, said in an email.
Airbnb and other platforms are not permitted to take booking fees from rentals that don’t have a valid permit number in the registry, but the city was previously giving unlicensed hosts and the platforms a pass on that fundamental rule because of its own delays and problems keeping the registry updated.
Both Mayor Ted Wheeler and Commissioner Carmen Rubio said last month that they now expect Airbnb to exercise continual oversight over the listings and that the city would be enforcing its regulations “to the full extent of the law.”
– Ted Sickinger is a reporter on the investigations team. Reach him at 503-221-8505, [email protected] or @tedsickinger
– Our journalism needs your support. Please become a subscriber today at OregonLive.com/subscribe
