Melanie Rees is a housing consultant from Crested Butte, where workers erected tent cities at nearby campgrounds over the summer.
In the past year, she’s across Colorado, concluding that the loss of rental properties available for workers could alter the character of ski towns.
It’s already changing her town, where homeowners hosting short-term vacation renters pay 60 percent of Crested Butte’s total lodging tax revenue.
“I used to have neighbors,” she said. “Now I have vacationers living all around me.”
Rees places the blame for the high-country rental crisis squarely on the short-term rental boom. She’s heard of towns pondering converted shipping containers as temporary housing. Jackson, Wyo., briefly considered a temporary in-town campground for workers last summer.
She’s heard from businesses that are struggling to not just hire but retain employees because it’s too hard for workers to find a place to live.
When towns start considering novel measures like allowing tent cities or tiny-home settlements, she urges them to consider more rigorous enforcement of short-term rentals.
Rees suggests that counties should start assessing homes that rent short-term as commercial properties, which would push property tax rates from 8 percent to 27 percent or more.
“If they are taxed the same as a hotel or bed and breakfast, that would be such a disincentive you would see an immediate gain in the supply of rental properties. Not like a three- or four-year project, but an immediate increase,” Rees said.
Joyce Burford, the executive director of the Colorado Association of Ski Towns, which commissioned Rees’ study, said her members have discussed the possibility of state legislation addressing the explosive growth of short-term vacation rentals in resort communities “but no one knows what that looks like right now.”
The board of Colorado Counties Inc., all county commissioners from across the state, pondered the impact of short-term rentals this fall, including higher-impact uses of residential property and the reduction of longer-term rentals in resort communities. Ultimately, the commissioners decided the issue needed more research.
“We did not come to a consensus on a solution for CCI to push in the 2016 (legislative) session,” said the group’s executive director, Chip Taylor.
Switching a home from residential tax to commercial is an electrified proposal that would likely stir companies like HomeAway, VRBO, Flipkey and Airbnb to sue, just as they sued New York City and San Francisco for what they saw as overzealous regulation of vacation rentals. and other Colorado towns that were searching online listings for homeowners who were not paying sales and lodging taxes on short-term rentals.
“We would absolutely oppose a move by any municipality or state to reclassify short-term rentals as a commercial use,” said Matt Kiessling, executive director of the industry-supported Short Term Rental Advocacy Center. “We have seen court rulings and rulings from additional state bodies that affirm the notion that short-term rentals are a residential, not a commercial use.”
Rees said the state should be not be swayed by a threat of a lawsuit.
“The battle needs to be fought,” Rees said. “These hosting sites are rapidly growing and highly profitable, and they are having a measurable impact on these communities.”
