Airbnb backs tax on visitors to ease housing affordability crisis
Airbnb is supporting calls for a tax on tourists that could raise the price of hotels, motels and holiday rentals as councils try to combat the housing affordability crisis.
The online accommodation platform has called for an opt-in tourism levy on all accommodation providers that local councils could use for key worker housing projects.
Randwick City Council will vote this week on whether to lobby the NSW government to impose a bed tax on short-term rental properties.
Randwick mayor Dylan Parker said residents were in the middle of a housing crisis where rentals were disappearing and affordable homes for purchase were almost non-existent.
“A modest levy reinvested into affordable housing to offset the downsides of short-term letting won’t change the sad fact the housing market is broken,” he said. “But it’s a start.”
An Airbnb spokesman said an opt-in tourism levy on all holiday accommodation – not just short-term rentals – could fund community infrastructure and services such as key worker housing projects.
“We believe tourism levies are a fair and sustainable way to raise revenue for local communities, especially in areas of high tourism, as they broaden the revenue base without imposing an additional burden on local ratepayers or businesses,” he said.
Last year, Randwick Council voted to investigate ways to levy higher rates on the owners of Airbnb-type rentals, which it blames for driving up the cost of housing.
However, a council report found that a bed tax would be a simpler and more equitable way of addressing the housing affordability crisis than charging Airbnb owners higher property rates.
“It is unlikely that this option would deter [short-term rental accommodation] operators [and encourage more properties onto the long-term housing market],” the council’s meeting agenda said. “However, it would provide an additional income stream for council that may be spent on affordable housing.”
The council’s report found Airbnb rentals were concentrated in Clovelly, Coogee, Kensington and Kingsford “where key worker housing is needed”.
Accommodation Association chief executive Michael Johnson said too many holiday rentals and not enough long-term accommodation had led to a lack of affordable housing for key workers including in tourism and hospitality. But he said: “We do not support a bed tax”.
Last year, Queensland councils failed to convince the state government to allow them to impose a bed tax on tourist accommodation, including Airbnb-type rentals.
Randwick’s push for a bed tax follows the Inner West Council’s decision this month to drop plans for rate variations on short-term rental properties after finding Airbnb had a limited impact on the availability of long-term rental dwellings in its part of Sydney.
Data compiled by the council shows 858 properties are Airbnb-type rentals in the inner west compared with 32,485 rental properties.
In comparison, 1076 dwellings in Randwick council are used for short-stay accommodation, compared with 23,875 rental properties.
These figures are dwarfed in Byron Shire, where an estimated 2470 properties are Airbnb-type rentals compared with 3907 rental dwellings.
University of Sydney senior lecturer in urbanism Laurence Troy said a bed tax was unlikely to ease the housing affordability crisis.
“The main hope with a bed tax, as far as I can see, is that it will discourage people from listing properties in the first place,” he said. “If that is the aim, there are probably better ways to do that, like regulating the number of nights you can list a property or requiring hosts to have permission from council to rent on Airbnb in the first place.”
Troy said the impact of Airbnb on housing supply was unquestionable in places such as Byron Bay and Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
“The impact in the inner west and wider Sydney region is much more muted, and it is questionable whether restricting Airbnb listings in these areas would have any impact on overall affordability problems,” he said.
The push for a bed cap comes as the Independent Planning Commission of NSW takes public submissions on Byron Shire’s attempt to reduce a 180-day cap on holiday rentals to 90 days to address the area’s housing crisis.
The 180-day cap on Airbnb-type rentals also applies in Sydney and some regional areas, and is due for review later this year.
A Planning Department spokeswoman said rents for short-stay accommodation in some parts of NSW were “significantly higher” than long-term rents.
“The 180-day cap has been designed to help reduce the financial incentive for landlords to switch to [short-term rental accommodation] and deplete the availability of long-term rental properties,” she said.
Byron Shire mayor Michael Lyon backed a bed tax to cover the costs of tourism on local infrastructure.
“It’s essential that areas like Byron with high holiday let concentrations can set tighter day caps to disrupt the investment model and protect residential areas for the local community,” he said.
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