BYRON SHIRE Council has strongly condemned the television program Instant Hotel which features a property in the Byron Shire.
“I am concerned to see a property on Red Gate Road at South Golden Beach promoted as an ‘instant hotel’ particularly because there has been a history of non-compliance with respect to the use of the property,” Mayor Richardson said.
“The owners of this property have a flagrant disregard for Byron Shire Council and thus, the community, which is charged with protecting the rights of residents against unlawful developments,’ he said
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“To see this property promoted on national television as an ‘instant hotel’ is extremely disappointing given it is not currently complying with Council regulations.
“Council has had more than 21 complaints about this property in the last two years and in fact Council issued a $3,000 on-the-spot fine to the owner of the premises on 2 November 2017 in relation to unauthorised activities,” Mayor Richardson said.
“Council is also asking Airbnb to be the responsible corporate citizen they claim to be and withdraw their support for Instant Hotel and condemn the use of the house for unlawful holiday letting.
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“Unauthorised short-term rental accommodation generates a wide range of complaints from local residents and they are also competing with recognised holiday and visitor accommodation providers who do work with the Council and obey the rules.
“2,655 properties in the Byron Shire were advertised on holiday platforms such as Airbnb in 2017 and when you consider there are only 4,256 listings for the Northern Rivers area, this is having a massive impact on our residential neighbourhoods,” Mayor Richardson said.
“To put this into perspective there are only 15,645 dwellings in the whole of the Byron Shire so that means almost 17% of properties are on Airbnb.
“The proliferation of unauthorised short-term holiday accommodation is threatening the fabric of our community and in some areas it is getting to the point where long-term residents don’t know anyone in their street anymore.
“Short-term letting significantly reduces the amount of permanent and affordable rental accommodation.
“Byron Shire Council is putting owners of unauthorised short-term rental accommodation on notice – we are watching you and will prosecute if necessary,” Mayor Richardson said.
For more information call Mayor Simon Richardson on 0427 076 834.
It is important to distinguish between whole house holiday letting, via airbnb and other platforms, and people who are doing airbnb hosting in their own home. The latter contributes to family income and contributes to the tourism economy in a positive way while the former impacts the whole neighbourhood negatively and the reduces availability in the residential tenancy market.
In Spain there is a rule you cannot do short term rentals for more than 4 months in a year. This law is to protect locals in the rental market. There are similar laws in Paris and NYC. The property market is driven by greed. Maybe if there was such a law here people would opt to rent long term ?
Just send this to the short term holiday letting agents ,
Who rent out residential investment properties,short term,
With no manager or caretaker on site.
We are sick of drunken peeps in our garden at 10 am
Kids jumping off our fence
Dangerous play in our pool
Unique
Byron bay holiday rentals
McGrath
These 3 agents are absent short term rental agents
Mostly impossible to contact at weekends !
There is a distinction between urban Airbnb rentals to remote rural based rentals. Nature based ones are usually in remote area & would not attract locals as it is too far away from services & employment. For those in these remote locations it is a valuable addition to providing a positive nature based experience for those that seek it not mention a valuable source of income in a situation where there is little employment available. Also the council seems to be using the AIRBNB phenomena to find a scapegoat for what is the chronic lack of new homes for rent & purchase. While there are obvious issues of conflict of interest between visitor needs & community needs one must be careful not to throw the baby out with bath water & bear in mind there are areas that would ‘die’ to have the tourist interest Byron has. Remember this is a high unemployment area & the tourist industry provide a valuable source of income not only to the landed gentry but to local shops, support workers etc.
It does need managing but some of the solutions offered are far to sweeping & do not take into account subtle differences especially between rural remote nature base experience & town renters.
I suspect if you do your research Heith you might find the main problem in byron shire is tourism. It has encouraged huge amount of residential housing investors. there are plenty enough houses, it’s just they are being converted from homes for local people into someones portfolio. The chronic lack of homes is an easily disproved myth. The social cost and lack of amenities is the well documented cost of tourism. The additional housing provided by granny flats has caused an investor gold rush, people moved here from all over australia to cash in on the rort of councils section 94 contribution gift in the last 4 years. Slow golf clap byron shire council. Investors buy the houses and locals are forces to pay top dollar to live in their sheds.