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On Tuesday night, the Monroe County Legislature will vote on whether to opt out of a new state requirement to create a short-term rental registry. Every other large upstate county including Erie, Onondaga, and Albany, is moving forward. We would be the only one walking away from basic transparency, enforcement tools, and fair taxation.
Right now, we don’t know how many short term rentals exist, where they operate, or how much housing they’re taking off the market. The new state regulation requires counties to maintain a public registry of all short term rentals and use a uniform system to collect state and local taxes from Airbnb, VRBO, and similar platforms. It is the bare minimum needed to understand what STRs are doing to our housing market, ensure everyone pays taxes, and hold bad actors accountable. And it’s even designed to pay for itself!
We are in a housing crisis and a funding crisis. Now is not the time to delay. New York State has given us a tool to bring transparency, protect housing, and collect needed revenue. Other counties didn’t hesitate. They put residents first and opted in, we should too.
So why is the county pushing to opt out of this requirement?
State lobbying records show extensive lobbying of Monroe County officials by Airbnb staff and Ostroff and Associates, the lobbying firm that employs Congressman Joe Morelle’s son, who is listed on the Airbnb account. Morelle is extremely close to County Executive Adam Bello, and Ostroff’s principals have long-standing political ties in this community. Airbnb and Ostroff lobbied counties across upstate. Only Monroe County took the bait.
The law allowing counties to create STR registries passed last December. If transparency were the goal, it would have gone through the normal committee process. Instead, the administration waited until the last minute and is now trying to force an opt-out without real public awareness.
On Tuesday at 6 p.m., residents can speak at the public hearing (call 753-1950 to sign up). Corporations have high paid lobbyists, advocates and neighbors just have each other. If you believe in fairness, in data, and in good governance, now is the moment to say so. Tell your representatives to vote no on the Short Term Registry Opt-out.
Kelly Cheatle
The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Monroe county has been successful to date in collecting sales taxes and motel/hotel taxes on Short Term Rentals (STR’s) that are overwhelmingly just bedrooms in resident’s homes.
Why change it?
Mixing the housing shortage issue with the STR market is mixing apples and bananas. STR’s overwhelmingly aren’t substitutes for permanent housing they’re equivalent to hotel rooms..
Let’s leave STR’s alone as they’re currently managed by the County and deal with the residential housing issue by allowing Alternative Housing Units (AHU’s) in Monroe County. Allowing for AHU’s would make available the opportunity for current residents to build small stand alone residential units on space available on their current property or build additions to their current residence. This expands the flexibility of allowing for “mother in law suites” where younger people could help take care of aging family members while having residential independence, or serve as first residence housing for non-family members as care givers while saving for their first home.
Such arrangements help people all around. They allow older residents to stay in their own home longer, help younger people support seniors, and offer the opportunity for young people to save for a a future larger residence.
Another option is to reverse roles and allow younger people to occupy the larger home and the owners occupy the ADU. There are opportunities for a range of financial options too from rental to mortgage financing with the younger person becoming the property owner and the younger people becomes care givers for the seniors.
AHR’s have been successful additions to housing stock elsewhere, why not Monroe County?
I support the new state regulation that requires our county to maintain a public registry of all short term rentals and use a uniform system to collect state and local taxes from Airbnb, VRBO, and similar platforms. It is the bare minimum needed to understand what STRs are doing to our housing market, ensure everyone pays taxes, and hold bad actors accountable.