The following is an August 1 Message from ANC President — Call for Action: Protest Commercial Short-Term Rentals at City Hall:
“Dear Neighbors,
Your city needs you this Thursday, August 2, 2012.
Back on June 7, 1990, more than 1,000 citizens took the time to come to Austin City Hall to protest an environmentally destructive development on the banks of Barton Creek. By standing united in opposition, they stopped the development and saved Barton Springs. It is one of our city’s proudest moments.
We need you to show up again to save our neighborhoods.
This Thursday evening, the City Council is poised to vote to allow and encourage investors to buy single-family houses all over Austin and turn them into Commercial Short-Term Rental (CSTR) properties. That means you might live next door to a hotel—and even have several on your street.
Please come to a press conference and rally this Thursday, August 2, at 11:30 AM at City Hall Plaza. And we especially need you at 6:30 PM at City Hall when the Austin City Council meets to vote on this issue. (Plan to stay late.)
The ordinance now on the table will have a severe, detrimental impact on the character, vitality and quality of life in Austin.
Currently, business enterprises like Commercial Short-Term Rentals are not permitted within residential zoning and should not be allowed. But unless you act, they will be legalized because Chris Riley, Mike Martinez, Lee Leffingwell, Bill Spelman and Sheryl Cole think such “hotel” business activity within neighborhoods should be allowed. Their five votes will open the floodgates to corporate-backed short-term rentals. (Laura Morrison and Kathie Tovo oppose commercial short-term rentals.)
Some Austinites want the ability to rent out their homes for a few days during South by Southwest or the Austin City Limits Music Festival. That’s OK, because that’s a short-term use of a dwelling that serves as a residential home for majority of the time. However, when a home becomes a commercial short-term rental, it’s rented like a hotel to customers by the week or weekend throughout the year. The owners do not live on the premises, and they might not even live in Austin.
Thousands of Austinites already have CSTRs in their neighborhoods. If you don’t live near a short-term rental (yet), imagine for a moment that the home next to yours or several on your block are converted, and your neighbors are replaced by a continuous stream of strangers.
Would your neighborhood seem as cohesive? Would your sense of community change? Would your family feel as safe? We could see whole streets in our thriving neighborhoods with more short-term rentals than owner-occupied homes.
Schools could be severely impacted. It is unfathomable to consider a policy that could hollow out our neighborhoods at a time of heightened concern about possible school closures.
Families with children could be driven from Austin’s urban core. Central city schools could further struggle to remain open.
Short-term rentals also make our neighborhoods less affordable, which leads to sprawl. When Austinites can’t afford to live in neighborhoods near where they work, they must commute, joining the daily gridlock.
For these and other reasons, municipalities around the country have begun banning commercial short-term rentals. If you feel Austin should do the same, we urge you to take action.
Help us urge the Austin City Council to not pass this ordinance. We need to come together to make it clear to city council just how bad we think this ordinance will be, and why they must do their duty as our public servants to vote it down.
Back in 1990, we saved our springs because we showed up in force.
Let’s take pride in our city and do what needs to be done to keep thousands of homes across Austin from turning into hotels— and save our neighborhoods.
You can find out more about this issue on the ANC website: http://www.ancweb.org/issues/STRs/STRs.htm. Please sign the petition to help stop CSTRs at www.SaveAustinNeighborhoods.com.
Sincerely,
Steven Aleman
President, 2011-2012
Austin Neighborhoods Council”
