On June 12, 2019, Portland City Council passed Ordinance 189557 which requires short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb and HomeAway to do one of the following:
• Enter into a pass-through registration data-sharing agreement with the Bureau of Revenue and Financial Services’ Revenue Division; or
• Remove all listings unless they are published on the City’s Short-Term Rental Registry of legal listing locations.
The City Council passed this ordinance as part of a series of ordinances adopted since 2014 to legalize and regulate short-term rental activities in Portland neighborhoods. The City of Portland has fire, life and safety regulations that must be followed by short-term rentals, but up until now, had no way to identify where all the short-term rental locations were.
Airbnb has chosen the pass-through registration data sharing agreement option. Effective November 1, 2019, Airbnb will launch an online registration system requiring new hosts to share their data with the City of Portland and asking existing hosts to allow their data to be shared with the City. Hosts that do not consent to having their data shared will be removed from the Airbnb website by January 1, 2020.
The pass-through registration system will include the following information sent to the Revenue Division each month beginning December 1, 2019:
• Name of the person listing the property and the property owner (or resident if different from the person listing the property)
• Host, resident or property owner’s mailing address, e-mail address and telephone number
• Address of the rental location
• Number of rooms and number of guests advertised for rent
• Description of the listing
• Listing number and URL
• Attestation that the host understands and agrees to abide by the City’s regulations
• Booking and transactional by listing and host including the number of guests, the date(s) booked, and the transaction amount
The Revenue Division and the Bureau of Development Services will use this information to enforce the City’s regulatory and tax codes.
Airbnb has agreed to pay the Revenue Division $20,000 for the implementation of the new system and $5,000 per year thereafter for its maintenance and support. The Portland-Airbnb pass-through registration agreement is the most comprehensive such agreement in the country.
“We are pleased to have worked with Portland lawmakers to update the registration process, making it easier for hosts to register and providing tools that allow the City to enforce its laws. This solution protects home sharing and helps the City enforce short-term rental registration while safeguarding the privacy and safety of our hosts and guests. Over the coming weeks, we will continue working closely with the City and our community to help bring our hosts into compliance,” said Airbnb Senior Public Policy Director, Laura Spanijan.
“We appreciate Airbnb’s willingness to engage with the City of Portland on the pass-through registration data-sharing agreement. We look forward to turning the page on our past disagreements,” said Thomas Lannom, Revenue Division Director.
HomeAway has chosen to use the City’s short-term rental registry. The registry is a listing of Portland locations that have already secured required permits or are otherwise deemed legal because of pending renewals or zoning. HomeAway has agreed to remove all unregistered listings from its HomeAway, VRBO, and related websites by September 30, 2019. This is the first city government interface HomeAway has launched in the U.S.
The short-term rental registry is accessible in a list format, or as a map. The list format is located at https://www.portlandoregon.gov/revenue/article/415180. A map can be found at https://pdx.maps.arcgis.com/apps/StoryMapBasic/index.html?appid=8356729c97844e71b8059692b2b4557e (or Portland Maps/Advanced/Gallery). The registry will be expanded to include Airbnb’s pass-through registration data beginning in January 2020. This will provide, for the first time, a complete view of all short-term rental locations in Portland.
For information about how to legalize a short-term rental location in Portland, call
503-865-2470 or visit https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bds/65603.
Source: City of Portland