A summer crackdown on unlicensed short-term rentals is having its intended effect of driving operators from the market.
Philadelphia’s effort to regulate the short-term rental industry is shrinking the number of available offerings on platforms like Airbnb and VRBO.
The new laws reinforce a long-standing, but little enforced, regulation requiring a hotel license for properties operating short-term rentals where the owners don’t reside. That’s illegal in most of the city, requiring operators — many of whom have been in business for years — to go to the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment to make the case that they should be allowed to get the necessary permit anyway.
“A well-run and regulated short-term rental can exist in a neighborhood such as ours without much notice, but that is not what’s happening,” Joseph Baker of the Franklin Bridge North neighborhood association said. “Loud parties spill out into the street in the early hours of the morning, screaming fights, cars racing the wrong way and, at least three times, gunfire.”
That’s why Squilla repeatedly delayed the enactment of his own law, pushing its implementation back by almost two years to give people time to try to get their licenses.
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