Elected officials from seven mountain counties say the giant short-term rental company cherry-picked data to divorce itself from the worsening housing crisis.
A group of 15 commissioners from seven mountain counties is blasting a recent study commissioned by short-term rental giant Airbnb that dismissed the idea that short-term rentals are eroding worker housing in Colorado’s high country.
“Airbnb narrowly focused on positive impacts, and facts appear selected to craft a story that is not entirely true, especially when it comes to negative impacts created by the STR industry,” reads a response from commissioners in Eagle, Grand, Gunnison, Pitkin, Routt, San Miguel and Summit counties to the recent report by Airbnb.
The economic impact report shows visitors renting short-term rentals in the high-country vacationlands making up almost one-third of all tourist traffic and spending $1 billion in 2020.
The study also disputes the widespread notion that short-term rentals are impacting workforce housing. Yes, it is hard to imagine a company like Airbnb, which counts tens of thousands of users in Colorado and submitted $25 million in tourist lodging taxes to Colorado municipalities in 2021, paying for a study that finds it culpable in the mountain-town housing crisis.
Many local communities in the mountains have identified growth in short-term rentals as a primary driver in the shortage of worker housing. Most every community has approved increased regulations, taxes and even caps on short-term rentals.
The June 14 letter from the 15 commissioners and other municipal members of the Colorado Association of Ski Towns admits the housing crisis is not entirely due to short-term rentals, “however it is misleading to claim there is no relationship.”
Short-term renting has exploded in the last three years in Colorado’s resort towns. Airbnb, which does not release town-specific statistics of rental activity, said the $25 million in Colorado lodging taxes it collected and distributed in 2021 was a 90% increase over 2020, which mirrors the company’s nationwide increase in tourist taxes it remitted for the year.
Summit County Commissioner Tamara Pogue called the study “a fairly standard piece of industry marketing.”
“I’m not sure that it will have much validity or relevance in terms of the conversation over STR regulations, and certainly not as it pertains to housing,” said Pogue, who has been critical of short-term rentals permeating her community’s neighborhoods that previously had been used by working locals. “It’s fairly obvious that the intent of the report is to further support a multi-million dollar industry.”
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