A Green councillor is calling for action to tackle short-term holiday lets and the way that they push up rents and dent the number of available homes in the area.
Councillor Ellen McLeay plans to propose a motion on the subject at a meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council on Thursday (11 July).
Councillors McLeay is calling for a report on how the council can use its planning powers to control short-term holiday lets, sometimes generically referred to as Airbnbs.
She wants the council to use an “article 4 direction” as it has done to control the spread of shared houses, also known as houses in multiple occupation – or HMOs.
The Green councillor wants a report to the council’s cabinet and its Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee outlining what can be done.
She also wants the proposed report to identify suitable areas of Brighton and Hove for the stricter regime, with details about enforcement if people do not seek proper permission for short-term lets.
Councillors McLeay also plans to ask council leader Bella Sankey to write to the government asking for councils to have the power to regulate short-term lets and ensure any loopholes are closed.
The motion is due to be seconded by Green councillor Chloe Goldsmith. She said that short-term holiday lets took properties out of the rental market – and this had a negative effect on housing supply and drove up rents.
She said: “As a renter myself and councillor for a ward with a high proportion of renters, I understand that this is just one of many problems with the housing market in our city but it’s one which we need to tackle as soon as possible.
“The outgoing Tory government never fulfilled its promise to give councils the powers to regulate short-term lets.
“But I hope this Labour government will – and the council should begin the initial work now to ensure we are ready to implement these regulations as soon as possible.”
The full council is due to meet at Hove Town Hall on Thursday (11 July) at 4.30pm. The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
And if they do, then like New York and other cities it will go underground! Then there is no regulation at all. But some councillors can put their triumph over those evil money grabbing monsters who rent out their own homes to pay the mortgage on their CV.
At no time does interference with markets ever end well. Build more council housing and stop mucking around with the private sector.
We have over 600,000 empty houses in the UK. We don’t need more. We need people to stop using stock to avoid taxes and make easy money. Houses should be homes.
I’m not sure how council housing will help those paying extortionate rates of rent? We need more availability and less costly rents for private renters. Wages just don’t stretch as far as expected for the rental sector in our City.
I suspect Chris means people who are private renting because social housing is less available will have a greater chance at moving into the latter either increased stock.
Or Chris may also ve suggesting the demand in the former will decrease, facilitating a drop in rents to be competitive with other properties with increased stock asforementioned.
From what i understand , the Labour Council are already onto this. No need for the Green councillors to bring it up , as it’s already got Labour looking at this issue and asking for more local authority controls, so that each council around the country will have the power to adapt and set in place policies that will suit their city.
‘Looking at it’…for the next ten years 😂
Sighhhh, yes because Labour have a majority, none of the other parties are allowed to bring anything up at all.
Yeah, I’ve heard this too. Registration is in the pipeline – that’s a when rather than if topic. Once there is clear visibility on where they all are, then the council will be able to act accordingly to control the unregulated market.
Well needed! The cost to privately rent is ridiculous, if this strategy can help to bring stock back to the rental market and bring rents down then amazing!!
Absolute twaddle you spout.
There is a reason lots of LL have converted from long-term letting to short-term letting.
Do you know why that is!?
Ever heard of S24 of the Finance Act!?
If you are making comments based on ignorance of S24 then you shouldn’t be commenting.
S24 will be coming to the short-term letting market soon.
This will put LL in an impossible position as their letting properties are unviable without the ability to offset finance costs against income.
This will leave LL little alternative than to sell up or move into the property as residential one.
Or just keep empty for personal use.
Whether many could afford to do this is debatable.
Many won’t and they will have little option than to sell up.
I see this as an absolute positive.
It will mean more properties will be privately owner occupied and at the same time it will reduce the supply for renting. Most people renting are not in a position to purchase and will likely be priced out of central Brighton and Hove. People should be careful what they wish for.
It’s not an unfair caution, certainly. Definitely not something that should be done in isolation from other methods either. Multifaceted approach seems to be the order of the day to tackle a big change.
This is the party that wants unlimited immigration. Now they want to wipe out the tourism economy and send people on overseas package holidays to accommodate the huge population growth. Very green.
Interesting – I understood that former Green Councillor Tom Druitt had a couple of properties in France that were rentable via Airbnb
If they’re going after Airbnb renters then they need to go after people renting to students as well. The huge student population in the city probably has an even bigger effect on rents and availability than Airbnb.
I would say that is tackled by ensuring that student-specific accommodation caters for the full student population. I read a statistic from Brighton University that the current capacity is nowhere near this, so it bleeds into private accommodations, perhaps reducing the availability of long-term rents to residents.
The greens didn’t exactly do alot for renters when they were running the show.