In 2022, as in 2021, the City of #HollywoodFL's Vacation Rental rules are useless, universally ignored, and yet exactly what City Hall and the City Commission want: a distraction from how truly ineffective they are in doing their job handling pretty much everything else! 🙄🤨🤔

Above, one of my many photos of Hollywood Beach, circa December 9, 2020

In 2022, as in 2021, the City of #HollywoodFL's Vacation Rental rules are useless, universally ignored, and yet exactly what City Hall and the City Commission want: a distraction from how truly ineffective they are in doing thr job handling pretty much everything else! 🙄🤨🤔

Eleven months later, what I wrote about Hollywood and Vacation Rentals last year on this blog is still 100% true, as is the fact that many people in Hollywood have a genuine fetish about VRs and  #Airbnb that is all out of proportion to reality.

Unfortunately for Common Sense, the City of Hollywood's new #VacationRental rules are a HUGE fail, and a step backwards. Simply put, the City and its officials have NOT actively and honestly engaged the honest stakeholders in this effort, yet at the same time, also allowed genuine troublemakers to continue angering neighbors, who quite rightfully feel aggrieved and taken advantage of, and are looking for some party to blame and hold responsible.
https://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2021/02/unfortunately-city-of-hollywoods-new.html


To say that the level of intellectual discourse re Vacation Rentals on some websites, esp. NextDoor, https://nextdoor.com/p/S3HPh3D6gJ6Y is often as simplistic and one-sided as it is, though, perhaps, cathartic to the person venting, is self-evident.

In some cases, some of those people whose comments I read might as well be wearing t-shirts with a diagonal arrow that reads, "I'm with Stupid."

But as we know, there's a big difference between light and illumination.

As I've written many times in fact-filled posts on my popular blog here, the City of Hollywood's Vacation Rental program was, is, and remains a snapshot of a disaster because, among other things, as I predicted years ago, when I publicly said at a Hollywood City Commission meeting that it would never crack 25% participation. 

Not so long as the City Commission, the City Manager's office, the Chamber of Commerce and the Civic Associations buried their heads in the sand, and didn't see it as the opportunity it was and is.

A fact made worse by a South Florida media that continually asks the same handful of people in Hollywood what they think -the Usual Suspects- and their response was and remains, almost always, that the sky is falling.
24/7/365.

Even when it's not.

The city administration, the mayor and the City Commission have utterly failed to try to understand the myriad reasons why people are visiting here in such numbers.

It's NOT  just because of the weather or because of a conference or symposium or a concert taking place nearby at the Hard Rock Guitar Hotel casino or at Hard Rock Stadium. 

All of these parties have failed to do even the most basic research, or ask the questions that they should have asked years ago and already know the answers to now.
But they don't. 

They remain like hamsters on a hamster wheel.
Round and round and round and round...

They've consistently failed to quantify what visitors contribute daily, weekly, monthly and yearly to the local economy, even as many Hollywood businesses barely stay afloat, as all the empty storefronts on Hollywood Blvd. and Harrison Street and 19th and 20th Avenue remind anyone who simply walks by.

Try NOT to notice all the restaurants that are only open Thursday thru Sunday.

Even worse, they've all failed to appreciate and incentivize the VR people in Hollywood who DID follow the law, and spent a lot of money to do so.

The city and its elected officials continually look the other way at public meetings as those few people who are doing the right thing are thrown to the wolves, left to fend for themselves, as irate people talk only about the worst-case scenarios and realities that the city has failed to resolve.

Also, it's a certifiable fact that the city website's VR directory is NOT intuitive and is completely useless, especially for visitors who would actually want to stay at licensed VR properties. 

But the city prefers the list be the way it is -useless.

Which sums up their strategy for so many things going on in this city.

Governing magazine
THE FUTURE OF WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW
Why Cities Can’t Afford to Put the Squeeze on Airbnbs
A mobile workforce needs housing options beyond long leases, but regulations stand in the way of short-term rentals.
October 11, 2021
By Scott Beyer

There’s a perception among public officials that Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms are a problematic form of housing. The assumption is that homeowners or investors rent their spare units to vacationers, thereby taking supply from full-time residents who need rental housing. Many cities have passed ordinances that restrict the use of housing for these rentals.

But that misidentifies the short-term rental customer base. This kind of housing is no longer just for vacationers; it’s for workers who need temporary housing for too short a time to sign a six- or 12-month lease. By serving them, too, short-term rental companies are providing a crucial form of workforce housing that is needed in our dynamic, mobile economy. “24 percent of our business is not travel,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told Yahoo Finance recently.

The large number of Airbnb clients looking for a month-plus stay is diverse. Some are remote workers who do not need to be in a fixed location. This includes those who are employed in one city but may have reason to live for a month or two in a different one.

Read the rest of the article at: 

https://www.governing.com/now/why-cities-cant-afford-to-put-the-squeeze-on-airbnbs