Monday 30 October 2017

The rapid growth in short term accommodation in residential areas is changing neighbourhoods in tourist areas and the government must introduce regulations to make the industry sustainable and prevent problems. Short term letting has already completely removed one per cent of inner Sydney’s housing stock and 3.3 per cent of the rental stock at a time of a housing affordability crisis.

Different types of short term letting have different impacts and my submission on the government’s options paper argued that homes should not be wholly turned into holiday accommodation. People should be able to rent out a spare room in their home if they are present as a host and caps are needed to limit how often people can let their homes out when they are away.

I again called for owner corporations to be given the power to control short term letting in their building including to ban or limit the practice. Apartments are democracies and all owners should have a say on how their building and common property is used. This supports a mounting campaign from strata communities that was presented at a forum I hosted last week for the Owners Corporation Network. A strata committee group will write to the Premier to put forward this approach and wants other committees to co-sign. If your building supports this model, email [email protected]. My submission is HERE.