Airbnb’s New Pitch to Cities: We Are Serious About Working Together

On December 7, Airbnb debuted a new 31-page report that summarizes the company's four-pronged approach to working with municipalities to develop commonsense regulations of short-term rentals. Called "The Airbnb Policy Tool Chest," it outlines four policy options that the company is offering to cities as a means of effectively regulating home sharing. They involve: tax collection through voluntary collection agreements; tools to address concerns from landlords, property owners, and neighbors; accountability in enforcing certain limits or restrictions on home sharing; and providing data to local authorities without compromising users' privacy. "Today really reflects the work of the last year of putting those principles [from Airbnb's Community Compact, released in November 2015] into practice," Chris Lehane, Airbnb global head of public policy said during a media conference call. "We really sought to work with cities across the world to address specific policy ideas, practices, and proposals that we could put into place. The Policy Tool Chest is very much a complement to our principles. The Chest is a living, breathing, almost organic document. As we go forward and continue to learn and put those learnings into practice, we'll put different tools into the Policy Tool Chest." The Airbnb Community Compact, released in November 2015, said the company was committed to "paying its fair share of taxes, working with communities to put in place rules that support each community's specific policy needs, and sharing data by regularly providing information about our community to cities and other jurisdictions in which we operate, in a manner that is consistent with our privacy obligations." New Models for Common sense Short-Term Rental Regulations This new report was released just days after Airbnb managed to strike a deal with the city of New Orleans to regulate home sharing, and just days after