Photo by Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine.

With the D.C. Council set to vote on a bill on Tuesday that would regulate and restrict home-sharing services for the first time, Airbnb officials say they are willing to take the issue directly to D.C. voters with a ballot measure in 2020.

In a memo sent to Council members on the eve of the final vote, Chris Lehane, Airbnb’s head of global policy and public affairs, said the San Francisco-based company would consider a ballot measure if the bill — which restricts home-sharing to a person’s primary residence, and limits it to 90 days a year if the owner is not present — is approved.

“Airbnb wants to continue working with the District of Columbia on smart and fair home-sharing policy as we’ve done in other great cities like Denver, Seattle and Philadelphia,” he wrote. “However, we know that when given the chance, voters side with short-term rentals and we’re willing to explore those options as well.”

In D.C., anyone can call for a referendum on a measure passed by the Council or propose a ballot initiative, essentially a law put then to voters for their approval or rejection. But as demonstrated with Initiative 77, the Council can also overturn a measure approved by voters.

In the memo, Lehane pointed to past ballot measures that had gone in Airbnb’s favor, including the 2015 vote in San Francisco in which 55 percent of voters rejected a proposal to restrict home-sharing and a vote in Boulder, Colorado, the same year where voters sided with a policy allowing residents to share their homes for short-term rentals for 120 days a year.

More recently, in September a ballot measure qualified for the ballot in San Diego; if approved by voters, it would rescind regulations limiting home-sharing to a primary residence and banning the use of second homes, as D.C.’s bill does.

“A fight at the ballot in 2020 isn’t our preferred method to solve the problem in Washington, D.C., and in fact, we think it’s more powerful for [the] Council to take the action their constituents want,” wrote Lehane.

According to a poll commissioned by Airbnb of 500 registered D.C. voters, 61 percent of respondents said they would support a bill allowing people to rent out their primary residence for 180 days a year, as is the case in Arlington County. The same bill would also cap the number of “full-time” Airbnbs at one-percent of the city’s overall housing stock and create a “three-strikes, you’re out” provision for bad actors.

Airbnb and other home-sharing services — including VRBO, HomeAway and FlipKey — say short-term rentals allow D.C. homeowners to monetize space that may not otherwise be used, and has “democratized” travel and tourism by offering residents a chance to play host to visitors. But critics say that home-sharing has become extensive and profitable enough — there are more than 9,000 short-term rentals in the city, the majority posted on Airbnb — and that it has commercialized the practice and eaten into the city’s stock of affordable housing.

And those critics have their own poll, too. In early September, It’s Time D.C., a coalition of labor groups including a union representing hotel workers, said a poll it had commissioned of 400 registered D.C. voters had found that 86 percent of respondents supported the Council’s bill, which passed unanimously on a first vote earlier this month.

Last-minute lobbying and possible changes

Ahead of the second and final vote on Tuesday, both sides furiously lobbied Council members, some of whom have said they plan on introducing amendments to address some concerns that have been raised with the proposed regulations and restrictions.

One of those is Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who will propose amendments to clarify whether a person’s separate basement or carriage house is still considered part of their primary residence and to create a hardship exemption to the 90-day cap for people like active-duty military and diplomats whose jobs require them to travel for long periods of time.

Another of Allen’s amendments would clarify that if the bill passes the Council and becomes law, it would not take effect until the start of the next fiscal year, in October 2019.

“It gives people time to make plans and to adjust. There are folks who own property and have made investments based on one set of assumptions, and that can’t change overnight,” he said.

But Allen said he would not try and change the 90-day cap on home-sharing when the owner is not present. During the first vote two weeks ago, he proposed extending the cap to 120 days, but lost on a 5-8 vote. San Francisco similarly has a 90-day cap.

Questions on implementation

Even if the bill does pass the Council, many questions remain on how it will be implemented and paid for. D.C. Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey DeWitt on Monday pegged the four-year cost of the bill at $121 million, largely because the way it is written it would prohibit short-term rentals in areas where zoning does not allow it — which is many residential areas. That, said DeWitt, would make between 80 and 90 percent of existing short-term rentals illegal, thus forfeiting the revenue the city already takes in from them. (Airbnb collects and remits the hotel tax for every short-term rental booked through the platform.)

But Council Chairman Phil Mendelson largely brushed aside the CFO’s analysis, saying the Council is merely trying to regulate a practice that is currently illegal and that it could pass the bill and find a way to pay for it later.

“It’s a bizarre situation. Bizarre because what the CFO has opined is that the bill makes it easier for the government to enforce existing laws and regulations, and in enforcing the existing laws and regulations, most of the short-term rentals would be prohibited. Well that’s not our intent. Our intent is to ensure that home-sharing can continue and prosper in the District,” he said.

Any proposal to regulate home-sharing in D.C. — which is generally defined as rentals lasting fewer than 30 days a time — would also have to include action by the Zoning Commission to amend the city’s zoning code to allow the practice in residential areas.

“It’s my intent to ask the Zoning Commission to revisit its regulations so that the bulk of the short-term rentals, that is the ones that are in residential neighborhoods currently prohibited by zoning, would be permitted,” said Mendelson.

In his memo, Lehane worried that if passed as originally written, Mendelson’s bill would “result in truly dire straits for thousands of Washingtonians who depend on home-sharing income to make ends meet.” But in her own statement, Lauren Windsor, of AirbnbWATCH, a group that supports regulating home-sharing, said the bill would instead help Washingtonians already facing a shortage of affordable options.

“Limiting short-term rentals to primary residences would increase the city’s permanent housing stock by more than 5,000 homes over the next two years by eliminating professional short-term rental investing,” she said in a statement. “This will not only return thousands of homes to the city’s long-term housing supply, but also protect thousands more from being bought up by outside commercial investors.”

This story was originally published on WAMU.