ATL Neighbors developed a questionnaire as part of its Short Term Rental fact finding efforts. This questionnaire is designed to help answer questions like:
ATL Neighbors sent its questionnaire to every neighborhood representative it could identify via email or uploading to neighborhood website contact forms. ATL neighbors identified contact information for 125 of the 243 neighborhoods in Atlanta. Additionally, the questionnaire was sent to every NPU Chair in the 2019 Community Directory. The intent was to get feedback from as much of the city as possible. Some community representatives forwarded the questionnaire to their constituents while others answered on behalf of their communities.
Participants selected one or more answers from a list of preselected answers. The questionnaire opened on July 16 2020 and the data presented here is current as of August 2 2020.
The raw data from the questionnaire is available here. Note that ATL Neighbors has redacted or removed some information including names and addresses to protect participant privacy.
ATL Neighbors values transparency and privacy. Information that identifies individuals such as names and addresses has been removed from the data set. Comments may also have been redacted or otherwise modified to protect a participant’s privacy.
ATL Neighbors post processes and attempts to validate the questionnaire results, which may lead to some discrepancies for others attempting to corroborate the statistics here. One example is that only one response per person is allowed so ATL Neighbors removed duplicate submissions. In some cases ATL Neighbors buckets similar answers together. An example of this is that ATL Neighbors tightened up the language of some answers such that early questionnaires had “I am a host and people pay me to stay in my Short Term Rental property” as a relationship to Short Term Rentals, which was updated to “I am a host and people pay me to stay in my Short Term Rental property in Atlanta”. For results gathering purposes these answers are treated the same way.
This diagram shows the relationship between participating neighborhoods and their respective City Council Districts.
This diagram shows how many residents participated from each neighborhood and City Council District.
This is a quote from the questionnaire:
I'm not at all opposed to regulation, and in fact I think it will be a good thing to provide clarity and help root out bad apples. However, I think it needs to be done by directly working with Airbnb and enforcing through the platform, not a huge amount of overhead for owners to figure out themselves. If it's not enforced through Airbnb, you'll have owners working around the rules, and you'll have huge overhead for Atlanta to enforce. So it's better for everyone, and there's precedent for it in other cities. But I think we should make it easier, not harder, to host on Airbnb as a way to supplement income and make Atlanta a great place to come visit.
These quotes are responses to the questionnaire:
I feel strongly that individual homeowners that are hosting not be treated the same as massive hotel corporations, from a tax perspective. It just doesn't make sense, and it's not an apples to apples comparison.
We rent only part of our residence and only when we are around to monitor. We do not allow parties of any kind and rent for weekly and monthly guests, who are in town for internships, medical rotation etc and cannot get a short term lease at a traditional apartment would prefer not to stay at a motel/hotel.
Short term renters can be just as responsible, or more so, than full-time renters. If you have a bad full-time renter, you have to evict them, and that takes time and money, especially in the era of Covid-19. If you have a bad short-term renter... they go away after a few days. People with short-term rentals have to make their properties pristine in order to get good renters and good reviews; not so much with long-term landlords. So, short-term rentals can be a benefit to a community, not always hindrance. Complaints about "transient" occupancies are often unfounded and based on personal bias and prejudice. Being able to offer short-term rentals can increase property values and property resale potential.
I think it's easy to paint Airbnb in a bad light, and I get it. But just realize that's using a few bad apples to ostracize the whole platform. My wife and I love hosting and staying with Airbnb, and the incentives are toward keeping a house looking great and clean (unlike traditional renting oftentimes) to get a great review. We love meeting new people when we rent out our extra room, or we get extra vacation money when we rent out the whole house when we're out of town on weekends. And we strictly enforce our house rules around no parties, and we and our neighbors have never had any issues. Honestly we usually can't even tell someone stayed there, since people really try to keep everything clean, tidy, and quiet. And staying at an Airbnb when we visit other cities gives us the chance to get to know a neighborhood, meet someone new, and save money versus staying at an expensive hotel that has amenities we don't care about. So I totally understand the issues around parties, and around home values going up in some neighborhoods due to investors buying up houses. But just realize there are lots of upsides too (incentives to keep houses looking great, guests wanting to get good rankings, opportunities for residents to earn extra money very seamlessly, etc.), especially for people that rent out their own residence to earn extra money on the side, and we should encourage this while working with Airbnb to make smart rules that help to avoid the downsides.
This is not a comprehensive list of comments and concerns expressed in the questionnaire, but these comments do represent most of the perspectives voiced. Some typos have been corrected for readability and details such as specific addresses have been omitted to protect participant privacy.
Airbnb is bad for the neighborhood!
The SIGNIFICANT increase in these properties are increasing rents and FORCING long term residents out
I am not supportive of short term rentals in residential neighborhoods at all.
Very frustrating that a single Airbnb can disrupt a neighborhood with noise and trash.
Lived with a party house for 2 yrs right behind our house. Was a horrible experience, known prostitution, trafficking, hundreds of cars on our cul-de-sac, drop offs on our street for 2 years at midnight to 4 pm, loitering, police needed to be called huge numbers of times, 350 people brought in from a strip club 2pm to 4 am on July 4-5, known to have rifles etc on their property, noise until 4 am...
We never felt safe in our backyard.
I can't imagine why long-term residents are fined for a specific number of false alarms within a period of time, but we don't have a similar situation for homes generating a number of nuisance report calls. Both situations are a nuisance and a waste of law enforcement resources!
We're worried this could start popping up everywhere when the Beltline becomes a paved reality, and I really wish CoA would create enforceable policy within a few blocks or in neighborhoods which the Beltline is inside or adjacent to, anything that would help us prevent this type of thing in the future.
I'm the neighbor of a party house that's been the sight of two separate shootings. One shooting sent a bullet into my neighbor's house.
The proliferation of unregulated short term rentals that are being built … is having a highly negative effect on the neighborhood. These types of businesses should not be allowed to operate to such a large extent in primarily residential neighborhoods; and if they do, there should be significant oversight and there should be a limit on the number and the capacity for each. Having vast numbers of strangers coming and going at all times of the day and night destroy the social fabric of the neighborhood. Many of these people do not care about our neighborhood and their actions continuously prove that out.
In my experience in our neighborhood and when I travel as an Airbnb guest, short term rentals of a room or part of a house where the owner lives is completely different than party houses with absentee owners.
All gun violence (at least 2 instances recently) and raucous, loud parties (many many instances) happen at locations where the entire house is rented on a short term basis. These absentee owners claim they have 'no parties" posted on their ads but there is NO effective enforcement.
If the City is going to allow this type of rental, the proprietors should pay fees to fund enforcement of City Ordinances. This enforcement must occur at night and on weekends.
I believe the Airbnb concept began as a way for people to share a room in their home with travelers WHILE THEY WERE IN ATTENDANCE, not an unattended free-for-all in a quiet community with no parking and postage stamp sized lots. We have a at least one home on our block saying it sleeps 18, with a 3rd story rooftop party porch (taller than legacy homes) and what appears to be limited and clearly inadequate parking for that volume of occupancy.
We find the Airbnb to be far better maintained than the student rentals with untended lawns, failing roofs, discarded mattresses and furniture. However, I think we are very lucky in that the ones near us are newly built and owner occupied, which makes a big difference.
Short term rentals are a commercial venture and destroy residential neighborhoods.
I see short time rentals having positive impact on my community in general. Dilapidated, older houses are replaced by beautiful new construction. In my opinion, there should be a bigger role of the City of Atlanta in this trending business. A required registration with the City, better framing of the city rules, and a tax might be factors preventing negative effects on the safety.
I want to see more affordable housing options in my neighborhood and throughout intown and also want to see renters protected when they do short-term rentals like PadSplit. I am concerned they do not have appropriate protection which makes them vulnerable to being taken advantage of.
Airbnb’s need to be regulated and adhere to the zoning conditions of the neighborhood.
We have a STR triplex right next door. It used to be host to long term renters and I feel like we've lost some community because we no longer have any connection or knowledge of the transients living next door. Also, from my reading of the city code, a three unit STR is illegal in our zoning district, but I have no idea who I could report it to or if it would have any effect.
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