Christchurch city councillor calls for bed register to crack down on unapproved Airbnbs

A Christchurch city councillor is calling for a bed register to crack down on units being used for short-stay accommodation without permission.

His comments come after the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment backed a ruling that multi-unit or apartment owners must ask permission before using residential properties as a holiday or short-term rental.

The council had sought a determination from the ministry because it felt the owners of a unit had changed its consented use as a household unit by making it available for short-term accommodation.

Councillor Nathaniel Hertz Jardine said the move added more weight to the council's argument that more regulation of short-stay accommodation was needed.

"The underlying issue is that we decide democratically as a city which areas of our city should be used for long-term residents, which are the residentially-zoned areas, and which ones should be used for tourist accommodation, which is commercial zones.

"What Airbnb operators do is they use areas that should be for long-term residents, and they basically convert them into motels and hotels, and this ruling just highlights that you shouldn't be doing that," he told RNZ.

It reinforced the need for a national bed register, he said.

"Even with this ruling, councils are still going to find it very hard to locate and identify those properties that are being incorrectly used with short-stay accommodation. So we still really need central government to help us with a register so we can get that information directly from platforms like Airbnb."

Hotel and motel operators had raised concerns about short-stay accommodation not adhering to rules around accessibility and fire safety. A bed register would make tracking properties and whether they were following the rules easier too, Hertz Jardine said.

The council would wait for appeals over the ruling to be heard before moving forward, he said, so they would have certainty it reflected the new status quo.

"Then we're going to have to look really seriously about how that affects our responsibilities as a council about enforcing these safety standards across all of the Airbnb units in the city.

"Regardless of which way that ruling goes, we still need help from central government for a bed register, for a bed tax, and for better zoning rules so we can have real control over how our city is growing."

Short-stay accommodation operators were taking on a lot of risk, he added.

"If you haven't gotten a resource consent from your council, you're in a grey area and you're taking on a lot of financial risk. And we, as a council, we're not responsible for that risk.

"It could be that in a couple of years from now, it's going to be very hard for you to be operating that Airbnb unit.

"You might want to consider getting a long-term tenant. You might want to consider selling the property. You might want to consider just doing something different."