Short-term holiday lets are tearing apart the social fabric of the region. With one in four homes being short-term rentals in Byron Shire, it’s no wonder we have a housing crisis.
Our submission urges the government to return planning powers to the community by empowering local governments. Short-term rental accommodation affects different areas in different ways, and a one-size fits all approach won’t work.
In my community, the massive overrepresentation of short-term holiday lets is driving up housing prices and displacing essential workers like nurses, teachers and hospitality staff. We’ve also seen the devastating floods of 2022 render thousands of homes in our region uninhabitable, which is why the Greens are also proposing that short-term holiday lets are used as emergency accommodation during natural disasters. If you have homes sitting empty during a flood, you should use them.
I know locals have been expressing their outrage at this system for decades now, and we hope that NSW Labor will listen to the community’s wishes and act to tax and regulate short-term holiday lets. Labor has a chance to usher in transformative reform, and any government serious about addressing the housing crisis would back these measures.
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