Fed up with a few neighborhood complaints about party homes, the Nashville City Council is proposing to drive homesharing underground where no one will see it. According to multiple Council members, creating a black market is the best way to address the “not in my backyard…or yours” crowd who wants to effectively dictate what their neighbors do with their own property.
The plan would be to ease into the black market by first issuing a temporary moratorium on new homesharing permits to those who don’t live in their homes full time. Once the camel’s nose is under the tent, officials will then take away the permits of those who currently operate “non-owner occupied” Airbnbs. If that works well, they will potentially eradicate the scourge of homesharing altogether.
Council members reason that once they ban homesharing and are no longer able to regulate noise, nuisance, and trash violations at all, then the few who currently complain about those things can’t blame them anymore. When homeowners continue to rent their homes on the unseen black market, it will be the enforcers of that black market’s problem, not the Council’s.
This move is expected to free up city officials to address more pressing matters like the city’s notable hotel shortage. With less tax revenue coming in from the now-illegal Airbnbs across town, their first order of business will be to figure out how to take more money from taxpayers to pay off the wealthy developers who promise to build more hotels. Some wonder if they should just declare the hotel shortage illegal to swiftly eliminate that problem as well.
We will continue to provide breaking updates here as the homesharing black market gets underway.