Short-term thinking

Long-term problems … How is Gitmo a good idea? … And we see the family resemblance.

It has been almost a decade since Arizona legalized Airbnbs.

In that time, rents in the formerly affordable Phoenix area have roughly doubled. Arizona has seen a surge in homelessness. And our housing crisis has climbed to the top of voters’ minds.

Estimates say Arizona needs an additional 65,000 houses immediately to solve our housing crisis.

In the Valley alone, there are more than 35,000 short-term rental listings, according to AirDNA, a company that tracks the short-term rental market. And that’s not even counting the pretty parts of Arizona.

In Sedona — a town with a population of about 10,000 — there are roughly 5,000 short-term rental listings.

Of course, Airbnbs aren’t the only reason rents and home prices in Arizona have skyrocketed in recent years. Population growth, restrictive zoning laws, migration trends, the rising price of raw materials and a bunch of other factors all play a part.

But it would be crazy to think they’re not a factor.

Arizona lawmakers first legalized short-term rentals in 2016. This was the era of “regulatory disruptors” and Republican lawmakers and then-Gov. Doug Ducey wanted to be at the forefront of that moment.¹

Tech companies saw Arizona as their testing grounds and hired massive teams of lobbyists to wine and dine lawmakers and woo them with their anti-regulatory ethos.

In 2015, Ducey signed a bill legalizing and creating a legal framework for ridesharing, AKA Uber, over the outrage of the disrupted taxi industry.

That same year, he signed special legislation allowing people to order medical lab tests without a doctor's prescription after a thorough round of tech-wooing from Theranos. The company turned out to be a total scam and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, is still serving out her 11-year prison sentence.

At Airbnb’s behest, the original short-term rental bill specifically prohibited cities and counties from putting any regulations on short-term rentals.

But six years later, seeing the unintended consequences that law had created, lawmakers backed off a bit — passing legislation to allow cities to enact a limited number of specific regulations and requirements for short-term rentals.

Now, as Arizona’s housing demand continues to far outpace supply, lawmakers are once again revisiting the idea of cracking down on short-term rentals as one of the levers to alleviate the housing crisis.

None of the handful of bills restricting short-term rentals have yet received a committee hearing — in fact, only one of them has been assigned to a committee so far. That shows there’s still deep resistance to the concept of regulating short-term rentals among key leaders at the Capitol.

But for the first time in as long as we can remember, it’s mostly Republican lawmakers who are spearheading the push to enact rules on short-term rentals.

And that’s a sign of hope.

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So today, we’re sampling some of those bills to crack down on Arizona’s Airbnb free-for-all.

Here are a few that we’re keeping an eye on:

• Republican Rep. Selina Bliss’ House Bill 2308 would allow cities and counties to limit the number of short-term rentals. They could set a maximum number of Airbnbs in town, require they be spaced out, or even set a cap on how many short-term rentals would be allowed within a specified area. Existing short-term rentals would be exempted from the new rules under the bill.

• Bliss’ HB2309 would also allow municipalities to restrict the total number of Airbnbs allowed in an area, but would take it a step further by allowing cities and counties to treat short-term rentals as “transient lodging facilities” — AKA hotels — meaning they could tax Airbnbs in the same manner as hotels.

• Republican Rep. John Gillette’s HB2316 would classify short-term rentals as commercial properties, increasing their tax rates.

• Democratic Rep. Stephanie Simacek’s HB2558 would allow cities, towns and counties to impose limits on the number of short-term rentals allowed — either through a population-based limit system, or an overall cap.

• Finally, Simacek’s HCR2032 would ask voters on the 2026 ballot to approve a measure that would repeal the law prohibiting cities and counties from regulating Airbnbs, allowing local leaders to impose whatever restrictions they see fit.

House Bill 2578, which would allow a monument at the state Capitol honoring assassinated journalist Don Bolles, is one step closer to becoming law after the House Government Committee approved it on a 6-1 vote yesterday.

If the heartfelt testimony on this bill doesn’t bring a little tear to your eye, you’re clearly not a sleep-deprived local news reporter.

This is not normal: The Trump administration has started flying migrants to Guantánamo Bay, the military base in Cuba, the New York Times reports. The U.S. government has held migrants stopped at sea at Guantánamo, but this is the first time they’ve flown migrants from the interior of the United States. Officials say they have readied 30,000 beds. Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Secretary Juan Ramón de la Fuente said “No Mexican is going to go there under any circumstances,” KJZZ’s Nina Kravinsky reports. Mexican officials are setting up shelters at the border to receive Mexican citizens who are deported. And 1,500 Mexican National Guard members were sent to Sonora's border with Arizona for drug interdiction efforts as part of the negotiation to stave off Trump’s tariffs, per the Republic’s Raphael Romero Ruiz.

A machine gun in every pot: Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin wants to repeal a state law that bans people from owning a variety of lethal weapons, including machine guns, silencers, sawed-off shotguns and pipe bombs, the Arizona Mirror’s L.M. Boyd reports. It would still be illegal to own those weapons under federal law, but if Kolodin’s measure ends up on the ballot next year and voters approve, then Arizona would no longer be complicit in infringing on Second Amendment rights, Kolodin said.

Speaking of guns: House Republicans approved a plan to let school officials carry guns on campus and eliminate any legal liability that comes from using those guns in a crisis, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer writes. Gun carriers would have to pass a certification program, however.

The old switcheroo: Two lawmakers in Cochise County plan to switch places in 2026, per the Herald/Review’s Terri Jo Neff. Legislative District 19’s Republican Rep. Lupe Diaz and Republican Sen. David Gowan filed statements of interest to run for each other’s spots. Gowan, who was first elected to the Legislature in 2008, hit his term limits in the House in 2016 and is now termed out of the Senate. But term limits are basically meaningless since lawmakers can keep switching from chamber to chamber to avoid them.

Trade barbs, not bribes: Republican Sen. TJ Shope introduced a bill to make companies that bid on state contracts reveal their campaign contributions over the past five years, the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger reports. It’s a response to a children’s residential group home that received more funding during Gov. Katie Hobbs’ administration after giving her hefty campaign donations. In response, Hobbs' spokesperson Christian Slater said Shope should “answer for the influence lobbyists and dark money groups have over him” and pointed to conservative policy group-funded trips he’s taken. Shope said Slater knows about that trip thanks to public disclosure.

Unlike some politicians, we don’t get free trips or bribes!
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Cutting class: Mesa Public Schools officials decided last week to move ahead with anticipated layoffs, the East Valley Tribune’s Cecilia Chan reports. The district expects to lose 1,800 pupils in the coming school year and has to cut $18 million from its budget. One of the factors Governing Board member Marcie Hutchinson pointed to was the ballooning school voucher program that pulls hundreds of millions of dollars from public schools.

Here’s your not-frequent-enough reminder that Arizona Republic columnist Phil Boas is the son-in-law of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

1. Here’s our favorite story about that era because it just so perfectly shows what suckers our politicians are for technobabble from turtlenecks, courtesy of the Daily Star’s Tim Steller.