Bend’s Economy is being devastated by the cost of housing. People have less money to spend while local businesses are drowning in skyrocketing labor costs as workers struggle to pay rent. Nearly 40% of people living in Bend are renters and are paying an overwhelming percentage of their incomes on housing costs. Bend has seen a surge of short term and vacation rental listings taking away from the supply of long term housing rentals and increasing costs. Bend Oregon has one of the highest per capita Airbnb listings in the nation and our rent costs are reflective of this. Renting out housing short term on sites like AirBnB is far more lucrative than renting long term to local tenants. 

Lets create an incentive plan for long term property managers to host local, long term tenants by creating a percentage tax on all housing rentals that are less than 1 year, and use this revenue to subsidize property tax refunds for long term rental properties in the form of a rebate. This subsidy would be directly funded by the pool and would reflect the total value of the pool at the end of each year divided up by the number of long term rental properties eligible for the rebate. Furthermore we would like to see these subsidies paid out as a sliding scale percentage, favoring properties with a greater rental income to property value ratio to incentivise more affordable rents. 

This will not create any burden on the taxpayer (accepting short term rental property owners) and does not involve the city budget. We do suggest the city reimburse itself from the fund for any and all costs associated with the implementation of this plan so as not to incur unnecessary costs on the citizens of Bend. 

What would this look like: Rental property owner A Makes about $50,000 a year renting out a short term vacation rental property in Bend. Manager A would be required to pay a 30% tax on all income gained by this property. All funds received by this tax would go into a pool that would then be divided up and paid out in the form of a property tax rebate to all eligible properties where the property was leased out for the entire year. Refunds would be weighted to favor properties with a greater income from rent to property value ratio. This means if rental owner B Leases out their $750,000 home for $60,000 a year, they will receive a proportionally smaller refund then Renter C who rents out their $550,000 home for $24,000.

Please sign this petition to show Bend City Council that we are serious about creating a more affordable Bend and a stronger local economy.