Power of the people: Short Stay Levy Bill 2024 passed in Victoria

We have been through a very difficult three-year journey regarding the regulation of short-term rentals like Airbnb/guests and dealing with irresponsible hosts in areas like St Kilda, Southbank and all over Victoria.

Finally, it’s great to hear that the owners’ corporation (OC) law has been changed to give OCs more control over short-term rentals in their buildings. This kind of change can have a substantial impact on community dynamics and property values.

Our experience highlights the importance of persistence and advocacy in effecting change, especially when it comes to local government and regulations. Engaging with various political parties and stakeholders can be a challenging but also through persistence, a rewarding process.

I am also reminded of the views of a single individual, a now retired councillor who tried to deter us from further activism in council and speaking out at council in 2023 to change these laws and to protect our rights.

“You believe council can regulate short-stay accommodation and I’m letting you know we can’t. That is the different pages here.”

Thank goodness we ignored his advice. What so many of our councillors and elected representatives fail to understand is that they work for us. We should never tolerate being fobbed off in a few SMS texts!

From speaking out we changed the law for short-term accommodation. From speaking out we changed the state law to allow OCs and owners to take their rights back to allow or not allow Airbnb within their own apartment buildings.

Victoria, we had a MONUMENTAL BREAKTHROUGH regarding short term accommodation.

In the Victorian Parliament a vote to give an OC the authority to ban short-term accommodation in apartment buildings was approved by a majority vote.

OCs from January 2025 will be able to vote with a 75 per cent agreement to ban short term accommodation within their own apartment block.

Many thanks to all those involved in tirelessly lobbying the City of Port Phillip, Victoria Police, members of parliament and opposition parties.

We must also thank these groups for their support in acknowledging the many anti-social, non-cohesive, life altering issues that short term accommodation created in confined areas such as condominiums.

We helped change the local law and state to empower OCs in Victoria, Australia.

Airbnb, Stayz and booking.com all brought this on themselves by not weeding out the bad operators and making it very hard for neighbours to make a formal complaint for noise and anti-social behaviour.

Airbnb and all these platforms have destroyed people’s family life from living next door to this kind of party house guest and these irresponsible hosts who do not care about the community.

Let’s make it clear, short-term accommodation is big business. It’s not small mum and dad’s investment the multinationals keeping talking about – it’s people buying apartments and houses solely for the purpose to run a mini-hotel right next to people’s homes and who don’t really care about the community.

They make every excuse under the sun and make up their own biased data and spend millions of dollars on advertising, but when it comes to the crunch you are destroying neighbours’ lives.

It took years for these platforms to act and help and in the meantime the damage caused from endless parties from Airbnb and noise had been done! The hosts and the unresponsive staff of these platforms have themselves to blame.

It is far from a “sledgehammer approach” as 75 per cent of neighbours need to vote against it.

I’m sure you are all aware that this is a very mild amendment compared to what is happening in more progressive major cities all over the world where they have realised the detrimental effect short-term rentals have on local neighbourhoods.

Finally, it’s great to hear that the OC law has been changed to give OCs more control over short-term rentals in their buildings. This kind of change can have a substantial impact on community wellbeing, safety, dynamics and property values. •

Name and address supplied but withheld by request