ORLANDO, Fla. – Airbnb is using artificial intelligence and Brevard County commissioners voted Tuesday to look into using AI, essentially for the same purpose but in very different ways: cracking down on problematic short-term rentals.
Brevard County Commissioners said at Tuesday morning’s commission meeting unregistered — “illegal” — short-term rentals are “breaking the law and they are taking money away from each and every one of us.”
District 1 Commissioner Rita Pritchett said unregistered short-term rentals in “some areas” are “really a problem.”
“I mean if you’re residential with a bunch of kids and you have people coming in and out every weekend with loud noises it’s really not cool,” Pritchett said.
From California to Florida, some cities have struggled to curb parties and violence at some short-term rental properties.
The Osceola County sheriff tried to limit short-term rentals after a massive street party spilled out in the street in 2020. The sheriff said several people were arrested.
Airbnb spokeswoman Lisa Cohen said the vacation rental company “is deploying an AI-driven anti-party system aimed at reducing the risk of disruptive and unauthorized parties in Florida.”
“The crackdown will see this state-of-the-art AI and machine learning system block certain 1-night and 2-night reservations over Halloween for entire home listings in Florida, and throughout the U.S.,” Cohen said. “These defenses impact bookings identified as potentially higher-risk, and help to enforce Airbnb’s worldwide party ban. Airbnb brought in party prevention measures for Halloween 2022 that blocked thousands of people across the U.S. from booking - and saw a reduction in the number of disruptive parties over that holiday. Specifically in Florida, approximately 11,300 people were deterred from booking an entire home listing on Airbnb last Halloween due to those defenses.”
Brevard County Commissioner John Tobia said fewer than 20% of the 1,200+ short-term rentals in unincorporated Brevard County are legal.
“If you look at the report, according to Rentalscape, there are approximately 1,245 short-term rentals within unincorporated Brevard County...they said roughly 237 of them are lawful,” Tobia said.
At the end of Tuesday morning’s hourlong debate, commissioners voted 4 to 1 to direct county staff to draft a short-term rental registration fee of $50 and hire a firm to use A.I. to find short-term rentals that are illegal.
Commissioner Jason Steele was passionate about making all short-term rental owners pay revenue taxes.
Brevard County commissioners said at Tuesday morning’s commission meeting unregistered — “illegal” — short-term rentals are “breaking the law and they are taking money away from each and every one of us.” said. “When they do that they can find out whether or not those are legal rentals or not legal rentals. And if they’re illegal rentals they automatically file a letter that goes to that person that says we’ve noticed on Oct. 28c or whatever that you have advertised your property as a short-term rental. And you’re not in compliance with the law of registration or whatever the law might be in specific areas. So for how long they’ve been circumventing the taxes that go to TDC [Tourist Development Council], for how long they’ve been pulling the property appraiser, for how long the tax collector hasn’t been able to collect taxes, we’re in just a big giant mess.”
Once the proposed rules are drafted, commissioners will vote on them at a future meeting.
To learn more about Airbnb’s measures, head to the company’s website.
Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily: