VRMA Administrator
An audit indicates Phoenix, Arizona's short-term rental regulation efforts are falling short, with many officers not knowing how to label them as problem properties. "It seems to me and most of us, they're glaring slow when the problem is mushrooming and metastasizing in a phenomenal way," said Arizona Neighborhood Alliance co-founder Susan Edwards. The audit found departments need to cooperate better on the issue with more communication between the police department, neighborhood services, the planning and development department, the prosecutor's office, and municipal courts on how violators will be punished. Police departments also need to train their officers on issuing citations and referring properties that are not registered as short-term rentals. The city ordinance requires short-term rentals to be registered or face fines, and there have been 1,504 registrations since January 2020. Yet Edwards said her organization, through multiple databases, found the estimated number exceeds 10,000. The audit extrapolated five police reports on short-term rentals from seven precincts, and 24 of 35 reviewed calls concerned properties that were not registered as short-term rentals. Officers did not refer those violations to another department because of little training about the ordinance, while the audit estimated it takes two years for city police to train their officers on those citations.
azfamily.com (09/08/22) David Caltabiano
