Through services like Airbnb & VRBO, short-term rentals are changing the landscape of housing in cities across the world, allowing for the home next door, spare bedrooms, an old camper & entire apartment buildings to be transformed into DIY hotels. While this has proven to be a lucrative investment for some, others associate the rise of Airbnb with increased gentrification & skyrocketing rents. Recent studies from
Carnegie Mellon & another featured in the
Harvard Business Review reinforce these concerns.
It’s known as the Airbnb effect and here’s how it works. Investors who rent property are generally afforded much more flexibility and profit than they would get from serving long-term tenants. As residential properties are converted into short-term rentals, the options available to tenants seeking permanent housing decreases. Without market controls & policy to guarantee the human right to housing, conniving landlords use the reduction in available long-term rental supply as a justification to gouge tenants & maximize profits, causing rents to rise dramatically.
Florida law doesn't allow local cities & counties to ban short-term rentals outright, or regulate their duration or frequency of use. However, local ordinances which existed prior to 2011 are grandfathered in, which is why vacation rentals are
generally prohibited in most residential areas of St. Pete without a costly & cumbersome special overlay approval. St. Pete residents are limited to renting out their property for short-term use no more than 3 times in a year if the duration of the guest’s stay is under a month. Anecdotal accounts indicate that enforcement is somewhat lax and unlikely to occur unless a violator is reported to codes by a neighbor.
To be clear, the focus of this article is not directed at working-class homeowners or tenants setting up part of their own living space as an Airbnb to help pay the mortgage or keep the lights on. Our focus is on the corporations & wealthy investors who are snapping up properties which would otherwise be serving the long-term housing needs of locals, and converting them into vacation homes for rich tourists.
Here is a snapshot of a few of the short-term rentals popping up across the Sunshine City & the profiteers fueling our housing crisis locally:
Location: 1608 Preston St S
Property Acquired: 2021
Zoning: NT-1, short-term rentals prohibited
This Airbnb in Midtown St. Pete is an asset of local mortgage lender
Ryan J. Speltz, a self-described #kickbuttmortgageguy and recent transplant to St. Pete. Nestled in a historically working class Black neighborhood, Mr. Speltz seems to have no scruples about contributing to the rapid gentrification happening here. This zip code, 33712, has seen one of the
highest rates of eviction during the pandemic, a
decreasing Black population & has one of the highest housing vacancy rates in the entire city, with over a quarter of homes sitting vacant for part or all of the year.
Location: 3601 6th Ave N
Property Acquired: 2021
Zoning: NT-2, short-term rentals prohibited
This 5 bedroom home in the Central Oak Park neighborhood is advertised to sleep up to 20 people. The home is listed on VRBO by
Vacation Rentals of Florida LLC, a company which operates at least 34 short-term rentals across Hillsborough and Pinellas county according to their website. The deed to the home belongs to Mark Christen, an Orangeville, California real estate investor.
Location: 537 5th St N
Property Acquired: 2020
Zoning: NT-4, short-term rentals prohibited
This multi-unit property in historic Uptown is owned & managed by
Hey Vacay, a south Tampa-based vacation rental company which operates a handful of other properties in St. Pete & St. Pete Beach, including a single family home located at 4453 2nd Ave N. According to
his LinkedIn, company President Shaun Carcary has been a landlord for over 25 years and recently began converting some of his properties into short-term rentals. He boasts about “family business principles” and his dedication to “improving our community” although it’s unclear how restricting long-term housing from the market improves anything except the profits of Carcary, his fellow landlords & real estate investors.
Location: 459 31st Ave N
Property Acquired: 2021
Zoning: NT-2, short-term rentals prohibited
According to property records, this VRBO was purchased by an individual named Ahmad Shaker in 2021. Another home needlessly withheld from the market while thousands of working class families in St. Pete struggle to find and afford a place to live. It must be a fairly lucrative investment considering Shaker lives in a $3 million waterfront mansion on Snell Isle, according to property records.
Location: 610 8th St N
Property Acquired: 2021
Zoning: NT-2, short term rentals prohibited
This parcel contains a main house and a separate structure containing two apartments. Both rear apartments are currently listed on VRBO. The property is an acquisition of Carlos Mazariegos, a disgraced pharmacist who was
sentenced to a year in federal prison in 2019 for ripping off taxpayers through a kickback scheme involving TRICARE. He owns another VRBO a couple blocks away at 519 Grove Street as well. While he may no longer have the feds on his back, he may soon have the St. Petersburg codes department to contend with if he's operating short-term rentals in parts of the city where they're prohibited.
Location: 3604 7th Ave N
Property Acquired: 2022
Zoning: NT-2, short-term rentals prohibited
This single family home is listed by
HotelierYo LLC, a company recently founded by
Francis C. Dewolf IV, the 20-something year old son of a Sarasota-area millionaire merchant banker. It is unclear what other properties the company owns, but based on the single review on VRBO which complains of unresponsive owners & poor quality of service, it appears this side-hustle may not be quite passive enough of an income for young Dewolf.
Location: 2508 Imlay Ct S
Property Acquired: 2021
Zoning: NT-1, short-term rentals prohibited
This 4 bedroom Airbnb in the Lake Maggiore Shore neighborhood “can easily fit 11 adults” according to the listing. The property is owned by Kidma Investment LLC, a Tampa-based company which operates several short-term rentals across Pinellas & Hillsborough counties including at least 2 other Airbnbs in St. Pete, located at 7581 17th Way N & 7596 16th St N.
Location: 1668 28th Ave N
Property Acquired: 2021
Zoning: NT-1, short-term rentals prohibited
This property contains two separate VRBOs, owned by
Martinez Assets, LLC, a real estate firm founded by Chris Martinez. According to public records, the company owns a property in Clearwater as well. Another opportunist investor generating personal wealth at the expense of our community!
In addition, it appears that corporate landlords of two downtown luxury apartment buildings, the Vantage & the Wayland, are shelving dozens of units for use as short-term rentals through a company called
Frontdesk. The zoning for both buildings allows these apartments to be used as vacation rentals, but if demand for long-term housing is through the roof, then why?
It's no surprise that
Atlas Real Estate &
DevMar Development, landlords of the Wayland and the Vantage respectively, are big players in the downtown St. Pete development game. Both would certainly benefit from
deliberately withholding long-term housing from the market, not only as a justification for inflated rents, but to aid in propagating the
disingenuous housing shortage narrative which is used as cover for industry deregulation & to sustain the onslaught of new high-end development.
We could also be witnessing a new process by which rental housing will be accessed in the future. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky believes services like his will
eventually do away with long-term leases altogether, envisioning a world where people pay for rent "the way they pay for cable television, or for Netflix". The company has seen a recent surge in long-term stays totaling a month or more, accounting for
22% of stays booked through the service. In New York City, Airbnb listings
have surpassed the number of apartments available for rent. It's not difficult to see where this could be headed.
In Florida, where protections for non-traditional leaseholders are scant, landlords have a greater legal advantage in these arrangements than with a long term tenant. Landlords don't need to provide a reason for terminating a month-to-month rental agreement, which can be severed in as little as 15 days. Premium rents are normally charged under the guise of tenant convenience & flexibility. The replacement of traditional rental agreements by services like Airbnb wouldn't mean the end of long-term tenancy; it would just mean less stability & less rights afforded to these tenants. While Mr. Chesky's dream of an Airbnb renter class may never fully materialize, it's a trend that housing justice activists everywhere should be keeping a close eye on.
In a capitalist economic system, the so-called "right" of investors, developers & landlords to profit off housing takes precedence over our right to
actually be housed. This is why
a whopping 19% of all homes & apartments across St. Pete sit vacant, or are used as lodging for rich tourists while people are forced to sleep on the sidewalk. This is why developers
get our tax money to make "affordable" housing, and are then allowed to jack up the rents to market rate in as little as 15 years. This is why corporate special interest groups like the National Association of Realtors and the National Apartment Association
dictate public policy &
stymie basic protections for tenants. This is why tenants can be arrested and
even killed by the police during evictions, but slumlords are allowed to exploit tenants
with impunity. This is why
no amount of new housing that is built under this system will ever guarantee a home for everybody. Don't be fooled.
Corporations & developers routinely
bankroll public relations efforts and fake news to try and sell you on their bogus narratives. It's important to share articles like this one and educate your friends, family and neighbors about what's really happening in our community. Be sure to follow the St. Petersburg Tenants Union online for all the latest updates and ways to get involved.
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