At the end of a five-hour-plus Bend City Council meeting last week, councilors quickly read and unanimously approved an ordinance that would clarify requirements for short-term rentals in Bend. The move ended a long-standing agreement the city had with Meredith Lodging.
It all started because of the annual transportation fee. The city fee for short-term rental units is increasing from $100 to $200 as part of a scheduled increase. Bend’s Utilities Department pulled data on short-term rentals to make sure they were billing people correctly starting July 1.
That’s when utilities workers noticed discrepancies with some short-term rental properties. It appeared that not all the rentals had a license on file. So the department reached out to Ariel Vee, the city’s licensing program manager.
“They were like, ‘Why are these utility accounts not licensed?’” she said.
City Hall in Bend, Oregon.
Courtesy of the City of Bend
To have a short-term rental property in Bend, owners need a land-use permit and a short-term rental operating license. The permit lets the homeowner use the property for a specific use and the license helps hold the property owner accountable to the city and their neighbors, according to city officials.
Vee, a former financial fraud attorney for the Oregon Department of Justice, started investigating and found that the city had made an agreement with the property management company Meredith Lodging in 2015. The agreement allowed the company to apply for one license that would cover about 114 short-term rental properties.
Vee said she reached out to Meredith Lodging to let them know the old agreement was coming to an end.
“They said it was no problem, that they would apply for the license on behalf of the individual properties (and) they’d pass on the costs to the individual owners,” she said.
There were some complications, though. Some properties have multiple owners, and Vee had to help them navigate the licensing process.
Part of what Bend councilors approved last Wednesday was cleaning up the language in the short-term rental ordinance to draw distinction between the permit and the license property owners must have. But, Vee stressed, nothing else is changing and the change doesn’t exclude more short-term rentals from being created.
Ending the informal agreement with Meredith Lodging will net the City of Bend an extra $40,000 every year, going forward.