2019-02-12 Attachment 1 to Item 7 - Short Term Accom Online Platform Issues Paper

For Council to maintain private and public residential amenity, while tourism gentrification and rapidly
rising short-term rental is occurring, it is critical that it recognises and incorporates the amenity values
of local communities into the management and planning of the region.

Complicating this is that what constitutes the public amenity space requirement in one area is not
necessarily the same as in another area. For example, the public residential amenity expectation in
Doonan is different to that expected in Witta Circle, Noosa Heads. Any provision for recognition and
protection of public residential amenity should reflect that the region can be characterised by its
density and compactness of living, location to transport corridors, land size and proximity to the
natural environment.


4.3      Disruption to Sense of Community
The changing nature and use of neighbourhoods as tourists, visitors and holidaymakers infiltrate
these areas has also contributed to a disrupted sense of community, exemplified by feelings of
mistrust, reduced perception of personal safety and increased alienation.

Prior to Airbnb, the market for accommodation in Noosa largely consisted of holiday unit blocks,
apartments and empty second homes. As a transformative travel business, Airbnb has provided an
avenue and allowance for travellers to live as local residents do, with hosts able to provide a
comparable simulacra of experience at a more affordable price.

People choose to live in a neighbourhood for a complex set of reasons and variables, all of which
connect a group of people to a given physical place in ways that may not be obvious, such as a
desire to live close to the beach, or close to cafes and restaurants, or in a quiet street. By sharing a
place, people shape it, both purposefully and incidentally11.

Airbnb may be disrupting the sense of community in the Noosa shire, as property owners and hosts
disengage from their home by transforming it to a commercial operation. As most residents or
homeowners would attest, once you have lived in a street or area for a period of time, you experience
a settled feeling and higher perception of safety and security from knowing your neighbours, sighting
familiar vehicles each day and attuning to the social, work and travel movements of those that live
around you. With the infiltration of tourists into these areas, the settled feeling and perception of
safety is reduced by strangers, new vehicles and different transitory movements throughout the week
and weekend.

As property owners disengage, particularly owner-occupiers, the flow-on effect is that their
neighbours become less engaged and connected to their home, as they see strangers coming and
going. Arguably, homes neighbouring an Airbnb rental property incur the majority of social cost.

In various global studies, neighbourliness and connection to one’s community have been shown to
have positive impact on individual wellbeing. Disruption to community fabric caused by the arrival of
short-term letting properties may have a flow-on impact by reducing social capital. This has been the
basis of an argument made by the Mayor of Byron Bay, Simon Richardson, regarding the impact of
Airbnb and other platforms. He has referred to the result as ‘gutting our community’ with its
associated impact on volunteering, especially for essential services like lifesaving and the SES, as
well as reducing participation in local community groups and sporting clubs etc. 18




Short Term Accommodation - Online Platform Response Issues Paper                                    Page 13