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City of Sydney council will investigate reducing the cap on un-hosted short-term rentals from 180 days a year to 60 days in a bid to improve housing availability in the inner city. Greens councillors who put forward the proposal say the plan could return thousands of homes to the long-term rental market in the middle of a housing affordability crisis. Council unanimously backed a motion for staff to investigate the plan at a meeting of councillors last night. "More and more, we're seeing whole houses or apartments being ripped away and turned into mini-hotels, rented out short-term for huge profit," Greens councillor Matthew Thompson said. "Post-COVID, we have seen an explosion in the number of Airbnbs in our city. On conservative estimates, there are at least 5,000." Cr Thompson said the proposal would work because the idea elicited a strong response from investors who emailed councillors ahead of the meeting, advocating for the idea to be rejected. "We actually had a flood of emails over the weekend from property investors and businesses that have ripped hundreds, sorry thousands, of homes from the inner city … calling on us to vote down the motion," the councillor told ABC Radio Sydney Breakfast. A report commissioned by the council last year showed 68 per cent of short-term rental hosts in the city had multiple listings, while many had 10 or more sites. Cr Thompson cited a recent move in Byron Shire on the state's north coast as inspiration for the cap reduction. In September last year, Byron Shire capped the number of days non-hosted short-stays could be rented to 60 days a year. Figures from the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure show the number of short-term stays dropped by about 15 per cent in the Byron Shire in the year since the changes. City suburb mostly rentals The city's move comes weeks after a childcare centre in the inner-city suburb of Millers Point announced it was closing due to a lack of enrolments. Residents in the area say the suburb has become mostly short-term stays. "The problem is much worse than people realise," Millers Point resident Cormack Champion told ABC Radio Sydney Breakfast. "There's a street that has over 100 or so houses. There's only two permanent residents in that street, every other door is lock boxes."
