They did have the option of voting no

Tons of fun watching City Council completely throw up its hands last week at the prospect of having to vote for the STR tax.  There were objections from the public comment but those were met with typical condescension from our elected friends about how poorly the public supposedly understands the background details.

But that's bullshit.  New Orleanians have been following this story for the better part of the past two years that it has dominated the local political news. We know what it is and why it does what it does. The deal was bad enough even for "normal" times. It offered insufficient and mostly one time funding to shore up failing city infrastructure in exchange for authorizing permanent publicly funded slush funds for the convention center and for a private tourism promotion board called New Orleans and Company.  

The STR tax is only one piece of the deal authorized by the state legislature and then by local ballot measure. It has been criticized for two reasons. The first reason is it creates a perverse incentive for the city to promote the proliferation of short term rentals despite their destructive impact on New Orleans neighborhoods and housing costs. Residents have spent several years now fighting to rein in the STR boom but political leadership has repeatedly demonstrated its indifference. Recently, the former executive director of Sonder, one of the largest and most damaging purveyors of STRs was hired by the Cantrell administration and put in charge of city permitting and land use policy; a shocking development for the thousands of New Orleanians now threatened with the prospect of eviction. 

The second criticism of the tax is that it hands millions of dollars over to a private non-profit tourism promotion agency so that it can produce dogshit tweets like this. These were the complaints presented to City Council last week.  Members responded by shrugging and talking down to people about the "ballot language."

“This council was also not involved in the negotiation of the fair share deal when this was broken down,” Councilwoman Kristin Palmer, one of the council’s most vocal opponents of short-term rental expansion, said on Thursday. “The ballot language was what was passed by the voters, we have to adhere to that ballot language, and that’s why we’re here today. And I’m referring, of course, to the 25 percent of the tax that is to be given to New Orleans and Company.”

The ballot initiative approved by voters last year gave the Council the ability to levy a new short-term rental tax. But it didn’t require them to. And while the City Council couldn’t create the new tax unilaterally, it can create new fees for city permits and licenses, like short-term rental licenses. Prior to the fair share deal, council members had floated a fee structure on short-term rentals that would have raised an estimated $20 million for affordable housing projects.

They didn't actually have to vote for it.  Since the time that the Fair Sham deal and the ballot language of some of its component parts was finalized,  many things have changed. New Orleans is going to be hit harder than most places by the pandemic/depression/mass eviction crisis we are dealing with now.  City Council had an opportunity to at least try and force a reconsideration of the bad deal which had become far worse. Instead they chose to pretend it was out of their hands.

A tale of Two Saints

The mayor of Lisbon would like to reevaluate some housing and development strategies.

Like many cities, we’re reassessing our post-pandemic priorities and putting the key workers that drove Lisbon through the Covid-19 crisis at the top of the list. Now is the moment to do things differently.

Lisbon has benefited enormously in recent years from the millions of tourists who throng our cobbled streets and enjoy our world-famous restaurants and bars, but we’ve paid a social price.

Essential workers and their families have increasingly been forced out as Airbnb-style holiday rentals have taken over a third of Lisbon’s city centre properties, pushing up rental prices, hollowing out communities and threatening its unique character. 

Now we want to bring the people who are Lisbon’s lifeblood back to the centre of the city as we make it greener, more sustainable and ultimately, a better place to both live and visit.

Now, in this letter, the mayor says they're going to, I think, subsidize lanlords who rent to "essential workers" at what we have to assume are affordable rates although that can defined as anything.  Also it doesn't say the plan is to ban STRs altogether. It says "replace some Airbnbs" with affordable housing. And, again, they're doing this through a program that apparently pays money to landlords so.. this whole thing may be more about the gesture than it is about actually meeting the need.  We'd have to know more in order to say for sure.

Still, if we take Lisbon's plan at face value, if we assume it is a good faith effort to reclaim the city from the rot of over-tourism, then we might contrast it with what's going on in New Orleans where we continue to move ahead with evictions, even while we bend over backward to accommodate the owners of short term rentals whose licenses are due to expire. 

Meanwhile we've somehow decided our "affordable housing" policy is giving public money to Marcel Wisznia's bowling alley dormitory.

As a condition of getting a property tax break from the Industrial Development Board through a program known as payment in lieu of taxes, the developers agreed to set aside 40 of the project’s 218 units for those making between 60% and 80% of the area's median income. Those units would rent for less than $1,000 a month, while others in the complex will go for between $1,400 and $1,500.

“This will help us in our ability to provide affordable housing for working people here in this city,” Banks said.

The Two Saints project has drawn a mixed reaction. Some, including Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration and some affordable housing groups, have argued it will provide much-needed housing for lower income residents. Critics have said the prices for the units would still leave them out of reach of many and argued the co-living model is unlikely to be desirable

Ha ha, "unlikely to be desirable."  Ya think?  Cramming multiple <strike>families</strike> sorry.. individual 20 somethings.. nobody is going to move their family into a dorm...  into a "communal living space" is a brilliant idea in the middle of a pandemic.  Brilliant.

Also... there is nothing stopping these from being Airbnbs anyway.  The new zoning rules allow it. In fact, they encourage STRs in that area.  Ultimately, you have to assume that's what the project was designed for in the first place.