Short term Vacation rental permit cost causes financial concerns for residents hosting in Indio

Short-term vacation rental permits in the city of Indio are almost two thousand dollars.

"I mean, if there are other Airbnb people that they own homes, and they specifically do it just for business, and they rent it all year round, I get it, but somebody who does it for the month of April, and you get that much of a fee for a license, whereas to pay $85 It's just crazy," says Karlow Chavarria (STVR Host). "It's ridiculous."

During the month of January 2022, The letter below "was mailed out to all permit holders on file at the time," says Rob Rockwell, the city of Indio Assistant City Manager. Karlow Chavarria says that he did not receive a letter, but he wants to revisit solutions for communication between the city and host and the fee.

A possible solution from Rob Rockwell (Assistant City Manager) when asked about STVR owners that only plan to rent out their homes for festival season, a random month, or a few weekends, is:

We understand that the majority of the rentals in the city of the 1000 are business oriented; they are agency-run. They're grouped together in blocks, but the mom and pop who just wants to rent for the weekend or a couple of weekends, weekends during April, I encouraged them to come into City Hall to work with the business license department; they'll have to provide the Transient Occupancy Tax reports. They will have to get a clean report from the tech company showing you haven't been advertising during the year. And we'll look at it quarter by quarter and potentially give them up to 75% of the short-term code enforcement fee.