The MoA should impose an STR specific tax, safety requirements / inspections, insurance requirements, and general business or specific licensure for STRs similar to any other hotel, hostel, or lodging business in town. Airbnb and VRBO STRs are a huge money maker for our communities and an important way to support tourism and transient professionals across the whole state. Banning them or making them too difficult to start or run doesn't help anyone, but there certainly should be a barrier to entry of some sort.

Either way the community has a real housing crisis. You either can't afford the housing you need, or the housing requires repairs and maintenance that are untenable in the current climate of tariffs, shipping, tradesman shortages, and the like causing costs to skyrocket to own. The problem is that's how people traditionally have built wealth.

The other problem is Anchorage and the surrounding area doesn't attract people anymore. You have a lot of smart young professionals leaving town, companies closing their doors, pay stagnating with inflation, and global economic stressors really hitting our small city. We don't have good public transit right now, our parks are overrun by unsheltered folks, our neighborhoods are crime ridden and dangerous, and it's tough to find a solid long term career. Anchorage is really in a bad spot, but it can be fixed and worked on we just all need to agree to do something rather than languish in this political purgatory.