<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_344941" style="width: 830px;"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-344941">Downtown Juneau on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025. (Photo by Clarise Larson/KTOO)</figcaption></figure>

The mayor’s task force on short-term rentals wrapped up four months ago. It was mostly made up of homeowners, not renters. And its findings offered no immediate recommendations on regulations or restrictions for the Juneau Assembly to consider. 

Juneau has been grappling with a housing shortage for decades — studies pointing to Juneau’s acute lack of it date back to the 70s. 

City officials have tried finding ways to create new housing for long-term renters. In recent years, there’s also been a push to crack down on short-term rentals, like Airbnbs and Vrbos. City data and other analyses suggest there are likely around 300 to 400 short-term rentals in Juneau, but that the number could be even higher.

“There is very distinct opinions on it — and some people are for them, and some people are against them,” said Mayor Beth Weldon.

Right now, short-term rentals are largely unregulated, although the city started requiring people to register them in 2023. Weldon launched a short-term rental task force in January to assess the market and make recommendations that improve housing availability.

Of the 11 members, only one was a renter. The group concluded its meetings in early June and offered some imprecise recommendations to the Assembly. But, Weldon said she had hoped for clearer direction. 

“They were pretty benign recommendations, and if that’s what the Assembly wants, that’s good. But I was hoping to see a little bit more,” she said.

Assembly member Wade Bryson, who chaired the committee, said one positive change that did come out of the task force was requiring rental sites to take care of sales taxes on behalf of local operators. The Assembly approved that change back in May.

The task force also recommended non-regulatory actions for the Assembly to take, like conducting an economic impact study on short-term rentals.

But members couldn’t agree on what else to implement, or when. Bryson said the committee faced a lot of hurdles. Not everyone on the 11-member task force showed up to every meeting. He says that made it hard to gauge a consensus and led to a lot of split votes. 

“It was difficult to get support to take such a hard stance one direction or the other,” he said. 

He said he thinks a better use of city time and resources is to focus on creating new housing opportunities, like the Telephone Hill redevelopment project. 

“The data says they’re not causing the housing crisis, and even if we restrict them, that’s not going to move the needle and get more houses into the market,” he said. 

The task force suggested basing its recommendations on Juneau’s rental vacancy rate — the overall number of vacant rental units. In a final report shared with the Assembly, it concluded that the current 3.9% vacancy rate is low — meaning there isn’t enough open housing to go around. But, they left it up to the Assembly to decide what rate would justify taking action.

<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_344960" style="width: 788px;"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-344960">The City and Borough of Juneau’s rental vacancy rate between 2010 and 2024. (City and Borough of Juneau)</figcaption></figure>

If at some point the Assembly decides on what that threshold is and that it has been met, then the task force recommends two things: the city institute a fee for permits and cap the number of rentals permitted to a person or business. But, it also didn’t recommend a specific fee rate or cap to consider. 

Bryson said it’s unlikely that the Assembly will pick this topic back up any time soon. 

“It did not appear with the data that we were in a crisis mode because of short-term rentals,” he said. “It just isn’t making that level of impact.”

Assembly member Alicia Hughes-Skandijs also served on the task force. In a text message, she said she “wasn’t satisfied by the amount of outputs from the task force” and intends to take the topic back up in the coming years.