AG Ken Paxton Asks to Jump Into Austin Rental Fight
The state’s top attorney is jumping into the fray over a controversial Austin ordinance that regulates short-term home rentals made popular by websites like Airbnb and HomeAway.
Attorney General Ken Paxton asked to intervene Wednesday in a lawsuit brought by a group of Austin homeowners after the Austin City Council last year passed new rules trying to rein in short-term rentals. Residents had complained “about strangers coming into their neighborhoods for short periods of time” and hosting “loud parties late into the night,” according to the Austin American-Statesman. The city stopped issuing new short-term rental licenses, limited the areas where homes could be leased and set a 2022 deadline for the end of such rentals.
Paxton is asking Travis County District Judge Scott Jenkins for permission to intervene in the suit homeowners already filed against the city. In their court filing, lawyers from Paxton’s office said the homeowners bought or fixed up houses intending to rent them out through sharing economy websites. The state argues that Austin’s ordinance “functionally ousts homeowners and investors from real property without just compensation.”
A spokesman for Austin Mayor Steve Adler declined to comment late Wednesday.
Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2016/10/05/texas-ag-joins-austin-homeowners-fight-over-rental/
[font color=330099]I suspect the real reason why Paxton wants to intervene in this lawsuit is that some of his legislative cronies buddies in the Legislature are looking at the prospect of seeing their rents raised during the five months of each biennium while they are in Austin. I doubt that he is concerned about the property rights of the landlords as justification for his intervention as he pretends.[/font]