Crown Hill RV illegally rented out on Airbnb

RVs are a common sight in Seattle and are known for attracting the homeless — but apparently, they can also make for a profitable business venture. According to a post on the Safe Seattle Facebook page, one Crown Hill RV owner put his home-on-wheels on Airbnb, the popular vacation rental website that allows people to rent out their houses, apartments, or even unoccupied rooms in their homes for vacationers.

The host of the listing titled “34′ RV Ballard,” who has 30 reviews averaging 4.5 out of five stars, charges $60 per night for one to two guests, and $80 per night if three guests are staying. The rolling rental’s description reads:

34 foot RV 1995 clean. 420 friendly. great place to sleep in private. 10 min to Ballard locks. 2 blocks from carkeek park. come experience the pnw and all it’s offerings [sic]

However, according to Dave Preston of Safe Seattle, the listing is illegal for two reasons. Not only is it against Seattle law to park an RV on private property and live in it, but it is also illegal to rent out RVs on your property.

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“The problem is that it’s not allowed to have people living in an RV on your property,” Preston told David Boze, filling in for KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson. “So the city needs to enforce that law … This is a violation on two counts.”

As per a comment left on the listing page by the owner, the RV opened up for business in October 2017. According to the City of Seattle’s website, the illegal RV-for-rent was reported in late January 2018, and the city gave out a notice of violation just a few days later. However, reviews of the RV on Airbnb date from this past summer, half a year after the RV owner would have received the notice.

One of the key concerns among those in the Safe Seattle community is where the RV’s sewage is being deposited.

One Airbnb reviewer wrote that the RV, which does not provide guests with hot water, “could definitely have used more cold water in the tank … there was only enough to flush the toilet a few times.”

“There seriously is an issue where the waste from this RV is being dumped … nobody really knows, and that’s a problem,” Preston said. “I would think that Governor Inslee would be all over this, since pollution in Puget Sound is one of the factors that’s threatening our orca population.”

Another complaint was made to the City of Seattle on Thursday of this week, Preston said, and an inspector was scheduled to go out and view the RV later that day. At press time, the results of this latest inspection were not yet known.

“The city responds to pressure, and only pressure,” Preston said. “And so that’s a big part of what Safe Seattle is about … Safe Seattle has had good luck with getting the city to enforce the law when we focus a lot of attention on situations like this, so that’s our model.”

While Seattle tends to overlook homeless people living in RVs, this particular situation appears to be a case of a person running a business illegally, Preston said. He believes that “the owner is taking advantage of that sympathy for homeless people and just trying to fly this RV under the radar.”

“It’s not registered with the city for the purposes of the Rental Registration & Inspection Ordinance, so there’s no inspector coming out there,” he said. “Presumably no taxes are being paid to the city … Every other small landlord has to pay for an inspection, every other small landlord has to bear the burden of whatever fine the city imposes on them if they fail that inspection. So it’s really just not right, what’s going on here.”