Airbnb - Somerville - Letter — File 202907

888 Brannan Street Fourth Floor San Francisco, California 94103 United States Mayor Curtatone Somerville City Hall 93 Highland Avenue Somerville, MA 02143 February 14, 2017 Dear Mayor Curtatone: Thank you for your recent request for data relative to home sharing usage in the City of Somerville, Massachusetts. The Airbnb team looks forward to the opportunity to engage in conversations with City officials, staff, and community members about Airbnb’s presence and positive impact in Somerville. As our community grows, we appreciate the opportunity and responsibility to work with local governments to craft progressive, fair rules for home sharing. With this in mind, we have enclosed the Airbnb Policy Tool Chest, a resource for governments to consider as they draft or amend home sharing rules, as well an overview of the Airbnb community in Somerville in 2016. Governments around the world already are embracing home sharing. In the year since we launched our Airbnb Community Compact, guiding how we engage around the world, we have: • Established partnerships to collect and remit hotel and other taxes in more than 200 jurisdictions, remitting $110 million in taxes to date. Beyond helping to support critical services, communities are starting to use this new revenue to fund affordable housing, aid for the homeless, and destination-promotion programs. • Released comprehensive data and information about our impact in 19 jurisdictions, with many more releases to come. • Worked with governments all over the world to craft progressive new laws or, where appropriate, support existing ones. We also have entered into more than 30 Memoranda of Understanding, partnerships and other agreements with a range of communities around the world. Now, we are offering insights gained, lessons learned, and policy options developed through these hundreds of collaborations with policymakers across five continents by releasing our Policy Tool Chest. Importantly, this is not a one-tool-fits-all policy prescription or model legislation. Rules that work in Portugal may not make sense for Philadelphia, yet both places leveraged these policy tools to enact regulations that enable home sharing to thrive, to their immediate and long-term benefit. To help demonstrate how these tools can be put to use, the Tool Chest also provides 10 use cases and numerous other examples of how these concepts have been tailored successfully. We are eager to work with officials at every level of government toward modern rules for home sharing. When the car began replacing the horse and buggy nearly a century ago, we

888 Brannan Street Fourth Floor San Francisco, California 94103 United States needed new rules for that new technology. Home sharing itself is centuries old, but home sharing on an online platform at a peak of 1 million guest arrivals per night is new. Such new developments take time to figure out, and we want to work with lawmakers to get this right. Smart policymaking will allow home sharing to achieve its potential as an economic, social and environmental solution, not just for the everyday people who take part in it, but for the cities and other local governments that stand to benefit from it. Please do not hesitate to contact me directly if I can provide further information. With best regards, William D. Burns Senior Adviser