Hawthorne council hears pitch to track short-term rentals; vendor says platform could recover millions

Hawthorne — City officials on March 24 heard from a vendor about a system to find unlicensed short-term rentals and help the city collect unpaid transient-occupancy taxes.

Deckard Technologies presented the Rentalscape platform and told the City Council staff have already contracted with the firm to integrate a registration portal on the city website. "We're within—I'm gonna say—between 2 and 4 weeks from going live with the system overall," the presenter said, describing a final payment-provider integration as the last step before the portal launches. He added the company has identified nearly 600 listings historically in Hawthorne and currently tied about 150 properties to more than 400 listings.

"We data mine about 15,400,000 listings on a daily basis," the presenter said. He estimated the city could recover roughly $5,000,000 in host revenue over the last year if enforcement and registration were scaled.

Council members and staff pressed the vendor on operations, privacy and enforcement. The presenter said data delivered to staff would include property addresses and owner information and that the company performs human verification after automated matching. He said Deckard operates as a software-as-a-service under an annual contract and does not collect taxes on a contingency basis: "We are not taking any of the tax dollars. It's not on a collection basis. It's just a cost of our platform and building out the portal and accepting all those payments." (Deckard representative)

Mayor Vargas noted that transient-occupancy taxes have been a city requirement and that staff will determine whether to pursue back taxes or limit enforcement to prospective collection. The vendor said jurisdictions often treat prior periods as a policy decision and that some cities offer a limited amnesty to drive voluntary compliance; others pursue retroactive taxation subject to statute-of-limitations constraints.

Council members also referenced past experiences with outside collection vendors and stressed that any outreach should be courteous and managed by city staff. The city attorney said the attorney's office is prepared to assist if legal enforcement is required.

Next steps: city staff will finalize the payment integration and the portal; the vendor said staff already has access to the dataset in closed-session or staff-only review and the city must decide whether to pursue any back-taxes or limit actions to future compliance. The council also has on the consent calendar a voluntary transient-occupancy-tax agreement with Airbnb that staff listed for consideration.

(Reporting note: direct quotes in this article are from the presenter representing Deckard Technologies and from Mayor Vargas as recorded in council proceedings.)