Hoover considers ordinance to regulate Airbnb, other short-term rental properties

The Hoover City Council on July 1 is scheduled to vote on an ordinance to regulate short-term rental of property in residential areas.

Hoover Councilman Curt Posey said the ordinance is needed due to the growing popularity of short-term rental of homes through websites such as Airbnb.com.

Numerous Hoover residents have complained about people using homes in single-family neighborhoods as a short-term rental business, with different people coming and going, sometimes on a daily basis, Posey said.

“It’s more along the lines of a hotel,” he said. Such usage blurs the lines between residential and commercial activity in what is supposed to be a residential area, he said.

Riverchase resident Dennis Price said this became an issue in his neighborhood a couple of years ago when someone purchased a home and began offering it for short-term rentals on Airbnb.com.

Every day or two, a whole new group of people would arrive at the house, which is located on a cul-de-sac on Bailey Brook Court, Price said. Sometimes there were large groups of people, and guests would park their cars in the cul-de-sac, blocking other people’s driveways and mailboxes, he said.

He didn’t like having strangers peek over his fence into his yard, and the neighbors began to feel uncomfortable about letting their children play in the cul-de-sac, Price said. “It was no longer a neighbor situation,” he said. “It was simply being operated as an inn.”

There have been complaints across the country about short-term rental houses being used for wild parties that involved drugs, strippers, property destruction and gunfire. A teenage graduation party held at a short-term rental home in Pittsburgh on June 11 ended with a triple shooting that left one person dead and two injured, according to WPXI-TV.

A group of neighbors in Bluff Park within the past couple of years complained about a house being used for short-term rentals on South Burbank Drive. Neighbor Earl Lewis said they never saw any wild parties there, but the house always seemed to be rented by a large number of people and “it was just uncomfortable having different people there every weekend.”

STRONG DEMAND FOR AIRBNB

Kasey Johnson, one of the owners of the house, said it’s no longer listed on Airbnb, but she and her husband recently have had another house in Hoover on Airbnb. There is incredible demand for that service, she said.

The most frequent types of guests were people visiting Church of the Highlands for a conference or having medical procedures at UAB Hospital, Johnson said. If neighbors knew who was staying there, they likely wouldn’t object so much, she said.

Price of Riverchase said he’s not against the idea of short-term rentals in all circumstances. He sometimes rents homes through vrbo.com (vacation rentals by owner) when he goes on vacation, but those are usually in areas frequented by tourists and neighbors expect that, he said.

When he bought a home in Riverchase, he and his wife made a substantial investment to be in a traditional single-family neighborhood and expected to have that neighborhood feel until they move into a nursing home, he said.

In their case, the city of Hoover stepped in and told the owners of the rental home they could not operate the home as a business in a residential area, he said. The problem was solved, but some other cases of short-term rentals are not as cut and dry, particularly when a property owner is renting out only a portion of their home, such as a bedroom or garage apartment, he said.

The ordinance being considered by the council on July 1 would address all rentals of property in residential areas for less than 90 days, including single bedrooms and entire houses.

It would require people wanting to operate a short-term rental property to go through a review process with the Hoover Planning and Zoning Commission and get approval from the City Council for “conditional use” of the property. There would be two public hearings for each property, and neighbors would have an opportunity to object.

Price said he would hope that neighbors’ objections would carry some weight with city officials.

Short-term rental operators also would have to get a business license, pay a $250 annual permit fee for each property, pay lodging taxes and show evidence of insurance with at least $1 million of liability and personal injury coverage. Permit renewals would include a review of any complaints about the property, how those were resolved and whether law enforcement was involved.

No more than 10 percent of an apartment complex or 50 percent of a condominium complex could be used for short-term rentals.

Johnson said she can understand the need for this type regulation for an Airbnb-type property, but she thinks it’s too much “red tape” for situations where people are in a bind and need to rent a house for a few months while they are in between houses. There should be some distinction between those types of rentals, she said.