Already this year, the number of applications for nightly rental licenses has jumped by 1/3 compared to all of 2019 — and it’s only May.
Lynda Viti, a Summit County attorney, said the county has little oversight beyond requiring a license for properties listed on sites like Airbnb.
“There is virtually nothing in our code to regulate these nightly rentals right now," Viti said. "At this point, you can bring in your application, pay your money and get your license, and that's about it. And there’s no real regulation of health issues like unsanitary pools or bed bugs, there's no issue of safety regulations.”
The council didn’t impose any such measures Wednesday night. Instead, councilors asked the Attorney's Office to prepare an ordinance that would stop the issuance of new licenses for six months while the council examines the issue.
Possible regulations, according to a report from county staffers, include limiting the number of people who are allowed to stay in a nightly rental, requiring health and fire inspections, imposing a fine for failing to obtain a license and limiting where and how many nightly rentals can operate in a particular neighborhood.
State lawmakers have limited how cities and counties can regulate nightly rentals. While local governments cannot stop someone from listing their property on a nightly rental site, Viti told the council that is a narrow statute that does not limit other aspects of regulation.
“So you can pretty much do what you'd like," she said. "We can craft it however you see fit to accommodate safety, health issues and the character of the neighborhood.”
Councilor Roger Armstrong said the council should have already imposed some health and safety regulations on the industry. But he suggested the goal of regulating nightly rentals is broader than that.
“Those are units that one would assume would otherwise be available either for full-time residents, owners that live in them or as rental properties," Armstrong said. "So we've taken as many as 8,000 units of potentially rental property that could be used for workforce, that could be used for middle income workers, that could be used for other people, and, again, we're allocating them to people theoretically from outside of our jurisdiction.”
The 8,000 number Armstrong used is the high end of an estimate of the total number of nightly rentals in the county. The real number is hard to pin down, because many units are not licensed.
Jennifer Leaver, a senior research analyst with the Kem C. Gardner Institute, said there were 5,358 entire-home short term rentals listed in Summit County in 2021. Viti said the county has received fewer than 1,000 applications for nightly rental licenses so far this year.
