It’s a bitter, demeaning feeling when someone can’t afford to live in the city they were raised in while houses in the community are being used as nightly rentals, critics say.
The Heber City Council held a discussion regarding short-term rentals during a work meeting at 4 p.m. Tuesday evening.
It wasn’t the first time.
“In 2019 staff researched and proposed a STR code, including a STR Overlay zone,” according to a staff report. “The new zone was recommended by the Planning Commission.”
The decision, however, was postponed until 2020. With new council members and new focuses, city “staff was directed to put together an ad hoc committee comprising of members of the general public, local STR hosts, and staff.”
Eventually, the council decided to allow short-term rentals with building permits in single family residential zones.
Recently, among mounting concerns from the community, the council asked for the discussion to be reopened.
The staff report — presented to the council by city planner Jacob Roberts — indicated there have been 83 short-term rentals available in Heber City over the past year. Only 42 residences in the city, however, are licensed and zoned to allow the brief stays.
An estimated 75% of these rentals are homes or within homes, 16% are apartments or condos and the rest are primarily inns, townhomes and motels.
The specific number of short-term rentals was hard for city staff to gather, however, and the statistics might best best be taken with a grain of salt, officials suggested.
Another measurement shows over 130 single-night rentals in Heber City.
“The data is a little bit rough,” Roberts said..
He mentioned several potential solutions he and city planner Jamie Baron identified. The options included regulations on how many short-term rentals are allowed in an area, limitations on how close together they should be, issuing only a certain number of licenses for short-term rentals, prohibiting accessory dwelling units from being used as short-term rentals or changing code to Heber City property owners from renting their property for small periods of time altogether.
“What we’re really looking for is direction,” Roberts said.
Council members explored several options, some contradictory.
Rachel Kahler briefly considered the possibility that local homeowner associations could help mitigate the problem.
Senior Accountant Sara Nagel was wary of that approach, mentioning the volatility and often changing nature of HOA leaderships.
Scott Phillips considered allowing only accessory dwelling units as short-term rentals, a solution he hoped would help prevent occupancy limits and similar rules from being broken.
“If we really are serious about affordable housing, we have to tackle Airbnb’s head on,” Scott Phillips said. “I’m really kind of upset. I’m sure a lot of these are not paying the full load of taxes they should be paying.”
Councilor Ryan Stack said he thought the opposite might work better to ensure affordable accessory dwelling units can be purchased by community members. He added that city regulations managing short-term rentals should be tightened to make sure they are run above board and with the city’s knowledge.
“Nobody should be able to get a business license for a short-term rental unless that prospective unit was constructed under a validly issued building permit,” Stack said.
He said he would support limiting the amount of short-term rental licenses issued within a certain district.
Mike Johnston said he and his wife have run a legal and licensed Airbnb within their home for a few years and have been paying the required fees.
When paying taxes on the rooms he rents out, he said, he pays at a notably higher rate than what is applied for the rest of his home, his primary residence.
“I don’t really see this as an affordable housing issue,” he said.
He suggested most short-term rentals in Heber City are not corporate owned and likely do not take away from the affordable housing market given that the homes used as rentals are typically expensive and homeowners use the small source of income to help pay for the house. He said the only short-term rentals that would likely take away from affordable housing are accessory dwelling units, and he doubted many such units are on the short-term rental market in Heber City.
“They are chewing up our affordable housing,” asserted Mindy Kohler, the city treasurer and business licensing representative.
Houses in areas once occupied by young families are being bought up by people and companies that she said have no intent to live there.
A community member approached the council and gave his two cents on the issue, as well. First, he acknowledged he was ignorant of necessary short-term rental licensing and regulations and was thus operating one contrary to code, a folly he promised to correct quickly.
Then, he argued that short-term rentals will devalue themselves as they become more common and that they are beneficial to the community through bringing tourists and travelers to Heber City.
Rather than having the man cited, the council heard his concerns and used his now-corrected ignorance as an example of the importance of letting the public know about relevant short-term rental codes.
“It’s not to get a list and go with pitchforks to people’s homes,” Nagel said. “It’s education.”
The conversation ended with the determination that it will be continued. In the meantime, Nagel will explore ways to gather more accurate data.