EDITORIAL: The changing nature of short-term rentals demands regulation

Should short-term rentals be regulated?

Of course they should.

That has been obvious ever since the Airbnb phenomenon of homeowners renting space in their homes to transient guests morphed into lodging businesses operated in residential neighborhoods.

For more than a year, residents of the Town of Belgium have been asking their Town Board to pass an ordinance that would address the disruption brought to their neighborhoods by misbehaving renters of houses operating as Airbnb businesses.

Local regulation of short-term rentals can be done, as a number of Wisconsin communities have demonstrated, but it isn’t easy to craft restrictions that are both effective and fair.

That’s because in 2017 the Wisconsin Legislature passed a law that stringently limits the ability of municipalities and towns to place restrictions on short-term rentals. It was worthless legislation that served no need and offered no benefit to the public, a state intrusion into local control to provide unique protection for a form of commerce.

Businesses using the Airbnb platform, and that of its competitor Vrbo, have exploited the limits on local regulation in Wisconsin communities by buying houses to be used solely as short-term rental facilities.

This wasn’t the intention when Airbnb was started in 2008. The idea—a brilliant one, it turned out—was to leverage the power of the internet to help private owners find renters for short stays in their residences.

Airbnbs can still work that way, and when they do they’re community assets that support local economies by attracting visitors and providing income for homeowners. Guest-behavior problems are rare because homeowners are not likely to share their homes with trouble makers. These are classic Airbnbs, and there are many examples of them in Ozaukee County.

The types of short-term rentals that have stirred the ire of Town of Belgium residents, and have been the subject of complaints in other communities, are something else. They are businesses, not homes.

Most of Airbnb’s remarkable growth in recent years has been driven by speculators buying residential properties for the express purpose of turning them into commercial operations that are similar to hotels but without on-site management.

In New York City, properties were being scooped up for the Airbnb market in such numbers that short-term rental corporations were depleting the affordable housing supply. The city reacted by passing an ordinance that is just short of an outright ban on short-term rentals.

Small towns face a different problem; the changed character of short-term rentals is inviting business operations into residential areas. This goes against the precepts of community organization, which include zoning codes that separate commercial, industrial and residential uses.

Non-resident Airbnbs are susceptible to attracting guests who don’t feel bound by the norms of neighborhood living. In extreme form, this can involve criminal activity, as was the case involving arrests at a Town of Belgium Airbnb last winter.

Less outrageous, but still disrupting, episodes of unacceptable behavior by short-term renters—loud, late night partying, speeding cars, trespassing—have occurred in lakeshore areas of the town. In these cases, the renters are often not travelers passing through, but people celebrating a holiday or an event such as a wedding and are treating the property as a resort.

While state law limits what the local governments can do about these situations, it does permit some specified local regulation. Communities are allowed to cap the number of days a property can be rented to no more than 180 in a year. This could diminish the appeal of owning properties used exclusively for the short-term rental business, and should be considered as a provision in an Airbnb ordinance designed for the Town of Belgium.

Residents have repeatedly asked the Belgium town government for help. The board’s response so far has been to encourage communication between the residents and Airbnb owners. That has helped, but it’s not a solution. As long as Airbnbs are operated as businesses by non-resident owners, problems will persist.

It is understandable that Belgium officials have been hoping to avoid town government involvement in short-term rental activity, but that ceased to be a viable option when some Airbnbs became a nuisance in town neighborhoods.