EDITORIAL: Communities should regulate Airbnbs

Police in force surrounded a house in the Town of Belgium on the night of Dec. 17, responding to a call from a Sheboygan mother who feared her teenage daughter was in the house and in danger from a man who had previously assaulted her.

Ozaukee County sheriff’s deputies found the house was occupied by a large group of people, some with outstanding warrants. They arrested a man who was subsequently charged with felonies committed on the property, child enticement, sexual intercourse with a minor and possession of an illegal automatic handgun.

The house is located in a quiet lakeshore neighborhood along Country Club Beach Road. It was rented as an Airbnb. Neighbors are appalled.

Airbnb, the internet platform that lists millions of short-term rentals worldwide, has come a long way.

As the classic business success story goes, two former college buddies started the business in 2007 to earn some cash to help pay the rent they couldn’t afford on their San Francisco flat. Today, they and their company are worth billions.

The first Airbnb was a loft in the founders’ apartment. They lived below it as usual and paying guests slept in the loft.

The arrangement was a primitive model for what became an international phenomenon: Residents, using an internet listing service, would offer space in their homes or entire houses to be rented for a few days. Owners would communicate directly with the renters to explain features of the house and its neighborhood and rules for use of the property.

Some Airbnbs, including many in Ozaukee County, still operate that way and are assets to their communities. But others have turned what was conceived as private transactions between homeowners and short-term renters into what are in effect commercial businesses operated in residential neighborhoods.

These include houses that have no permanent residents and are owned by companies or individuals far removed from the communities in which they are located for the express purpose of profiting from short-term rentals. It is not surprising that these businesses are often operated without regard for their impact on nearby residents, an impact that can range from annoying nuisances to serious bad behavior.

The Dec. 17 incident was the most shocking Airbnb nuisance reported in the lakeshore neighborhoods of northern Ozaukee County, but not the first. Earlier Airbnb-related problems prompted residents to ask the Belgium Town Board for help.

The town supervisors demurred, citing a state statute that restricts their ability to regulate short-term rentals. What happened on Country Club Beach Road should persuade the board to reconsider.

Wisconsin’s so-called Right to Rent Law states that no city, village, town or county can prohibit rentals of residences for periods of seven consecutive days or longer, but there are exceptions in the statute that allow local governments to regulate Airbnbs in some ways. The Town of Holland in Sheboygan County, adjacent to the Town of Belgium, managed it effectively.

The Holland Town Board reacted to numerous complaints involving Airbnb renters, including fast traffic on narrow roads, dangerous beach fires, trash left in yards and on the beach, unleashed dogs running through neighborhoods, noisy late-night partying and lewd behavior. One resident reported that he found strangers who had rented a nearby Airbnb in his hot tub.

The resulting town ordinance limits the number of occupants in short-term rentals and prohibits excessive noise and “greater than normal” traffic caused by the rental, among other restrictions.

A group representing Airbnb owners sued to invalidate the ordinance, but the Sheboygan Circuit Court ruled that the regulations enacted by the town did not violate the Right to Rent Law.

That law allows local governments to regulate short-term rentals of less than seven days duration and to limit the days a property can be rented to 180 in a 365-day period and require those days to run consecutively.

The Belgium Town Board and other local governments should take advantage of these exceptions. The six-month limit could discourage the commercial business of short-term rentals that is now driving revenue growth for the Airbnb company while it threatens the character of community neighborhoods.

A recent study reported that property owners listing multiple homes for rent, in some cases 10 or more, make up the fastest growing segment of Airbnb’s business.

That is bad news for communities and should be an incentive for local governments to use legally available means to protect their neighborhoods while still preserving the right of resident owners to offer their homes as short-term rentals.

The Country Club Beach Road outrage lends urgency to meeting that challenge.