Chapel Hill Town Council passed a resolution earlier this month that will kick off a task force and public engagement process addressing Short-Term Rentals (STRs), the renting of rooms, individual units or whole houses for less than 30 days, as seen on websites like Airbnb.

A key development made in the resolution will focus town efforts on a specific category of STRs. The task force will be first addressing dwelling units rented by an investment companies or owners who does not use that lodging as their primary place of living.

During the council’s deliberations leading up to the resolution, officials voiced a desire to narrow the scope of the task force as a matter of time efficiency.  But Town Council member Karen Stegman also made an effort to calm the fears of residents who host Airbnb users in their primary dwellings as a way to make ends meet.

“I am very supportive of relieving the anxiety of people in our community. We talk about how much we value our artists and our musicians, and we have heard that this is an income source,” Stegman said. “It’s causing a lot of anxiety in the community for people who this is a source of income. So if we could take that off, I would be very supportive of that.”

The council heard from residents with those kinds of concerns, including David Hartman. Hartman said when he originally bought his home in 2003, it was considered a 20-year flood plain. Now, as a result of numerous floods due to increasingly erratic weather in our area, Hartman’s property is now designated a repetitive loss property by FEMA, meaning his flood insurance is nearly $6,000 per year. This, he told council, makes his home unaffordable to him and difficult to sell.

“If I am no longer allowed to be an Airbnb host, my only hope is that I am chosen by FEMA for a buy-out and a tear down of the only home I have ever owned, the home in which I expected to live for life,” Hartman said.

After discussions over an appropriate scope and timeline, council passed a resolution 8-1 for a task force that would develop recommendations for council for regulations on short-term rentals in non-owner-occupied rentals for consideration in March 2020.

The dissenting vote on the resolution was Nancy Oates. In a post on her blog days after the vote, Oates voiced her concern that the town council was exempting accessory dwelling units from being regulated as short-term rentals, which she said would cut down on longer-term affordable housing options.

According to the resolution, the Town Manager with collecting applications for the Task Force which the council will consider in early October.

The town is hosting an open house Monday evening to discuss the next steps in developing these guidelines. The open house is scheduled to run from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Seymour Senior Center on Homestead Road.

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