Airbnbs won’t be banned in Columbia, but city still making plans to limit them. Here’s how
Rather than effectively banning most Airbnbs and other short-term rentals in Columbia, a City Council committee is instead looking at ways to cap the number of such rentals in residential areas.
It’s a shift from an earlier proposal that would have outlawed the majority of those rentals in the city.
While limiting the number of these rentals within neighborhoods satisfies some concerns raised by community members, rental operators say there could be devastating unintended consequences.
Ultimately, some say, the policy could cause the number of Airbnbs and other short-term rentals to shrink in a city where many visitors rely on them for everything from business trips to college football game days to military graduations.
Still, city leaders say they’re committed to finding a happy medium between those who have made the rentals their livelihoods and those who don’t want them in their neighborhoods.
The new ordinance proposal seeks to cap the number of residential short-term rentals – properties rented for 30 days or less, typically through sites such as Airbnb and VRBO – by giving rental owners 60 days to apply for city permits to legitimize their non-owner-occupied properties.
After a 60-day window beginning when the ordinance would be enacted, no more permits would be issued, at least not for properties where the homeowner doesn’t also live.
That 60-day time frame could change, said Councilman Howard Duvall, who chairs the committee drafting the ordinance.
“It might be that the industry will say we need longer than 60 days to get everybody registered, and it might be the city says it’s going to take us more than 60 days to get the infrastructure in place to manage the registration, the permitting and the enforcement. So that’s a number that is not set in stone,” Duvall said.
While the 60-day window to apply for permits would apply to rentals where the owner does not live on-site, homeowners who want to rent out a room would still be able to apply for short-term rental permits for their own residences any time. But, ultimately, the intent is to cap the number of rentals in residential areas, Duvall said.
The draft ordinance was not shared at a recent meeting of the city’s ad-hoc short-term rental committee. Duvall said that meeting, held Sept. 29, was simply to get additional public input on the general topic, not on the draft itself.
An ongoing concern
The conversation about short-term rentals has been ongoing in Columbia for more than a year.
Those involved in that conversation keep reiterating the same points: A lot of people in Columbia rely on short-term rentals — both as operators and as guests. But the presence of such properties has and can harm neighborhoods if the properties aren’t regulated.
“We want neighbors, we want residents. We want people you can go borrow a cup of flour from or bring you a casserole when someone dies,” Kit Smith, a Wales Garden resident told committee members during a meeting last week. “We know each other and we care about each other, and the more transience you have coming through your neighborhood, the more you disrupt the neighborhood.”
Smith’s arguments have been echoed by many other residents who say they worry about an increase in late-night noises and crime and the eventual deterioration of neighborhoods previously filled with longtime homeowners.
But while rental owners agree there may be a few “bad apples,” the industry itself benefits Columbia, they say.
Their properties are used by those supporting family members who are graduating from Fort Jackson, and by people with temporary jobs such as travel nurses.
Perhaps the biggest sticking point in the city’s efforts to regulate the short-term rental industry here is the distinction between owner-occupied rentals and non-owner-occupied rentals.
An owner-occupied rental, one where the homeowner lives in the house and is just renting out a room or portion of their home, would see far less regulation than properties where the homeowner does not live, but rather rents out the entire house to short-term tenants.
The vast majority of short-term rentals in Columbia are the latter.
Duvall has previously called such properties boutique hotels in residential areas and said he believes they should be subject to stricter rules.
Another aspect of the draft ordinance creates an infraction system that could mean rental operators lose their permits if they violate city laws. This would apply to both owner-occupied and non-owner-occupied rentals, and would come with fines of $100 for a first offense and $500 for subsequent violations.
Rental hosts would also be required to undergo safety inspections at their properties in order to receive a permit, which would have to be applied for each year. For owner-occupied rentals, permit registration would cost $100 per unit, while non-owner-occupied short-term rental permits would cost $500 per rental property.
Other clauses in the draft ordinance require that a host or representative be available 24/7 if problems arise with the property. It also requires short-term rental tenants to be at least 21 years old and prohibits stays less than two nights long.
Finding compromise
While the new proposal is an improvement from the previous draft in the eyes of some rental owners, the policy may still have unintended consequences, said David Bergmann.
Bergmann, who runs the local short-term rental company Heartwood Finished Homes with his wife, Wendy, said the biggest concern is that the ordinance as written doesn’t create a way for the industry to balance itself out if people sell their properties or otherwise stop using them as short-term rentals.
“The city basically says, ‘We’re not going to issue anymore. … You have that 60-day window, and that’s it,’” he said. “We think that there should be a mechanism by which we can maintain some sort of equilibrium. … The moratorium has no mechanism to repopulate the permits, the number of permits can only go down.”
He added he is not opposed to some form of cap on the rentals.
If the availability of short-term rentals craters, the prices for those that remain are likely to increase, Bergmann added.
The draft ordinance does allow for new owners of previously permitted rentals to reapply for a permit, but beyond that provision, there aren’t currently options to reopen permit applications for new would-be investors in the draft ordinance.
Bergmann has been a constant voice at committee meetings and public hearings about regulations for Columbia’s short-term rentals.
“We’re comfortable with having some regulations. We think that some regulations are definitely good and needed,” he said.
Bergmann and other rental hosts want Columbia to establish a working group to workshop the ordinance that involves hosts and residents, not just City Council members on a three-person committee.
While there have been opportunities for public input at committee meetings, Bergmann said one point of frustration is that neighborhood residents and rental hosts can show up and give testimony, but they aren’t involved beyond that.
“Instead of just creating these drafts within the city behind closed doors, we’d really like to be involved in the process,” Bergman said.
Bergmann has sent a handful of suggestions to Duvall that have been worked into the ordinance, but the process has not been out in the open, Bergmann said.
He added that the city has promised to look at data around code enforcement and public safety infractions at short-term rentals to paint a clear picture of actual problems from these properties impacting the city, but that data hasn’t been publicly shared.
Best practices
Columbia is not the only city looking to restrict Airbnbs and other short-term rentals. At least 11 South Carolina municipalities have laws limiting the industry or are in the process of drafting them, according to the South Carolina Policy Council.
A review of short-term rental regulations by that organization suggests regulations in Hilton Head and Folly Beach are the gold standard. Those areas don’t ban rentals according to zoning districts but do enforce tracking and maintenance requirements.
That same review put Columbia’s previous ordinance proposal in the “poor examples” category. The city’s new draft addresses some of the Policy Council’s concerns, such as no longer banning certain rentals in residential areas.
But not all of the concerns have been addressed, including non-owner-occupied permits costing significantly more than those for owner-occupied properties.
Even among industry groups, there are disagreements about what counts as best practices.
Susan Cohen, president and CEO of the South Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association, said that while her organization’s membership includes short-term rental operators, she agrees there is a need for stricter rules.
“We have seen across the country that well-meaning unregulated short-term rental situations have quickly gotten out of hand,” she said during the committee meeting Thursday. “There’s really three bottom lines: Limit them, license them and level the playing field. ... When it comes to the location of those businesses, they are, in fact, a business, and they need to be in a commercial area and not in residential zoning.”
Columbia’s new ordinance is far from final, Duvall said, stressing that he and fellow council members on the committee Will Brennan and Tina Herbert are still discussing the policy.
“We will have probably several more drafts before we come to something that’s ready to go to the full council,” he said.
