Columbia planning officials reject ban on Airbnbs in neighborhoods. What now?
Columbia Planning officials on Thursday rejected new restrictions on Airbnbs and similar properties that are rented for less than 30 days at a time. Now it will be up to Columbia City Council to either honor that recommendation, or move forward with the restrictions.
The new rules rejected by the Columbia Planning Commission would have only allowed short-term rentals like Airbnbs in areas zoned for commercial and mixed uses, with the caveat that rentals that fell outside those zones would be allowed to operate if they were located on a four-lane road.
The rule would have effectively banned the rentals in large swaths of the city, particularly in the residential areas where Airbnbs tend to be most common.
“It’s a ban on our business,” said David Bergmann, who runs Heartwood Finished Homes, a rental company that largely focuses on short-term rentals across the Midlands.
Bergmann said his company operates around 90 short-term rentals in Columbia, and about 85 of them would fall outside of the new zoning restrictions if they were to pass.
Columbia has 426 registered short-term rentals in the city, but a city zoning official could not immediately say how many of those rentals would fall outside of the new zoning restrictions if they were to be passed by City Council. There are close to 100 short-term rentals the city believes are operating illegally, without the proper permits.
The Planning Commission can only recommend policy decisions to the City Council. It’s up to the council to decide whether to accept those recommendations from the commission. In this case, if the City Council agrees with the planning commission, the process to add new restrictions to where the short-term rentals can be located could start over.
“This feels really extreme, there’s probably a middle ground,” said commission member Steve Cook before saying he would not support the new restrictions.
Ultimately, the commission members rejected the new zoning restrictions in a 5-3 vote.
The rules considered by the Planning Commission would have allowed existing Airbnbs to stay where they are, but it would have banned any new short-term rentals in most neighborhoods. Several neighborhood leaders supported seeing the new restrictions become law.
“We need people that engage in the neighborhood in ways that advance the neighborhood,” said Denise Wellman, president of the Cottontown neighborhood. Wellman urged the commission to approve the new restrictions, which she said would help protect the city’s “historic assets” like the various historic neighborhoods that dot the city.
Columbia in 2023 passed a slate of rules for Airbnbs. At one point that conversation also included the possibility of banning the rentals in residential areas, but the City Council pivoted and instead set a list of new enforcement measures.
The tension between neighborhoods and short-term rental operators boiled over earlier this year after four people were shot and one person died during a shooting at an Airbnb in Columbia’s Elmwood Park neighborhood.
Neighborhood leaders who are opposed to the rentals on their residential streets counted the shooting as a strike against Airbnbs at large, while rental operators said the shooting was not representative of the vast majority of their rental clients.
The city revoked the rental license of the property where the shooting occurred, but the incident re-opened a city conversation about where the rentals should be located and how they should be overseen. The shooting also ultimately led the city to put a pause on issuing any new short-term rental permits until new rules were decided upon. That pause remains in effect.
The Columbia City Council is expected to revisit the Airbnb conversation at its regular meeting on Dec. 16. Because the Planning Commission can only recommend certain actions to the council, the council could still pass zoning restrictions for the rentals.
