I’ve tried, very hard, to get my local officials to regulate it, fell on def ears. I contacted every elected official I could think of, they either ignored me entirely or laughed at me. My local zoning refuses to enforce what we already have on the books and one of them even told me he thought the STR concept was “kinda neat”. I beat on elected officials doors for 2 straight years about STRs. I got nowhere. I still beat on doors, but not as much as I used to.
My city went from around 300 single family houses used as full-time STRs in 2021 to over 1,000 today. The person that owns the one next door to me plays games with ownership (transfers to different LLCs each year to avoid taxes) and in 3 years time she has bought up 4 more single family houses in my city to use as full-time hotels, making that a total of 5 homes that are no longer available for local families. She lives in a 1.5 million dollar house in another city. From what I can tell, it’s a game to her. There are A LOT of little mini STR empires like this everywhere. One person buying up multiple houses and running full-time hotels in residential areas.
I edited to add that my city ALSO has a very large homeless population and it’s getting larger every day. The STRs drive up the cost of housing (and property taxes). The house next door to me could have been a wonderful entry level home for a young family. But nope. It’s a hotel (there’s a Marriott about a half mile away too). What a waste.
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