Plan to ban short-term rentals in Dallas single-family neighborhoods finally moving forward

The elevator pitch of those opposing the ban on short-term rentals in single-family Dallas neighborhoods is as follows:

“We sympathize. No one should have to live next to a party house. But it’s not a raging problem. We just need to apply the right regulations to weed out the bad actors.

That’s not a winning argument right now in Dallas, where City Hall is drowning in faulty systems that have failed to fix pernicious problems.

Just look at the last two titles from 1500 Marilla St.: The continuing gaps in the dysfunctional building permit office and the failed effort to put a homeless center in Oak Cliff.

No wonder so many neighbors insist that the only satisfactory solution to the short-term rental controversy is for the zoning hammer to fall hard on the ever-increasing number of local addresses found on online accommodation sites. .

The City’s Plan Commission got its first official look Thursday at that option, a recommendation from one of its committees to define rentals as a housing use and ban them in residential neighborhoods.

For more than two years, the municipal council has been throwing this hot potato back and forth – Between several working groups and committee meetings, in public listening sessions and in camera briefings.

This paralysis of analysis has given problematic rental properties much more time to drive residents on edge and has left many certain that the big dogs of Airbnb and VRBO are controlling the debate.

I’ll spare you the mind-numbing timeline of how we finally got to Thursday. Most importantly, for the first time, a resolution is in sight. (Well, until it’s probably court related.)

The planning committee The Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee began reviewing potential recommendations in June that aim to protect the health and safety of short-term rental users and the integrity of the neighborhoods where they operate.

According to the final report, the committee sought to “preserve the neighborhood character of residential neighborhoods…and to minimize the negative impacts on housing supply caused by the conversion of residential units to transitional use.”

The Dallas Development Code currently has no standard on whether the use of residential property for short-term rental is appropriate – but it does consider a short-term rental to be analogous to a hotel for the purposes of the collection of the city’s hotel occupancy tax.

Changes communicated to the plan commission would modify the development code to add short-term rentals under “accommodation uses”.

The proposed change is part of a two-pronged attack that the city council finally launched earlier this year. While city staff and the plan commission work on zoning, code compliance is developing regulations specific to these rentals in areas where they would eventually be allowed to operate.

The Dallas Neighborhood Coalition has long argued that because the city requires short-term rentals to pay the hotel tax, they are, by extension, hotels — which local code prohibits in single-family neighborhoods.

Core group members want City Hall to codify short-term rentals as a housing use in the development code and allow them to operate only in areas where other housing is permitted.

I don’t know how many of you reading this column have a short-term rental transaction on your block. Neither does the city.

In 2019, the city council approved a five-year, $495,000 deal with Colorado-based MUNIRevs to pay for short stays, contact their hosts to register and collect the hotel tax.

MUNIRevs identified 1,439 active and registered properties, with another 1,189 locations labeled “possible”. By contrast, three respected industry sources put total short-term rentals in Dallas at more than 5,000 — and possibly as high as 6,000.

The worst of these operations are rowdy party houses, of which I wrote last year: a 4,000 square foot home in the Lochwood neighborhood of northeast Dallas, advertised as sleeping up to 22 people.

Removed from online rental sites after I started asking questions, this house boasted loud music and chaos, smelly, overflowing trash cans, and high-speed vehicles that ended up illegally parked.

City Hall says party houses are not a raging problem, and this month it released an updated analysis of nuisance calls to 311 and 911 to back up the statement.

Using MUNIRevs inventory of 2,628 properties, the analysis found that more than 88% of rentals had zero calls.

On average, short-term rentals had one more 311 or 911 call associated with their address than non-rental properties; 123 of the lists received at least two calls to 311 or 911.

Promoters of Airbnb and VRBO are sure to agitate this report vigorously, but I would be hesitant to draw any conclusions from a valuation that includes only a portion of the total properties.

Unlike the nightmare of a party house next door, I’ve had a different experience in recent years with an Airbnb in my quiet block of single-family Tudors in East Dallas. It seems well managed and I’ve never seen any code violations.

But the three configurations it can be rented in — whole house, upstairs, or courtyard apartment — have changed the vibe of the neighborhood a bit with revolving doors of strangers and their cars coming and going.

I would hate to see the owners of multiple long-term rentals on my block switch to the Airbnb model. This is a legitimate fear because the profit on short-term rents is much higher than with long-term tenants.

Related:‘Party house’ claims from northeast Dallas neighbors illustrate why city needs to regulate short-term rentals

This brings me to the shortage of 20,000 housing units in the city. As landlords seek these higher returns, the “Airbnb effect” in the local market – as studied by the nonpartisan US think tank Economic Policy Institute — creates more costs than benefits.

“The costs to local renters and local jurisdictions likely outweigh the benefits to travelers and landlords,” the 2019 report found.

The debate unfolding in Dallas is unfolding in cities not just across the United States, but around the world, and anything decided in each jurisdiction will almost certainly face legal challenges.

Perhaps the most telling part of Thursday’s planning commission meeting was the part we know nothing about — nearly two hours of discussion involving the city attorney’s office in closed executive session before the beginning of the briefing.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years watching the meetings and listening to the voices on both sides of this controversy. What I heard led me to stop booking Airbnb rentals in single-family neighborhoods during my travels, which I have long done without a second thought.

In the debate over which property rights carry the most weight, count me with neighbors who actually live in the neighborhood — as opposed to short-term rental landlords.

The planning commission will hear many of those arguments at a special one-day meeting on Dec. 8, convened to hear public comment. He will then make his recommendation to the municipal council, which will have the final say.

The procrastination of the Council must stop. It’s time to vote.

With City Hall’s regulatory and enforcement efforts failing too often, the zoning hammer is the best tool to get the job done right.