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The Greenville Board of Zoning Appeals was scheduled Thursday to take up the issue of short-term housing rentals, but the agenda item was removed at the request of the city’s zoning administrator, Bryan Wood. According to Wood, the city attorney determined the zoning administrator didn’t have the authority to request an appeals review because a review would have to be part of an actual appeal. Currently, no cases are being appealed.
Complaints about short-term rentals have prompted the city to review the city code to see how those operations should be regulated. Greenville officials are looking at home-sharing websites to determine if short-term rentals comply with current zoning restrictions, Wood said. “It’s become more popular and, in some cases, it’s become disruptive to the neighborhoods,” he said.
The city, Wood said, is “just trying to get a handle on it early, rather than trying to deal with it later.”
Airbnb, VRBO.com and other sites where people advertise short-term rentals for their homes are part of a growing trend that supporters say is innovative. Wood, however, says that under the city code’s household living and visitor accommodations provisions, home-sharing services fall under either a bed and breakfast or a hotel or motel zoning classification. As such, short-term rentals must follow the same rules as those traditional businesses.
“I’ve already made a decision, an interpretation, “ Wood said, referring to how provisions of the city code should apply to home-sharing services.
“What we were wanting to do,” Wood said, “is to have the Board of Zoning Appeals essentially, hopefully, agree with that decision so that when we issue violation notices and have to provide an opportunity for appeal, we can let people know that the board already has sanctioned this interpretation.”
The issue of how to handle the growing popularity of home-sharing services has been debated in other locations, such as tourist-heavy Charleston, where officials are examining the economic and social ramifications of short-term rentals.
The city allows short-term rentals in commercially zoned sections of the Cannonborough-Elliotborough neighborhood, and despite restrictions elsewhere in the city, hundreds of properties are listed online, The Post and Courier reported. Those listings prompted a series of lawsuits last fall and earlier this year, accusing more than 100 property owners of illegally offering short-term rentals, court records show, according to the newspaper.
“Right now, I don’t know that we really truly understand the effect of short-term rentals on the city,” Jacob Lindsey, Charleston’s planning director, told the newspaper. “We need to be able to understand that before we set policy.”
