As short-term rental listings in Butler County have grown 77% since January 2023, local cities and townships are looking to institute regulations.
Tracy Kocher, executive director of Travel Butler County, said there are approximately 817 Airbnb and VRBO listings countywide, and “if every single one of these units were filled on a night they could house almost 5,000 people.”
Fairfield, Fairfield Twp., Hamilton and Oxford have new and or updated regulations in place and West Chester Twp. will be voting on rules soon. Fairfield Twp. is the only community that has an outright ban in residential areas.
Chuck Goins of Fairfield Twp. said bed and breakfast establishments and vacation rentals are conditionally allowed in business districts.
Fairfield is the latest of the county’s larger communities to institute restrictions on vacation rentals. Fairfield Development Services Director Greg Kathman told the Journal-News city council approved a number of changes to the planning and zoning code earlier this year, including regulating short-term rentals.
Some of the provisions include limiting the head count to two renters per sleeping area and no more than five renters at a time per dwelling, a minimum of two guaranteed off-street parking spaces and tents and recreational vehicles are not allowed.
“We considered additional regulations like local licensing and imposing a lodging tax but decided not to pursue these measures. Fairfield does not seem to be as impacted by short-term rentals as some of our neighboring communities are, so we didn’t feel it necessary to develop that level of regulation at this time,” he said. “We tried to find a balance between protecting the rights of individual property owners and protecting the rights and property values of the surrounding neighborhood.”
Hamilton Executive Director of Neighborhood Services Liz Hayden said they charge $25 a year but it is free for those who are renting out their own homes. She said recently the city council approved “some pretty basic updates to our short-term rental license that makes the enforcement language clearer.”
There had been some discussion about banning the rentals in some neighborhoods — neighbors in the Highland Park and Hickory Woods subdivisions have voiced concerns — but the rentals will remain citywide. There are currently 92 licensed properties.
Community Development Director Sam Perry told the Journal-News Oxford requires a permit and an inspection and charges a $57.75 annual fee that “mimmics” the student housing rental program, they also charge a 6% lodgings tax. They’ve been doing that for three years on the vacation rentals and there are about 60 of them.
He said last month city council inserted a primary residence requirement for properties in the western portion of the city away from the Miami University campus and last week they put a moratorium on short-term rentals within “Mile Square” so staff can draft additional owner-occupancy regulations.
He said they are trying to preserve the housing stock so it doesn’t get gobbled up for investment properties.
“There has been housing under-production for the past 10, 15 years, the demand for housing has out-paced production,” Perry said. “So in our little tiny neck of the woods we’re trying to do our part to encourage housing and also holding onto the houses that we have.”
West Chester Twp. is in final review of zoning code updates and Community Development Director Katy Kanelopoulos said, “We will define short-term rentals in our new code and expect to limit which districts allow them.”
Trustee Mark Welch said they will likely limit the short-term rentals to higher density areas of the township.
“The greater overarching desire for the township is to simply protect the integrity of subdivisions so we don’t get a bunch of long or short-term rentals,” he said adding they don’t have a problem with individuals renting out their homes while they are away, but they don’t want “a flood” of big corporations buying up land that “could change the character of the community.”
Officials in other communities like Liberty Twp. and New Miami say they will be looking into the issue. The Butler County commissioners declined to regulate vacation rentals when it was suggested a couple years ago. Townships governed by county zoning are Hanover, Lemon, Madison, Milford, Oxford and Ross.
“It’s got to be looked at now, it’s a whole new ballgame, there’s a lot more now than there were before,” Commissioner Don Dixon said. “I think it’s something we need to look at countywide and reach a consensus.”
Doing away with regulations
Some state legislators want to limit local jurisdictions’ ability to regulate vacation rentals. A similar effort failed in 2022 and Kocher said she believes the idea is bad for local communities.
“I’ve talked to a lot of our communities and the concern here is a home rule one,” Kocher said. “I feel strongly that local decisions regarding when and where short-term rentals should be in place should be made at the local level, not through a state law.”
Senate Bill 299 was introduced June 24 and referred to the Select Committee on Housing the next day. There haven’t been any hearings yet because legislators left for summer break shortly thereafter and won’t return until after the Nov. 5 election.
Bill sponsor Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, who is a licensed Realtor with vast experience in zoning and other property related issues and has been involved in short-term rentals, told the Journal-News he introduced the bill because the industry has evolved, “there are checks and balances” and “there’s a lot of things that are in place that make them good for local homeowners as well as the market.”
Brenner said if his bill eventually passes it would “undo” Fairfield’s prohibition in residential areas.
“I’m willing to compromise with all parties,” he said. “I introduced this bill knowing that I’m going to need to make some modifications. Probably the biggest modification I need to make, there was no intention in my bill to ban the collection of sales tax or bed taxes... I plan to have a sub-bill to address that.”
Brenner said the owner-occupancy rules and approaches like West Chester is considering are unacceptable to him.
“This idea that you can zone it way or put some zoning in place that says we only want short-term rentals here but we don’t want them here, may be discriminatory on its face,” he said and later added, “to suggest that they need to be only owner occupied, well then that means there just aren’t any short-term rentals, that’s a backwards way of banning them.”
Brenner said he doesn’t expect his bill to pass during the “lame duck” session after the election but he will reintroduce the measure next year.
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