Adam Kulikowski is facing $10,000 in fines from Boulder, plus thousands more in lost income from potentially having a city home rental license revoked, as officials have built a case that he violated the municipal short-term leasing regulations.
He is among a web of residential property owners connected to Robert Kulikowski, Adam’s brother, who have encountered issues with city enforcement around leasing homes for less than 30-day stays to vacationers, travelers on business and others through websites like Airbnb.
They all believe the city has gone too far with cracking down on short-term rentals in Boulder, and that officials are quicker than the city has promised it would be to seek monetary penalties for noncompliance, instead of providing warnings and guidance to correct missteps.
In December, Boulder clamped down its short-term rental regulations regarding the documentation the city needs to see to issue homeowners permits to lease for less than 30 days, and what kind of entities can own homes eligible to be rented on short-term bases.
Robert Kulikowski said his past rental practices are the reason why, and the scrutiny he was under by the city has possibly put other property owners who now own homes Kulikowski used to rent on the radar of enforcement officials.
“I was reading the code, and literally operating, just playing the game, very different than my brother,” Robert Kulikowski said. “I’m sure there were other people doing it. The way they changed the laws was the exact result of the way I was operating.”
Boulder issues permits to property owners who wish to lease their properties to a single tenant for more than a month, with officials inspecting the rental homes to ensure they are up to municipal standards. The city also issues short-term rental licenses for property owners wanting to list their properties on websites like Airbnb and VRBO to potentially be rented while the homeowners travel, or to allow spare rooms to be used by visitors.
But for short-term rental licensing, the homeowner must use the property as a primary residence, meaning he or she lives in it more than half the year; plus the name on the rental license must be the same as the name on the deed for the property, and the owner must be a natural person, trust or a nonprofit organization. That makes it difficult for the same person to rent more than one home, or any home other than his or her own, on a short-term basis.
Robert Kulikowski said he ended up paying about $4,000 in fines to the city, but that it could have been more. At one point, he was using eight properties as short-term rentals, he said, in part by giving a separate party ownership of a small percentage of a home and naming that party on the deed, in order to receive a license for the property.
“In most cases, compliance staff have been able to stop this activity because the 1% individual owner did not use the property as his or her principal residence. Proving that a property is not a licensee’s principal residence is a difficult and time-consuming investigation process,” the city staff memo from the December code update stated.
The code was changed to require a short-term rental licensee to hold at least 50% ownership of the property, and to eliminate the ability to use voter registration to show a home is a principal residence. That leaves the address on a Colorado driver’s license or identification card as the only ways for the city to verify principal residency for short-term rental license applicants. It was also tweaked to ensure the same property cannot be licensed for both short-term and long-term rentals.
“Altering a voter registration card has proven to be a very simple process that can be completed immediately online with minimal verification or expense for the individual. This has resulted in applicants changing the address on their voter registration temporarily to establish proof of principal residency at the property to be licensed,” the memo stated.
When Jasmine Munro and James Scherrer each purchased a property from Robert Kulikowski in recent months, neither was able to rent their new places on short-term leases without attracting city attention, and both believe they were under a microscope because of the issues identified by the city with Kulikowski’s practices.
Munro, a first-time landlord with the Pearl Street property she bought from Kulikowski, had a long-term rental license associated with her property, she said, but says she was quickly hit with a violation and possible fine when she made the mistake of listing it as a short-term rental.
“My hands were tied, and I felt like I was under the magnifying glass based on who I bought a property from. It was really uncomfortable,” Munro said.
She faces hundreds of dollars in fines for two notices of violation, with plans to appeal the city’s decision.
“Slap me on the wrist, or give me guidance,” Munro said, expressing her preference for a warning or instruction before a fine.
Allowing short-term rental licensees to gain compliance before seeking fines is the standard city practice. Officials in 2019 opened 451 total short-term rental cases and closed 417, assessing 81 fines, with 48 of those cases with fines related to closed cases and 33 assessed during cases that are still in enforcement, city spokesperson Julie Causa said.
Since the first version of short-term rental rules was adopted in 2015, the city has worked 1,442 cases, she said.
“The city consistently supports the philosophy of achieving compliance over assessing penalties,” Causa said. “This means that staff’s first approach is to inform and educate residents on Boulder’s local requirements to achieve voluntary compliance. Civil penalties are assessed when attempts to correct a violation with cooperation have failed.”
Scherrer, who also bought a home from Robert Kulikowski in 2019, said he had to wait to obtain a short-term rental license after the purchase while the city continued to consider the previous owner’s activity. But after Scherrer, who works for the Informed Consent Action Network firm advocating lax vaccine-related policies and travels frequently for his job, obtained the license, he drew city scrutiny for advertising the home as available for short-term stays the entire month, leading officials to believe it was not his primary residence.
He travels frequently, and often doesn’t know if he’ll be called on a work assignment on a date several weeks in advance, he said, so he keeps the entire calendar open to renters, without renting for more days than he is allowed.
But city code states that a licensee will be presumed to not be using the licensed property as a principal dwelling if the entire unit is offered and available for rental for more than 20 days in any month. The city can also make the assumption of non-compliance with the principal dwelling requirement for a short-term rental licensee if the person owns another dwelling unit that is not licensed for long-term rental; the person’s spouse or domestic partner has a different principal residence; the person’s driver’s license, voter registration or any dependent’s school registration shows a different residence address, or the Boulder County Assessor lists a mailing address different from the dwelling unit address.
No presumption shall apply in any criminal proceeding, the code states, and the presumptions can be rebutted with credible evidence of principal residency.
“When staff contact an owner to discuss the advertisement they will request any credible evidence to rebut the presumption,” Causa said. “If the evidence is compelling it is documented, and the case is resolved. If staff issue a notice of violation there is usually more evidence supporting the violation than a single presumption, but staff are always willing to review any proposed rebuttals that are provided.”
But Scherrer said the city requested to see his travel schedule as proof he was a resident of the property more than half the year.
“It became this invasive investigation into me and meeting this look inside my personal life. I felt it was very out of line,” Scherrer said, adding he is appealing a notice of violation for not listing his short-term rental license number with an advertisement of his property, as well as a notice for listing the property as available for a whole month.
“When I’m in town it’s not booked,” Scherrer said. “But when I’m out of town it gets booked. But not for more than the days that the permit allows.”
For Adam Kulikowski, he believes his last name is driving the city to suspect him of being in cahoots with his brother, but he insists he is not, and hopes to avoid paying the full fine of $10,000 that City Attorney Tom Carr said in an email obtained via open records request by the Camera that Adam is facing. (The newspaper sought the set of emails in which Carr’s message was included for a matter separate from short-term rentals).
Adam Kulikowski said he had a long-term rental license, but used the home as a short-term rental.
“You have never contested that you offered a unit for short-term rental without a license,” Carr said in the email. “… I understand that you believe that the penalties for operating an illegal short-term rental are high. In the past, when the city imposed lower amounts for violating the long-term rental licensing provisions, we found that some individuals were willing to treat the fine as a cost of doing business. … We have found that to regulate short-term rentals successfully we must remove the financial incentive to cheat.”
Carr added that a city prosecutor had offered to reduce Adam Kulikowski’s fine amount from $10,000 to $7,000, but Kulikowski feels that is still too much, and fears the city could also suspend his long-term rental license for six months as part of the penalty, resulting in lost income.
Causa said cases with fines totaling more than $10,000 aren’t common but have happened.
“I’m trying not to lose my long-term rental license, and trying not to lose my livelihood. I have a kid. I’m trying to afford living in Boulder. I was born and raised in Boulder,” Adam Kulikowski said.
He also said he was given more than one violation on a single day, and was unable to rectify past violations because he was out of town when he received them. He is willing to pay a consequence for his violation, but hopes it will be less expensive than the city has offered, and to keep his long-term renting ability.
Jennifer Zimmerman, a lawyer for Adam Kulikowski, declined to comment, saying her client’s hearing had been continued.
“They’re not applying enforcement in a similar manner” across cases, Robert Kulikowski said.
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