Short-term rentals in southwest Michigan are being shut down by local governments’ orders to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
Yesterday, officials in the New Buffalo and South Haven, Three Oaks and the townships of Chikaming and New Buffalo sent letters telling operators of short-term lodging that their operations do not qualify as essential businesses under the stay-at-home order Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued March 23. The order is in effect through April 13.
Short-term rental operators “should not accept vacation guests until after the Stay Home order is lifted,” said the letter from the city of New Buffalo’s city manager and police chief. “This is not a suggestion; it is the law.”
“Vacation travel can put other people in danger,” Rich Killips, New Buffalo’s police chief, told Crain’s. “If you stop for gas or groceries, you’re tagging people along the way. I think most people understand that.”
The board of the Harbor County Vacation Rental Association, which represents four of the largest property management groups in the region, voted yesterday to shut down all vacation rentals for the entire month of April, two weeks longer than the stay-home order now in place.
“If we need to go longer, we will,” said Jason Milovich, a member of the association and owner of Blue Fish Vacation Rentals, based in Union Pier. “This is our community, we all live here. We don’t want anyone feeling unsafe by bringing others in who could potentially contaminate people.”
Like a mid-March letter from officials in Door County, Wisconsin, the southwest Michigan letters discourage short-term stays, not the use of second homes by their owners.
Second-home owners “are stakeholders in our communities who help keep our economy afloat,” said Toni Morris, who owns the Yellow Bird Vacations management company in New Buffalo. Health officials in the region previously told Crain’s that if second-home owners are staying in one place, not shuttling back and forth between homes, they’re in compliance with the stay-home order.
Both Morris and Milovich noted that April is typically not a big month for rentals and that many existing reservations had already canceled. Airbnb's offer to refund the fees on reservations made before the crisis began sparked a number of cancellations in Harbor Country, Morris said.
“April was dying on the vine anyway,” Milovich said. The across-the-board cancellation, he said, was a preventive measure designed to keep all properties in compliance with the governmental agencies’ letters.
Killips told Crain’s that short-term lodging would be considered essential in certain circumstances, such as a local hospital needing temporary housing for nurses brought in from other locations to help handle COVID-19 cases.
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Southwest Michigan shuts down short-term rentals - Crain's Chicago Business
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