At Wednesday’s Chapel Hill Town Council meeting, a resolution was unanimously passed to help regulate short-term rentals and ensure safety for property owners. The regulations cover units listed on platforms like Airbnb and VRBO.
A short-term rental, or STR, is a rental unit for a period of fewer than 30 days. These properties had been scrutinized by town officials and community members because they were largely unregulated.
Guidance for the future of these properties came on Wednesday as the council passed an update to an ordinance in the Land Use Management Ordinance. The new regulations require permits for all STRs and limit the number of Dedicated STRs.
A Dedicated STR is a dwelling used entirely for rental purposes without a primary resident.
These units are now only allowed in high-density, mixed-use and commercial areas. Existing Dedicated STRs will have 18 months to change to either residential use or long-term rentals.
Several Chapel Hill town council members, including Mayor Pam Hemminger, pushed for a faster timeline on the updated ordinance.
“We would like to see if there’s something that could be implemented a little quicker,” Hemminger said. “Whatever that looks like, or best practices we would appreciate so we can actually examine where we are in the spring. That would be wonderful.”
The resolution also allows owner-occupied STRs, where a resident lives at the property for a majority of the year, to exist in all neighborhoods. Owner-occupied STRs are allowed so long as those properties meet neighborhood criteria and follow operational requirements such as occupancy limits and parking restrictions.
Operating an STR is dependent upon the neighborhood because homeowner associations are allowed to be more restrictive than town regulations.
The council is set to evaluate the progress of the STR regulations in Spring of 2022 following a public education campaign and the availability of STR permits to the community.
Council member Hongbin Gu urged community members to speak up about issues they see with short-term rentals because there is a need for better enforcement data.
“I want to encourage the people, if you do see safety issues, parking issues, noise issues please feel free to come to the council and report that,” Gu said. “We need that data in order for us to make reasonable regulations.”
Gu and others said the town should aim to find a better way to enforce and report disturbances when it comes to short-term rentals.
Discussions on this process took more than two years; something Council member Amy Ryan applauded the process as the culmination of compromise and hard work by the Short-Term Rental Task Force.
“I’d just like to thank everyone who has been so involved in this process and we’ve gotten an amazing amount of feedback, we’ve heard from lots of different parts in our community,” Ryan said. “Thanks again to the task force that got together and did a lot of the good groundwork on this ordinance.”
The short-term rental discussion was not without controversy. Community members received postcards warning of rezoning for short-term rentals. Hemminger acknowledged the anonymous postcard campaign as a tactic of citizen agitation and misinformation.
“It’s distressed quite a number of people and there was misinformation on that postcard,” Hemminger said. “The council has never talked about rezoning neighborhoods to allow dedicated STRs. That has not been a course we have been on for the past two years.”
Anonymous postcards with misinformation about STRs were sent to residents throughout Chapel Hill. (Photo via John Rees)
Other councilmembers also expressed frustration at the postcards saying it made their jobs unnecessarily difficult. The postcards warned residents of a need to “keep our neighborhoods safe.”
Town officials said the goal of the ordinance is to ensure overall public safety and to protect the welfare of adjacent property owners.
For more information on short-term rentals in Chapel Hill click here.
Featured photo via the Town of Chapel Hill
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