Short term rental decision brings up larger questions

Posted 6/8/23

When does a rental become a business? If a single family home is the primary use allowed, can that home be an AirBnB?

The Park County Planning Department has settled on a short term rental being …

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Short term rental decision brings up larger questions

Posted

When does a rental become a business? If a single family home is the primary use allowed, can that home be an AirBnB?

The Park County Planning Department has settled on a short term rental being a commercial business — and a single family residence being defined as one in which the owners or long term renters live in — as a way to address issues on short term rentals, Planning Director Joy Hill said she and her staff determined following a "deep dive" into the regulations.

That fact came up Tuesday during a Park County Commissioners meeting on an appeal from a property owner in a neighborhood to use his main dwelling as a short term rental.

The question turned into: Would this decision set a precedent for the rest of the county? Or just this specific Planned Use Development?

In casting the deciding vote against the appeal (Commissioners Scott Mangold and Lloyd Thiel voted in favor), chair Dossie Overfield said what some others had said as well, that it was unique to the Planned Unit Development the subdivision was created under, which limited property uses to single family homes. Overfield said she had hoped to not have to make a vote as she is, along with a number of others of the public who spoke, a neighboring property owner to Randy Loberg, who had requested approval for the short term rental. Overfield does not live in the subdivision outside of Cody but has property bordering Loberg’s and legally had to vote as she would not benefit financially from the decision.

Hill said the sticking point in the department denying the property owner the ability of having his home used as a short term rental (he had initially been allowed to by a department staffer who hadn't known about the PUD) was that his primary residence could not be used in essence as a commercial enterprise.

After questions from commissioners, Hill said the change in the decision on Loberg came after staff looked deeper into the short term rental rules as the Park County Land Use plan closes in on completion. After finding the PUD, which is essentially a contract between the developer and the commissioners, Hill said they had to determine what the single family home use restriction meant in terms of the case.

"The primary use has to be a single family dwelling," Hill said of the PUD rules. "Does that mean a single family residence can be used for profit? We decided no."

A couple of Cody area realtors objected to the idea of a single family residence being classified as a home lived in long term by either a renter or owner.

"Obviously this could potentially be bigger than just Mr. Loberg. It's a very complex issue with a lot of emotion attached to it," said Cody real estate agent Janet Kempner, noting that the PUD did not specifically exclude short term rentals, as others have done. "This is really important that it's done right because it’s the tip of the iceberg."

Hill said in an interview after the meeting that the issue of how to, or if to, regulate short-term rentals in the county would be a major topic of discussion once the new land use plan is finalized and the work on regulations begins. The county had addressed short term rentals in 2019 and found some people opposed to all regulations, all short term rentals, though most opinions are somewhere in the middle of the issue, Hill said.

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