Houston City Council's quality of life committee is meeting today to hear from citizens about short-term rentals, or STRs (AirBnB, VRBO, etc.). All but one ordinance enacted by a city in Texas limiting or otherwise regulating STRs has been ruled unconstitutional on property rights grounds, yet here we are with Houston trying to join in on the exercise in futility.
What is interesting to me is when I got the slides the City is presenting at the meeting it's clear they are trying to scare people into thinking STRs are some boogeyman that causes rampant problems across the city. They used data compiling raw numbers of 311 nuisance calls and 911 calls within 300 feet of an address known or believed to be used as a STR. In a normal neighborhood like the Heights, 300 feet includes a LOT of houses, and in many cases businesses as well.
However, the real interesting part of the city's presentation is the actual number of complaints made to City Council members about STRs. Before I give that number, I'll give some context:
2.5 million people in Houston
More than 1 million parcels
~11,000 STRs
27 total complaints. Twenty-seven. And 10 of them were at a single grouping of townhouses.
Every city that has enacted such an ordinance had a complaint-based enforcement mechanism. With so few complaints, there's not really anything to enforce. Further, an interesting fact that does not appear to be considered in the city's presentation is just how ineffective these ordinances are at obtaining (or forcing) registration/licensing or STRs. Austin enacted their STR ordinance in 2012. Fourteen years later, an estimated 80 percent of STRs are unlicensed.
Leave it to city government to waste time and resources on an unenforceable solution to a problem that does not exist.
What is interesting to me is when I got the slides the City is presenting at the meeting it's clear they are trying to scare people into thinking STRs are some boogeyman that causes rampant problems across the city. They used data compiling raw numbers of 311 nuisance calls and 911 calls within 300 feet of an address known or believed to be used as a STR. In a normal neighborhood like the Heights, 300 feet includes a LOT of houses, and in many cases businesses as well.
However, the real interesting part of the city's presentation is the actual number of complaints made to City Council members about STRs. Before I give that number, I'll give some context:
2.5 million people in Houston
More than 1 million parcels
~11,000 STRs
27 total complaints. Twenty-seven. And 10 of them were at a single grouping of townhouses.
Every city that has enacted such an ordinance had a complaint-based enforcement mechanism. With so few complaints, there's not really anything to enforce. Further, an interesting fact that does not appear to be considered in the city's presentation is just how ineffective these ordinances are at obtaining (or forcing) registration/licensing or STRs. Austin enacted their STR ordinance in 2012. Fourteen years later, an estimated 80 percent of STRs are unlicensed.
Leave it to city government to waste time and resources on an unenforceable solution to a problem that does not exist.
