Traveling to Rock Hill? Hosting? These new city rules could impact that next trip.
Rock Hill soon may allow home rentals with sites like Airbnb, but it’ll cost property owners.
Rock Hill City Council moved forward Feb. 24 with a new set of rules that would allow short-term rentals. Those rules would require business licenses and accommodations taxes that would be renewed annually. The rules would impact the more than 50 rental sites now operating in the city — despite their being illegal — and others to come.
“That type of activity is prohibited,” said Leah Youngblood, city planning and zoning manager. “We did look at some proposed regulations a few years ago, did not adopt them because we thought it was premature at the time. And so we’ve sort of been doing complaint-based code enforcement since then.”
The new rules still need a second approval by council.
Changes may come before then, something Councilman Kevin Sutton is counting on if he is to cast his vote for approval. He said the proposed rules still need details — from how far a property manager can live from the site to how homeowner associations can restrict rentals.
“There are far too many holes in it,” Sutton said.
Mayor John Gettys said he believes the new proposal is the right step. He said it would give the city better footing to address rental problems.
“If this passes we have a lot more tools in our tool chest than we do right now,” Gettys said.
Multiple short-term rental sites like Airbnb, Vrbo and HomeAway exist. Home or property owners list a room or a unit for guests, typically at lower rates than hotels would charge. Rock Hill planners define short-term rentals as less than 30 days. As of the recent council meeting, Youngblood said there were 52 rentals in city limits. Of them, 13 were investor-owned.
“They are, as you can see, all over, but generally tend to be clustered in areas that have more activities like in Riverwalk or in the downtown area,” Youngblood said.
Planning staff held two public workshops last fall. Youngblood said she heard pros of short-term rentals like how they help with sports tourism or create economical or safer choices for larger families. She heard how they can generate new accommodations tax on overnight stays and improve eviction options for unruly tenants compared to long-term renters, who have different property rights. Most rentals come through online sites, she said, that self-regulate through host and guest reviews.
“If you have a bad host or you have a bad guest, they’re not going to receive the ratings to be able to continue either hosting or staying as a guest somewhere,” Youngblood said.
She also heard cons -- noise complaints, loud parties, piled trash and parking problems among them.
The new plan would allow short-term rentals regardless of zoning district. The property owner wouldn’t be required to live on-site, and properties could host unlimited stays during the year. Owners or managers would have to pay for a business license as a hotel use and charge the 3% accommodations tax, money used on projects to promote tourism.
Sites would require an annual review by city planners.
Hosts couldn’t market or use sites as an event location or party house. If the owner doesn’t live there, the host couldn’t rent to multiple groups at the same time. Renters would be limited to two guests per bedroom, plus two more people. That means a host offering one bedroom could have four people, and a host with five bedrooms could have 12. Hosts in the downtown area would have to pay for a parking space or otherwise provide one for guests.
Rules also include details requiring hosts to maintain the home or apartment and yard, provide information on key city services to guests, list city permit numbers on rental websites and avoid using signs on the property advertising the rental.
Permits could be revoked if major issues arise. City staff would review problems as they arise to determine whether to revoke.
“We would look at either one really bad incident with widespread community impact, which we’ve had in a couple of cases, or three more moderate incidents,” Youngblood said.
Some issues still need resolution.
One is whether an owner who doesn’t live on site or the property management group representing the site has to be within a number of minutes or miles from the rental. The city wants someone in close proximity, Youngblood said, should noise or trash issues present problems. Another issue involves homeowner associations.
The proposed city rules state rentals have to be allowed, or unregulated, in homeowner association covenants, where they exist. The city wouldn’t allow rentals where homeowner association covenants restrict them.
The thought is, covenants often are difficult to change since they require a large percentage of homeowner votes and most covenants aren’t likely to address the relatively new trend in online short-term rentals.
“This is something new, and this is something that’s coming and it’s here, and if neighborhoods don’t want them they need to address it,” said Councilman John Black.
The proposed new rules also apply by rental, rather than by owner. Sutton has concern that multiple rentals with the same owner couldn’t be treated as one entity.
“Over the years we’ve had problem landlords in the city limits, and not always a way for us to deal with that real well,” he said. “To me, if we have someone doing short-term rentals and their properties are the ones around town constantly getting the police called on them and they’re not keeping them up, to me there should be a way that we just revoke their ability to do short-term rentals.”
Black said the accommodations tax issue is big with so many sports events hosted in Rock Hill. He’d still like details on how payment and enforcement would work for rentals.
“How do we track that?” Black said. “How do we know?”
Youngblood said that detail and others still need work.
As does the homeowner association question, where some on council wondered at the recent meeting whether associations would have time to review and potentially adjust covenants before a rental can post online and then be a grandfathered-in use even if the homeowner group doesn’t want it.
Youngblood believes the annual review will take care of that issue. The site wouldn’t be permitted for any year, she said, when it couldn’t show it’s within its homeowner restrictions. The proposed rules would allow neighborhoods to decide if they want to allow rentals.
“Neighborhoods are just going to have to decide individually how they want to handle it,” Youngblood said.
