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SHORT TERM JUNK, HERE TO STAY

Dallas, San Francisco, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Chattanooga, Tennessee have all banned short-term rentals. Montreal, Amsterdam, and more internationally have also banned them completely. In the Hawaiian Islands, it’s a ten thousand dollar fine for trying to operate one that’s not registered, and that’s for a first offense. There the owners cannot rent them out for less than thirty days, either.

So, what is Lake Geneva doing? This lake wonderland that gets more and more attention from Chicago residents is allowing short-term rentals. The penalty for a first-time ‘major’ violation is $500, the second is $1000 and banned for six months from renting and the third is $5000 and banned for a year. The minimum time to rent is nine days, not thirty like in Hawaii. Minor violations are those where the party becomes so raucous that the police have to be called by the residents living around the short-term rental, and a police report has to be written. It takes three of those police call ‘minor’ cases to qualify as one major violation.

Why is Lake Geneva sitting back and not paying attention to what the ‘big guys’ out there are doing and then asking why they are taking such drastic measures? Short-term rentals have been found to have major negative effects on the communities where they are allowed. These well-appointed homes, with front and side yards converted into concrete parking lots, are placed only in residential neighborhoods. They hurt nearby hotels as so many people stay at the short-term rentals and not the hotels and that’s because of expense and also the fact that the hotels have to have such things as annual fire inspections (Lake Geneva decided to waive all fire inspections for short term rentals), and identity paperwork on all those who stay at their places (Lake Geneva only requires the identity of the person renting, not the guests).

The reason for the brutal banning of short-term rentals in these major markets and cities is that they are lousy for those communities as a result. They all have had enough exposure to come to know that the short-term rentals destroy the residential structure of their communities over time and also the rentals act, in the hotel and motel business like Uber and Lyft have acted in the taxi business (which is lousy unmonitored and transport without the necessary documents and insurance and background checks that the real taxi’s had to have because over the years it was decided that the public needed all that stuff more than just cheaper ride).

Oh, and what about the six months when the homes are basically all vacant because nobody comes to rent those homes in the dead of a Wisconsin winter? They sit there, empty, as targets for those creatures out there who may be roaming in the night. Just what sort of danger does that bring to a residential neighborhood? And what about the 25 miles the manager, not the owner, has to live from the place in question? The owner can live in Timbuktu for all the city cares. The manager does not have to live 25 miles away or less, by the way.  No, the manager has to have a ‘base’ no more than 25 miles away.  Nobody is talking about what a base is.  Todd Krause, the city attorney, and an advisory committee made up mostly of short-term rental owners, tried their hardest to come up with a great short-term rental plan.

You are reading the results of their work, written above in this article.  You decide how you feel.  The good news is that the ‘ball’ got kicked down the road for approval until next month.