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MORATORIUM!
The beat goes on. ‘Clouds keep pounding a rhythm through my brain… Charleston was once the rage – uh huh…
South Carolina has a problem. It’s a Hawaii problem. It’s also a Madison and Lake Geneva problem. The ‘beat to quarters’ kind of attention being paid to the rise of short-term housing is becoming mainstream and beginning to affect all the most beautiful and seemingly attractive residence areas all over the United States. What’s going on in South Carolina that’s somewhat new but not unexpected? Hedge funds have decided that there’s money to be made in short term housing. The funds are moving into South Carolina and buying up great chunks of Charleston’s most attractive and expensive residential areas. The funds are converting these homes to short- and long-term rentals and the current residents not selling out are getting every angrier. In Madison the homeowners stopped the short-term market in its tracks, making it a requirement that a property owner be on premises and stay for the extent of all rentals.
Lake Geneva is hoping to do a bit of the same. Spyro Condos, former mayor of Lake Geneva for many terms and current sitting member of the police and fire commission as well as president of the Business Improvement District (commonly called the BID), got up at the city council meeting held last Monday and spoke vehemently about what the city has to do in order to take care of its citizens and residents to accommodate and moderate the developing nightmare of short term rental expansion in the area. A full thirty percent of the homes sold during the last 12 months have been sold to turn into short-term rentals. Almost all of those rentals are in residential areas not normally known for wild parties or dense parking masses of vacation people.
Wisconsin law, although very expansive when it comes to allowing short term rentals, allows for a one-year moratorium on licensing new ones until proper city ordinances can be enacted in order to monitor, tax, and control them. The City of Lake Geneva has not dedicated ordinances set up to do this so Spyro laid out a path that the city leaders could follow in order not to face the wrath that is likely to be expressed in next year’s elections. Spyro spoke ‘off agenda,’ so there were no responses from the deadly silent current leadership. Neither Mayor Mayor, nor her attached Joanie the Diner cohort had anything to say, which is uncommon, to say the least. At least, the leadership didn’t force Spyro to sit down and shut up, which has happened before many times when people have tried to go ‘off agenda.’
For that restraint, the council does deserve a tip of the Geneva Shore Report hat. Speedo put the idea out there and, hopefully, the citizenship of the local population will respond and begin working to convince or force the leadership in their districts to respond to what he proposed. The city attorney can be counted on to do nothing and it’s not likely the current ‘cabal’ running elective and appointed top offices will do much of anything at all. There are some short-term rentals, like those owned by Bill Briggs, the same man who owns the silver jewelry operations of great quality and merit in the city, that are truly gems to be desired as short-term rentals, even in residential areas, but Bill is quality and local where most short-term rental owners are not (think Chicago and hedges funds). A moratorium would give everyone time to sort out the current mess of insufficient inspectors, proper fees, and fines, as well as locations allowed for these rather new entities.
