Good afternoon. That was that's better. I'm Howard DeVall. I'm the city council at large and this is the first meeting of the short-term rental committee and I'm joined by two of our council members Will Brennan who represents district three and Tina Herbert who represents district one. This is the first of several meetings that we will be having dealing with the issue of short-term rentals and we hope to come to a reasonable compromise for both the neighborhoods in the city and the and the owners of the short-term rentals and the investors in short-term rentals. So don't think that we have to do it all tonight. Our goal tonight is to work from four to six. We have three short presentations that will kind of add to the information that we have to deal with on this this committee but I hope to adjourn at six o'clock and we will have if you don't get to speak tonight you will certainly get other opportunities to speak in the next few months as we hash this issue out probably in different areas of the city because different areas of the city are impacted by short-term rentals in different ways. This committee has been over the course of an election so one of the members that helped us in the beginning Sam Davis has now retired from the council and Tina has taken his place on the council. Will Brennan and I have worked with the staff to come up with a draft ordinance that we will be discussing in a few minutes. We used different ordinances to look at as we came up with the draft that we will be discussing tonight. Many of the cities in South Carolina are dealing with this issue right now Charleston, Greenville, Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Buford. We looked at Asheville, we looked at Raleigh. So we have tried to look at all the different ways that cities regulate short-term rentals and find the ones that would be most suitable for the city of Columbia and the clientele that we have here in the city of Columbia. The draft is just a starting place. We have met with Dave Bergman and he has given us some good suggestions on modifying and we have taken some of his suggestions and have modified the draft ordinance but don't think that what happens tonight is going to be the final version. We want to come up with something that works for everybody if we can. I think it would be helpful if I kind of explain a few of the terms that we're going to be using tonight in short-term rentals and I got my information from my documents on the municipal association website, a short guide to short-term rentals. The main issue I think that we will have eventually is an owner-occupied short-term rental which is in the 4% tax category or a non-owner-occupied short-term rental which is in the 6% category and this is the way the state law deals with those classifications. There are three different classifications that deal with short-term rentals in the state law and the first is the rental of a primary residential home for up to 14 days a year. So an owner of a piece of property that they are the owner-occupied 4% owner of that property and rent out their properties for 14 days and they will be exempt from any taxes, business license or state accommodations, sale tax or accommodation tax unless they use a platform to rent the building they're dwelling for that 14 days but if they do it on their own they've got 14 days that will not change their 4% tax status. The second category is rental of the primary residential home which is the 4% owner-occupied home for between 15 and 72 days and if you do between 15 and 72 days then you are responsible as the private owner for collecting all the the taxes that are associated with the rental of the short-term rental and remitting them to the proper authorities and you still retain your 4% tax status as the owner-occupied thing so you could go up to 72 years 72 days a year and still retain your 4% tax status. Then we come up to rentals of second homes and investment properties. Owners of these properties pay property taxes based on 6% assessment of the value of the property. All taxes including business license, state accommodation, sales and local accommodation taxes are owed so that's where you're getting into the investor properties and the non-owner-occupied. So those are the terms that we're going to be using frequently in the next few months as we discuss that the owner-occupied and non-owner-occupied status of the property and how they are treated differently both by the state tax laws and by our proposals in the. All right I think we're ready to begin. You don't have any questions? Our first presenter tonight is Bill Ellen who is president and CEO of the Midlands Authority for Convention, Sports and Tourism and Bill is going to give us an overview of the status of STRs in the Midlands and in the City of Columbia. Thank you Councilman DeVall and Councilwoman Herbert and Councilmember Brett and I appreciate the invitation to join you today. Short-term rental is something that probably not many of us in the room knew a lot about 10 years ago. I paid much attention to it, certainly didn't understand the impact that it would make in the hospitality industry that it does today. Our goal at Experience Club is to attract visitors to our city and help them to have a positive experience so they'll spend money and they'll want to come back. Many of our visitors look for alternate accommodations other than traditional hotels and short-term rentals meet that need for many of our visitors. So we are in no way opposed to short-term rental but it is a major player in our industry now and it's here to stay. In 2007 two guys that were college roommates after college moved to San Francisco and both had jobs that were barely making money to pay a rent but groceries on the table and they that summer were concerned about making the upcoming rent payment when one of them picked up the local San Francisco paper and read an article about a industrial design conference that was coming to town and the article focused on so many of the attendees were having problems finding hotel accommodations the city hotels were booked. One of them came up with an idea said hey let's take that blow-up mattress blow it up and put it on our living room floor advertise it to these attendees that can't find hotel rooms and offer a complimentary breakfast which is what they did for the three or four night stay that people were looking for and to their surprise they immediately sold a blow-up mattress and a complimentary breakfast on the floor of their apartment not only did they sell it they turned down over 20 people that had responded to their ad so they knew they were on to something they formed a website and began signing up companies that also offered short-term rentals. By 2009 their first company was called Air Bread and Back Bread Company. By 2009 they were being very successful they changed their name to Airbnb and by 2013 they had signed up about a half a million other short-time rental clients that also offered rooms to visitors and they were renting they've served over nine million hotel rooms by 2013. By 2017 they had a value on Airbnb at $31 billion. 2019 Airbnb was renting worldwide two million hotel two million overnight rooms every night two million rooms every night so obviously this is metting need for visitors that need overnight accommodations um a lot of us don't realize I didn't until uh the last year or so we've always subscribed to smith travel research which provides data and research of statistics on hotel occupancies and average rates and we've always subscribed to um to the star report two years ago we started subscribing to the company that offers air DNA and they do similar tracking and data for short-term rentals and currently there are um through March of this year there's 614 active short-term rentals in city zip codes um there are many uh in in the zip codes outside the city in particular around Lake Murray but just in the city zip codes there are 614 active through March of this year um through those three months for 2022 those 614 rental units have generated three and a half million dollars in revenue last year for the entire 2021 short-term rentals generated $21,946,000 in revenue um as I said we we support short-term rentals they do provide a a wanted need to our guest I've been in a number of hotel meetings with local hoteliers they realize short-term rentals is here to stay um they're not against it they would I guess their major concern is they would like to make sure there's a there's an equal playing field and um many short-term rental companies locally and nationally are already collecting some form of tax or fees um but there are many many that are other than maybe a cleanup fee are not collecting the same taxes that hoteliers collect if that were the case in short-term rentals in the city zip codes collected the exact tax that the hotels are collecting uh 2021 would have generated a little over 2.6 million dollars so it is a significant amount of revenue generated a significant amount of accommodations taxes and other fees that are available and I'm not I'm not insinuating that some of them are not paying that some of them are doing the right thing or whatever they're following whatever structure is in place and are collecting these fees but but I do know there's money being left on the table that um certainly I'm sure the city could find use for and the hoteliers would also feel that it's an equal playing ground if they if they collect the same taxes that they're collecting so that's just a brief overview of our involvement in short-term rentals again we uh we have many visitors um that are coming to Columbia they're staying in short-term rentals the majority of those 614 rentals are located in zip codes uh 29201 and 29205 uh but and if you do the math you know 614 uh rental units into basically 22 million dollars it averages out about 5700 dollars per rental now we have a number of rentals in the city zip codes that are generating well over 100 thousand the highest one that I've seen in the reports I've looked at are generating 175 thousand a year in rental so you can see what a significant player short-term rentals um are in our in our market so we're here just to provide provide provide any information answer any questions that we can and give support to short-term rentals because they service our visitors coming uh just like our hoteliers do so we just want to make sure their experience is is positive that they want to come back and at same time we want to make sure that we would like to make sure that the playing fields for both short-term rentals and hoteliers was equal so um with that I'll answer any questions that that I might build builders air DNA give you the ability to look at a specific uh rental you said that it's it's very specific you can actually pull up and see a visual picture of the rental unit where it's located the address and the amount of revenue that individual property is generating so it's very very specific and um there are companies there's a company I think it's called hospitality solutions and I'm not exactly sure of that what the name but they provide a service for many municipalities across the country that help manage short-term rental for the cities in terms of setting up the structure collecting or sitting out letters on city letterhead to all operators letting them to know what the structure might be um what's expected and they manage all that for municipalities for an annual fee and I'll be happy to get that correct name if there's any interest there but um a lot of information out there quick question bill and thanks for that information um you said the average bet $5600 a year um well I'm just I'm basing that on in 2021 there was just under 22 in revenue based on the 614 active rental units today that's what the average would be do you have that same kind of parallel statistic for the average number for a hotel room in the city of columbia per year um I have the um smith travel research provides similar data it's not it's actually not broken down as well as air dna I can tell you um what um oxys and average rates and rate per available rooms averages in a destination as well as you break it down into downtown hotels versus outland areas um not not quite as precise as air dna but the but the hotel information we can get pretty precise on um vacancy rates right yes can you do that same what what what are we seeing in the the the short term market when it comes to vacancy rates for that same yeah I'll have to I don't have that fee for you I know they probably do break that down like that um for example the most recent numbers in hotel actually is running about 52 percent in the city versus uh the same time last year which was in january the data was about 56 percent so it's about four percentage points behind um I'm sorry not last year but 2019 so we're measuring everything now pre-covid and yeah to the end of current time so but yeah I'll be happy to get any data that I can get for you perfect thanks Bill okay where I'm getting and Bill I'm sorry just for my clarification you said that these were the zip codes city zip codes were you able to break it down to ensure that they were actually in them well I I tell you zip codes that I've got I've got the only reason I say this you know we have those doughnut holes and we have a lot of um properties that are they have a like for instance two nine two oh three is a city zip code but a lot of it isn't in city okay because I do have that included two nine two oh three uh that zip code generated so far this year a hundred and thirty thousand five hundred and seventy seven dollars um but I've got two oh one three four five six nine ten twelve twenty three and twenty nine or zip codes that air DNA gave us and I'll be happy to share that I'll give you a copy there's an article that was in the post in Korea on March the 13th of this year a few weeks ago uh that's got a lot of statistics in it but I'm not going to read them because I think David's got got some of his I'll let him his presentation and I want to bring those out I'd also like to introduce my mayor's fellow who has gotten into the room she did a lot of research for me on this particular thing Olivia Gillespie from Clinton North Carolina she's a freshman at USC studying political science who wants to go into municipal government so I'm very glad to have her with us tonight she's getting ready to have her exams and go back to North Carolina for the summer but thank you for being here tonight with me thank you Bill thank you Howard do I get to recognize my mayor's miss Alexis is back there too and she's been helping me um research this I think sitting together yes are y'all comparing notes back there entropy what's her name Alexis smirks okay Alexis thank you from Phoenix Arizona Phoenix Arizona all right our next speaker is Dave Bergman uh David has been I wanted to know whether his type was CEO and Wendy his wife might be president of the company says they both work together so uh David and Wendy are both experts on this and uh I think we are interested in his perspective on what we're trying to do thank you Dave thank you thank you um and really appreciate the opportunity to to contribute to the discussion and uh share the data I've personally collected from our rentals and I think this will provide a little more information on the industry here in Colombia so that we can kind of go forward from here um before I get started just a little bit of background I'm from Colombia lived here all my life we live in cotton town my wife Wendy over here and our son Rowan and we also own and operate this small business Heartwood furnish homes it's based in Elmwood park and we have an office there um I have a master's in economics and I've worked as a data analyst and actuator at a local insurance company and I was there for eight years before I started this business and we've been doing this for a couple years now um we have six full-time employees 15 cleaners many who are in this room today and plan to speak uh all in all over the past year we've hosted a little over 2500 stays for people traveling and living in Colombia um I'm going to touch on three points today that I think are important to share with the general public and also the council um first is the size of the rental market which Bill already touched on I'm going to just kind of reiterate some of those points um also a background of of who host and guests are um and why they're staying in short-term rentals and then finally current and future regulations um the latest market data that I'm working from is February 2022 from air DNA it's a similar you know the same data set at that time I showed 524 entire home short-term rentals that's distinct from the rooms there are a lot of people who just rent a room in their house I'm thinking of this through the lens primarily as people who are renting entire units or buildings or homes um this data is inclusive of rentals in forest acres like 29209 I believe and Richland County to your point earlier and many of those are not inside city limits I would estimate that the actual number is probably closer to 450 maybe um and that's about 1% of the total housing stock in Colombia um those 524 entire home rentals equate to about 1100 bedrooms if you just multiply out by the number of bedrooms each unit has and then provides for about 2200 occupants of these rentals about two thirds are smaller units just studios one bedrooms and two bedroom apartments and just 9% of those are larger houses with four more bedrooms um demand for short-term rentals increased significantly over the past two years it doubled from about 3000 nights booked per month to 6000 nights per book per month much of that increase is consistent with national trends we're seeing it in other markets too where short-term rentals have increased in popularity during the pandemic because of the self-check-in options and the ability to have extended stays for travelers who want to work and cook from inside the home and have less interaction outside um note that short-term rentals make up about 20 of the total demand for lodging in the u.s and 60 of those reservations are millennials in february 2022 columbia short-term rentals brought in a total of about a million dollars so february this year a million dollars in revenue bill sounds like he was being closer to 21 million but i just extrapolated that out 1 million times 12 to get 12 million and assume that's about what we're going to see um not included that is a 10.27% tax that airbnb and drbo take uh from the guest and they remit that on behalf of post at the state and county level my understanding is that they do this the sheer number of local governments i think there's 20 000 in the u.s airbnb and drbo do not remit those taxes at the local level it's up to us this individual host to collect or remit taxes that are administered at the local level what is included in the 12 million dollars is the cleaning and maintenance fees which i think are important to address um that's what's being collected by operators to get the short-term rental ready for the next guest cleaning fees account for about 10 of that total revenue for about 1.2 million dollars in february typically pay this fee to a local cleaning company or individual cleaners and they'll perform those services um i'd estimate there's about 50 full-time cleaning jobs just based on the wages that a cleaner would make times that amount of money um now also share some information about hosting guests so we can better understand who are the two parties that are engaging in this the rental activity airbnb estimates that about 80 of hosts just have a single listing the average number of listings per host is 1.3 meaning that most listings are not operated by a management company like ours they're instead self-operated by a single individual or owner what i've found is that usually hosts fall into like one of three categories you have hosts who are staying in columbia for work or school or have some other reason to be here and they've purchased a rental so that they can personally use it while in town but they're not there all the time so you know they're they're renting it when they're not there we also have hosts that are renting a guest house an additional dwelling or additional unit in a duplex um as a means to offset their mortgage and make their housing more affordable and then finally you have hosts who are using the short-term rental income much like long-term rental income as an investment to support their family and save for retirement i think it's important to also look at the guest profile and understand why people are visiting and staying in short-term rentals here i reviewed our data from those 2,500 stays over the past year and found the following um average length of stay was 5.5 days by comparison average length of stay for hotels is 1.8 so people are staying for in short-term rentals about three times as long 44 percent of stays in columbia are greater than a week and 26 percent of stays are greater than two weeks meaning that columbia has a very large demand for those longer extended stays relative to other nearby cities about half of the stays are for people just coming in town to go specifically to an event or visit sites the most common are for jackson graduations university of south carolina events like commencement ceremonies next week and parents day usc athletics we also see a lot of people coming for riverbanks congregate national park and then to go to shows and concerts at our local urbinas in the township um those do tend to be our shorter stays um the remaining 50 percent of stays are related to work family or life changing events these tend to be the longer stays that are happening and the most common kind of categories are travel nurses and doctors who are working at local hospitals like prisma and they have contracts for a specific duration military families who are here on temporary assignments for for jackson new columbia residents who are moving to this area and they're using short-term rentals as kind of a stop gap while they explore the area and find the place that they want to call home we see a lot of current residents who live in the neighborhoods who require temporary housing due to home renovations that could be dangerous if they're there or home loss due to the flood or fire or life changing events just like divorce where they need a separate space we've observed that extended stay guests typically have a preference for short-term rentals as we see in the numbers because they have the full time the full kitchens for cooking laundry facilities multiple bedrooms for kids backyards that are suitable for pets and they tend to be just just simply more affordable at this time rentals fall into the same guidelines and requirements as long-term rentals and we must adhere to the rental housing regulations ordinance that went into effect in 2016 the ordinance requires us to obtain a rental permit for each unit that is rented regardless of length of stay that we plan to rent it for of note in the ordinances we must have an active rental permit and pay a $25 annual fee our properties must comply with the minimum safety standards such as having working smoke detectors we must have a designated agent within 45 miles from the rental property to respond to request an emergency needs we must adhere to a list of regulations in that ordinance otherwise we can receive a citation and those violations will accumulate points against our rental permits and those violations include things like not discarding trash not removing animal waste violating noise ordinances or ordinances or safety requirements and then the accumulation of a certain number of points within 12 months I think it's 15 will result in the loss of your permit so that's the teeth that kind of go behind that and our more than 2,500 stays in the past year we haven't received a single citation and I've talked to a lot of hosts over this past year and I'm not aware of any other hosts that have received a citation code enforcement to my knowledge has has not released data yet to suggest that short-term rentals have received citations and we have no data to support that they are over represented with respect to rental permit violations as a whole but that would be the type of data that I think would help in this conversation to understand where these violations are happening as we look to other cities for guidance and a suitable framework for our city I think you'll find that a lot of those cities look like have regulations that are similar to what are I just described they create a rental permit with annual fees require designated agents they have a point or strike system for infractions and they set penalties that act as teeth to deal with repeat offenses from rental owners so we're gathered here today to talk about short-term rentals and new regulations but I think we need further research and analysis to say why or even if the current policy we have today is effective and I think to go along with that why we need to start from a new framework instead of build upon the existing framework that might just confuse owners we've seen we have seen the results of the poor results of stringent short-term rental regulations like the some of the ones proposed here today that have been in effect in Greenville and Charleston for years what we see in those numbers is that the policies have not been effective at limiting the supply of short-term rental because that demand is there in fact the supply continues to increase while those cities spend significant amounts of public dollars to hire headcount for enforcement and hire third-party consultants and the hundreds of thousands of dollars like we heard earlier from Bill just to locate short-term rental property addresses which are not available on air DNA meanwhile honest and hardworking hosts like the ones in this room they're going to be forced out of those cities and the bad actors who are willing to operate illegally have stepped up to meet demand in those cities today the people who are here today representing Columbia's short-term rental industry they're good people we're neighbors we care about the community we support our local economy we know the studies have shown that short-term rentals foster parallel development and nearby properties and retail establishments creating jobs and adding value to the entire community I think we have the right people in this room and stakeholders to help expand and close any gaps within our current ordinance so that we can continue to foster that growth in our community while addressing the concerns of our neighbors I think we all look forward to working with city council and our community to develop a fair and reasonable policy framework that's going to work for all parties thank you David that was an excellent presentation a couple of comments from me before I asked my colleagues a travel dot travel doctors and travel nurses normally would rent for over 30 days with me they would yep yep so they would not be covered by this ordinance if you're going over 30 days you're not they wouldn't be a short-term rental because about a normal rental problems well yeah but a point I would make there is that the reason we don't go into it saying I want a nurse in our place we put our short-term rentals out there on air bnb and if they choose to come to us with the three months stay that's great if we say no short-term rentals no air bnb we would just take those units away and you know do something else with them they wouldn't have those accommodations so it's not like we would just they would still be there and they would be exclusively for nurses right yeah yeah we will let you comment save your comment when you can get up here and be registered David one other thing in the article that I have cited from the post in courier you quoted saying the whole purpose of short-term rentals is that people that they are people's homes I would agree with you a hundred percent that's that's what one of my goals is that they are people's homes that they are willing to put up a short-term rentals following the law so I'm glad you quoted that so I can I don't see your point but they're not investors they're people's home that's what well that's what the whole business started with people written out their homes for the masters or or the heritage or football games okay and and then now the investors have come in and got into the business because of the the money involved and that's the problem I think a lot of people here just you know we're just people in the neighborhoods too um I don't think we're these scary investors compromise along those lines I just needed clarification um as a mother of a millennial um only does Airbnb's for her personal business as these kids are growing up um but you gave us statistic 20 percent of the demand of rentals are used where you say that is short-term rentals and then you said something about 60 percent yes millennials yeah I pulled that was a Airbnb um statistic that I pulled from their website it was actually that the exact figure was 19 percent I found it to 20 but 19 percent of the overall lodging in the US is being met by Airbnb specifically and then the what is the 60 percent 60 percent of the reservations are um millennials okay thank you Will yes David thank you so much for the continued wonderful information you've been sharing with us um you know it's very important for the city of columbian richland county to continue the wonderful bond we have with for jackson can you speak to the the the numbers of short-term rentals that are used by the families that come to graduations it's it's it's thousands of future soldiers uh weekly monthly is there any data you can share with that particular user group um with us I did not specifically gather that but that's something I can do between this meeting and the next one I can go through our our stays over the last year and try and find out what that would be wonderful our military families but I do know that we those uh graduation ceremonies are weekly I can't remember the exact number of weeks per year but it's it's every literally every thursday okay yeah large families come into to see their yes their loved ones yeah absolutely perfect um any data you can provide um if it's available be wonderful uh between now and the next meeting absolutely thanks David thank you David now we have david hatcher who is columbia housing official mayor glad to have you with us uh columbia housing official and chief code enforcement officer for the city of columbia he will go through the proposed article the ordinance that is in draft form right now good afternoon members of council miss wilson again for those that don't know me david hatcher and we charge with the code enforcement division in the city of columbia which is under the police department I thank you for the time to present this to you today oh thank you for this thing out short-term rentals are for strs as as we've been mentioning are a growing concern in our community and they were never really fully addressed when we passed the rental ordinance in 2016 typical issues we have with strs are noise and public safety issues specifically ordinance compliance heavy traffic trash parking issues offensive behavior and over occupancy currently the existing rental ordinance does not regulate str specifically however non-owner occupied strs are considered rentals by ordinance as mr bergman mentioned um and unfortunately we have not historically tracked str since not all were required to register we don't currently track what's ones or strs which ones are not I know everybody's already quoted a bunch of stats um I also pulled some stats from air dna um my stats are mostly the free version you can guess that's probably not as accurate as uh mr ellens and mr bergman's but what I found um what I found the uh um there are 685 strs according to air dna now that's the columbia area and I think it's very discovered some of that's probably outside of the city limits I don't know the exact amount of city limits um it was showing some of those are the 80 or the entire home for rent um it was shown an average daily rate of 151 dollars 67 occupancy rate uh majority are one and three bed one two three bedrooms and it was showing that there's 11 growth in the first quarter of 2022 this is the map I took from air dna's website um you can kind of see how they're spread out throughout the city um you can see a concentration actually within where the sea limits would be this is the zoomed in area to show you where they're at again I don't know the accuracy of this it was from the air dna website the free whatever free data you can get anybody who goes there a quick search of other um south calana cities I think councilman deval mentioned a few of them charleston view for ringville mount pleasant folly beach and I'm sure there are several others already have an str ordinance in place now to the actual ordinance the proposed str ordinance before you today requires an all short-term permit the permit would be would be renewed annually on july 1st this ordinance requires that anyone who owns or operates an str can ensure it does not disturb the neighbors it requires a safety inspection by city staff and the application must include a contact information for a person available on a 24-hour um day call basis for any major issues that come up under this proposal non-owner occupied strs would be prohibited in residential districts defined by the new zoning ordinance section 17 3-2 3.2 which is the the table that has the that lists what those are uh transitional they would not be allowed in transitional conservation districts um reserve districts single family districts two family districts the mill village district and the residential mixed use districts the proposed the proposed str ordinance identifies minimum life safety and sanitation standards for the most part standards for the most part these standards are already approved standards by the city ordinances and similar to what we use in our rental ordinance that we've already have in place with the exception of this ordinance requires an evacuation plan carbon monoxide detectors and a sprinkler system for non-owner occupied units there are some proposed fees in this ordinance the annual application fee would be $50 there'd be a hundred dollar registration fee for owner occupied um and 500 registration $500 registration fee for non-owner occupied lastly this proposed ordinance is designed to ultimately hold the property owners of an str accountable for the tenants actions and behavior and can be revoked if there are continued violations violations include um providing false information failure to register and violation of any applicable ordinances or city laws the str owner will be provided with um in the event of an action of a violation the str owner will be provided with a warning um if there are two more warnings in 12 month period the str can be revoked the permit can be revoked if the str permit is revoked they can appeal to the city manager uh the city manager has the final decision to say so and what happens with that that's that's a quick summary and introduction of the rental ordinance the first draft is any questions i'm happy to try to answer this David um one of the things you mentioned was over all you can see is a problem yes sir would they be limited to the same three people for for dwelling that our families and single family zone areas they should be because based on the zoning requirements that would require that's already in place it would have to be yes sir the three per residential housing three per unit no more than three unrelated to us per unit David thanks for this information so we've heard there's somewhere between 680 and 450 short-term rentals in the city of columbia today do you and i don't know how available this information is it's probably going to take some time for research how many of those 680 to 450 actually have rental permits uh now is that something that is easy to pull up it sounds like you can't find the exact address on the airbnb sites um i just say that because i i'd i'd love to know the addresses to know if there are issues truly um that are consistent i know there's wonderful property managers uh that have great short-term rentals um so just having a metric as we move forward over the next couple meetings would be great to to look forward and look back um with with the police department to see you know have any have any nuisance calls been to whatever address as a short-term rental but just some information i'd like you to to pull together as we move forward um with this with this issue yes sir thanks david from you know yes i do have some questions um going back to the safety inspection do we do safe and this is just me asking do we do safety inspections for our under our rental ordinance we do not do the inspection we have it set up to where um people have to do a checklist they do that it's kind of a self checklist and they have to submit that as part of the application process and it's sort of like that to um sign it certifying that they they're meeting those minimum requirements the reason why we wouldn't do you have any particular um i'm just wondering why don't we do the same thing it may be a silly question but why not apply the same thing for um for the short-term rentals i mean that's certainly something we should look into in this process and make sure we're consistent with the two ordinances problem okay and i i'm just trying and i'm trying to make life easy well not easy but i know how hard it is when we um implement new ordinances the other thing i got a lot of things just questions i'm the new person so i get to ask a lot of questions all right so when we look at prohibited in residential districts defined by section 17 dash 3.2 um what percentage of the city with this fee like give me a idea of what percentage of the city could be used for short-term rentals and like where could they could is it we tell my 50% and we tell my 5% of the city that i'd probably have to get back to you and i don't know specifically i can i could probably get that information i'm sure 17 days three dash this is 17 dash three dash two about two is the definition for residential right and so what i'm trying to figure out is if they can't if they must be owner-occupied in this area then what space do we have for non owner-occupied yeah but i'm looking at this i'll try to get that information but i can get that and only because i i i just don't know so i'm not trying to be um with david you know me um so also on the short-term rental ordinance sprinkler system for non owner-occupied is there a particular reason while we would have one for one and not for the other um i think this the the difference between the air b and b the short-term rentals versus the regular rentals these are probably more of a commercialized um it's more commercialized so it's it's more like a hotel and i think it's more of a safety issue for um you have a change in tenants every other day or so versus somebody who lives there for 12 months i think it's just more of a um hotels are required to do so i mean rmbvs as well sdr's i'm sorry i'm sorry um a couple other things i think my concern um again as a mama of a millennial um who loves air b and bs i asked her and her husband um you know would you stay at a air b and b if there was if the owner was there and they pretty much said never they wouldn't do it i'm not trying to be funny though no but i mean seriously but that's what my daughter said um and you know she used them recently for her wedding and she's probably going to kill me for talking about it um so i am concerned about what i would think would really impact the market i mean just the whole business model that they have um and so i will say that of all of the things that i've seen in here um that probably is what gives me the most hard-earned um you understand that the owner occupied is just the legal status of the house the owners do not stay there they go on for a vacation while a master's is being played but that's so that's not really eat this it's not it's not practical from my understanding i don't have one but so for instance if you have if you're renting it from thursday to sunday and you have to go find someplace to stay thursday to sunday if you let's say if you don't have family in town you have to go rent a hotel or spend money then it kind of defeats the purpose of the income that you're earning so i understand it but i just think that that um i think that that truly impacts the whole business model and makes it very difficult which may be the point which may be the point makes it very difficult for it to be very feasible now i also agree that you know all of our neighbors um need to you know enjoy everything that they need to enjoy and be free from some of the other issues that people have complained about but what i i just don't know if we need to distinguish non-owner occupied and owner occupied to address the issue which is the behavior what you have is a boutique hotel and a residential area when you have an investor that comes in and buys a property for this purpose of str have a hotel and they should not be allowed in residential areas that's an opinion howard okay well i mean i'm just i'm just giving you yeah i'm just giving you my heartburn from my job i think those oh the other thing david is i don't know who's howard gave us homework and i did not come in without doing my homework um but it was an article about the effects of short-term rentals on the housing market and affordability and they did talk about um i think at a 10 increase in short-term rentals um it did lead to an increase in the rent and housing costs and surrounding areas um and so in some areas they have chosen to just cap how many you can have like in the city or in neighborhoods have we considered anything like that i mean i there's certainly other options you can look into there's many other ordinances already out there um so we certainly can look into that that's the way i do want to have on our next meeting a discussion of the impact of strs on affordable housing in the community and what it does for rents and for um price of housing i think that should be a separate thing because it is significant uh we we are seeing cases across the street from me uh where houses are being well at many thousands of dollars over the asking price that are intended to be used for short-term rentals and uh we should not have that i i would say do the same for student housing because it's the same effect so while you're doing that research david i don't know how much data of that i would have access to i'll certainly see what i can find any other questions no that's all i have right erica do we have a sign-in sheet yes sir okay say that again erica do you have some telephone calls or emails um not at this time sir okay all right let's let's begin the list we've got three pages of lists we would like to stop at six o'clock so you've got three to speak so be brief we'll we'll sit you down please if you try to get verbose um just so you know oh pronounce it performing absolutely um my name is gustavo bueno um me and my wife would just move here from brazil if you can tell for me my southern accent is from south of brazil uh we love to hear so i prepared a little notes here um so it's my understanding that the the committee is worried about the everything that's going wrong with potentially being caused by the rb and b and i live in the elmwood district so i stand behind that i don't want any mass um but we have to be careful because we need to identify the problem and cure the problem and there are many ways to do that and i think by by over regulating something you might kill stream of revenue that benefits the city in in many ways we host rb and b in our in our home we have a quadruplex so we are on our occupied uh but we work monday to to sunday sometimes and i don't want to do that forever so that's why we decided to generate this extra um extra revenue string and so we are considered investors but not let's not think that everybody that's an investor owns 15 houses in the neighborhood uh we're small investors we do intend to buy other properties but the regulation the way is written today would prevent us from doing that so we would have to choose another city to continue our venture so i think we need to treat the problem and really identify the bad actors and make sure that they do not stay in our community so always stand behind any regulation that aims to do that only and not just um try to do anything that would keep the the good actors here in our city so that's all i have for today any questions for me good to see you thank you thank you jeff and ashley douglas kala bailey kylan if i press the press the button or does it automatically start it should be going okay there we go um so i've i've been at this well i think i'm gonna make sure to stay true sorry matt carroll um i've been at this for a while probably one of the longer standing um short term by rental owners in town i just want to um i guess dispel some some thoughts um that i've heard today so far um also i was on the code enforcement task force um was appointed at the time appointed at the time by now mayor um rick rickenman um and helped establish those that ordinance that we all live by uh i don't think that i think that there's some misguided thoughts about what short terminals are and the impact they have on the neighborhood i can tell you i own long-term rentals and short terminals i think i i also have bought short terminals that used to be long-term rentals um i can tell you with 100 accuracy that every neighbor that i've bought a house from that was a long-term rental and it's now a short-term rental has thanked me and said they are so glad that i came in that house up and it's now maintained on the regular basis um it isn't um you know yards aren't long and it's not the tennis responsibility to do things and take trash out and you know as a short-term rental owner we have reviews that our guests leave for us and so i have a yard maintenance man he goes i mean it's maintained all the time we have a cleaning person in that house every couple days so there aren't beer bottles in the yard there aren't beer cans in the yard the yard isn't long those houses are maintained generally speaking the neighbors love that we're in those neighborhoods um so again i think it is a fight the problem not the overall um you know the overall thing so um when you when you find some some bad actors address those which is what that ordinance was meant to do um but i think um councilwoman herbert your question earlier about where uh the where the they can they can be um under this ordinance would be they can be in hotels and they can be in other commercial districts but they would not be able to be in any central districts and so when you have owners that you know they might have one house um you know i don't know that that owner um has the opportunity and has the availability like like you said you know to travel out of town for a week during the master's okay maybe um for that short-term um nurse that's coming to town or other short-term people that are coming to town that doesn't address their need um because the availability just isn't there and so i think that you'll i think we need to be cautious what we do because if this goes into effect and there are no longer allowed to be short-term rentals in residential areas other than the few owner occupants that that have them most of those properties are going to turn back into long-term rentals and i don't think the neighbors want i think the neighbors would much prefer short-term rentals to long-term rentals in those areas um i think if you asked them they'd probably tell you that i think i think a lot of neighbors are trying to trying to rule out having short-term rentals because they don't like them in the neighborhood but they don't realize what might come but um i don't think we can regulate people's rights to do with their property what they want to do so appreciate you having me thank you uh what just just to be clear of what it is if it's owner occupied it can be in residential districts sure if it's investor owned it has to be in a commercial if this goes through sure and that's that's what i'm addressing is that all the rest of those that are investor owned will then become something else right so they will become long-term rentals it'll become rental housing instead of affordable housing rather than investment i'm not necessarily affordable i mean not necessarily affordable um that's the thing is they become rentals and then their year-long rentals that my year-long rentals i go in afterwards and i'm like what have these people done in this year i mean i got to redo my yard i got to redo my fascia i got to redo the roof there's a tree going in the window like what happened over here in this year thank you my short terms aren't like that so um it looks like douche douche of john i can't read this but it looks like douche of john's all right good good any more one anthony albert all right press button i think i don't worry about okay so my name is anthony alberti first off i would like to say thank you for giving us opportunity to talk upon this today um i want to go over five things be as concise and straight to the point as i possibly can so david basically touched on all the things i'm going to say we're really going to reiterate it so number one i think this space should be regulated the reason for it is because what that will do is hold the operators that are doing this right already to a higher standard so something that's actually feasible and what that'll do is knock off the bottom people that are probably potentially causing the problems that the good enforcement and everything else is saying it's probably going to knock those people off causing really all those problems that we're talking about to go away number two there is a demand for this i mean there's clearly a demand hotels really offer those one two-day stays people coming in a long-term rental covers a year two years there's people that need two weeks from moving out of their house there's people that are coming for graduation for fort jackson's there's parents that are coming in for usc there's uh traveling nurses that are coming in for two weeks to a month that require that demand for the short-term stay that hotels don't really satisfy the need for what those consumers want and then long-term properties those long-term rentals want that passive one year two-year don't want to really have to worry about an investment that they've gone through they're not going to change so it's meeting that demand that society is already creating for us number three it's a tax benefit to the city if we look at all these numbers that everybody said there is a lot of potential revenue we've regulated to where there is a tax benefit that goes to the city from these operators i guarantee all these operators are completely okay with to pay that tax they have no problem doing it because those are the people that are going to do it right but there's a benefit for coming in they're coming for a reason if they're coming they're going to the food establishments they're going shopping they're doing all these things so why not allow these people to come that one help those businesses bring up revenue and then also help provide for the city number four code enforcement what's it going to actually take to enforce this do we have the staff to do it a lot of people aren't wanting to work right now do we actually have the staff to pay these people to hire people to add to the 300 plus properties that are out there to enforce this if we're going to spend this much money to enforce it when we could potentially gain this much money to actually allow it and regulate it it doesn't make sense we're wasting our money trying to enforce something that doesn't necessarily truly need to be enforced to the extreme that we're saying it and then five if you're not growing you're dying that's in business that's in life it doesn't matter so if we when internet came out said no no no i'm not going to worry about that internet thing we're just going to do the things we've always done it i'm going to keep it this way where would we be right now right now culture society the united states the world is taking the airbnb the uber's the vrbo's the turros the grubhubs all those things are becoming a part of our norm people expect it if we don't have those things people want to travel to our city last thing i want to say is essentially you are abolishing short-term rentals you're making it almost impossible to do you're saying yes you can do it it's kind of like this analogy let's say i work out which i do okay i can i can lift i can bench you're the trainer over here and you're saying hey you can use my bench right here okay the weight on there's 300 pounds i go try to lift that i can't lift it okay i say hey trainer can you take a little bit of weight off keep some on there that's fine can you take a little bit of weight off no we're going to keep it exactly how it is the way that this ordinance sits it's that 300 pound weight that we can't move still there we're allowed to do it but it makes it feel impossible thank you good presentation jesse stevensson hello my name is jesse stevensson i'm actually a real estate broker a property manager and an investor i manage about a hundred long-term rentals and i manage two air bnb's one one that i own and and then one that i managed for a friend on the lake so i know about all the sides of the story and i can agree with the the gentleman that said uh long my long-term rentals if i don't keep an eye on them which i do but if i don't and they're especially up there in certain prices price range those are not taking care of nearly as well as my air bnb is um and in the street that i have my air bnb on it's quote-unquote residential neighborhood but there's two four plexes and there's three duplexes on that street how am i a worse actor than those people with those investors with the four plexes and two plexes what difference does it make i mean why is why why does how long my guests stay make my guests worse than their guests because they stay there a little bit longer i mean it's i think in the united states you're close to have property rights and nowhere did it say oh well you know six month guest is it was good but a three-week guest no we don't do that i mean i just don't think that's fair and um and the last thing i'll say this ordinance with the sprinkler system do you know how much a sprinkler system would cost on a on a three bedroom two bath house it'd be like 50 grand no i when you said that 300 pound weight nobody's gonna can afford 50 grand for a sprinkler system and and why and how and why why do short-term guests need sprinkler systems to all these long term guests don't need the sprinkler systems it doesn't make any sense and that's that's all i want to add um carla guido did i get it close you did i thought carla guido your sound hi there um carla guido um i have owned real estate for about 20 years um and i'm also a nurse so i'm going to come here and speak for our nurses that come and travel to this area um i have short-term rentals i have air b and bs and i have long-term rentals and let me first say that in this last three months i got a citation on my long-term rental because they have too much stuff out on their porch and they haven't cut their grass um and these are some of their responsibilities um also when i have my long-term rentals you know they might hang up something that looks like a curtain but not necessarily a curtain even though it says that you know even though we supply white lines on all of our properties but if they break that they seem to hang up something else instead so my definitely my air b and bs and my ones that my travelers have been staying in we're in those properties more often um you know we're just there because we go by and change the filter you know we have to come by and when they move out you know clean them um they're also better maintained in regards to you know the furniture selection no one is going to stay in you know um when when nurses come into the area they need furniture they can't necessarily rent a long-term um place because even like court what provides you um rental furniture doesn't deliver to columbia so they all have to be furnished and they want somewhere that's nice and clean to stay and that's comfortable um a lot of my nurses also talk about they travel and they want something that feels more like a home versus a hotel plus a hotel doesn't allow them laundry in their facility or cooking um they might give them a microwave if they stay in the hotel but they don't have as many options um when they stay in a hotel staying in an actual home so they'll stay in a home i've asked my nurses you know what about would you like to stay in a home you know just rent out a room and they have a lot of them and some of them have worked with me have actually said that no we would always prefer to stay by herself not in a room and then i even asked them i said well how about would you be willing to rent a room out with another nurse and their comment is no we would rather rent a three-bedroom home for ourselves versus having to stay with somebody or stay in a hotel um some other complaints that the nurses might have is that a hotel is loud and when they work third shift they need a quiet environment when you're staying in a your own private home it's a lot more quiet um so they can get the rest that they need to be able to get um travelers also travel with pets and they need a place for their pets i mean that's their companion when they're traveling and hotels don't necessarily provide that or provide a backyard for them for their pets right and that even with these nowadays a lot more people are traveling with pets um and hotels don't always offer that option um and then my last statement i just want to say is that a lot of time travelers have to stay within a certain distance to the hospitals because they're on call and they have to get there within you know 30 minutes or an hour after they're called and if they're too far out of the city limits they can't um they can't you know rent those options because they just don't have enough travel time to be able to get there so of my three different um i definitely would say is that my airbnb's um i've had a better experience and the properties are much nicer and just like other people have said is that our neighbors are actually happier to have an airbnb there because the properties better maintained than if it was a long-term rental the question what's the difference when you're airbnb and your str well my str the only difference is um my airbnb's they usually come in they stay there for about three or four days and then if they happen to be a nurse they might come in and stay for a week or two weeks um sometimes up to six weeks or sometimes 13 weeks depending on their assignment and then some of my my um my airbnb that will come in if their nurses uh prefer to definitely stay within um i um the short-term rentals is that sometimes they they travel from like charleston and so they only need a place for like three days they go home they go back to greenville they go back to rock hill but they want to be able to leave their stuff there you know and be able to come back in um and then i have a lot of them that call me back up because they like the location um and like the home so thank you um jim jim risa rey okay my name is jim rey and david manages my property that i also live in and he does an excellent job by the way um and i'm all fair regulation um the way this stands right now to me it's just simply not favorite it would put everyone out of business so anything that's fair i'm awful that's all i've got to say thank you um you are harris how you doing uh my name is no i no yeah like the arc um looking around the room i can tell everyone we all have this one thing in common we all love the city of columbia yes and that's probably why we're all here i'm a real estate investor but i would probably consider myself a hard-working business owner over anything else my wife and i we have a child who's autistic so he's sorry he's five just recently diagnosed um when we go and travel to other cities states um you know we want to have vacations too and go to the beach or visit ashville or greenville we used to go to those places we don't go to those places as much anymore because of what has happened with short-term rentals um i would love nothing more than to stay at a hotel like me and my wife hotel slippers room service like that sounds awesome i would love that more than anything but with the family it's impossible to do that but for being able to be able to give our kids the same experiences and do this stuff airbnb has been a lifesaver for us and we discovered this many many years ago and being in real estate we're like gosh there's nothing like this really in columbia how impactful would it be if like let's do this like the same way people are helping us to help other people and i'm not saying every single person who stays at our places has a disability or an autistic child but a lot of them do and we embrace that and what's cool about columbia is the city embraces it too like last week we did a thing with usc student athletes where um our son was paired up with an athlete all of the parks that you're building are sensory parks and um the ed adventure today i went to the zoo on a field trip with with my son who who has autism i feel like the city is like hey we embrace this but if you really do like keep short-term rentals around because this is what those families need and you know i could go on and on about all the properties and i could give you case studies we have a little house the thing hasn't turned yellow yet so i'm gonna keep going um across from finley park i moved here 10 years ago i lived in pavilion towers and every single day i drove down finley park and looked up to the right there's a little white house boarded up windows jewish cemetery never a cemetery and for like five or six years nobody ever touched it we drove by someone needs to buy that someone needs to buy that somebody needs to fix that up and finally we're like well we're gonna do it if nobody else is we bought it and that place is a memory maker right now people come here they enjoy the city you go to finley park lay out a blanket look up you see the beautiful house you don't see the haunted house that used to be there anymore um so there's there's a lot and what's cool is once we remodeled that house it was like popcorn like all the neighbors you know everyone kind of rallied around it and one of our neighbors at one of our airbnb told us about this meeting uh yesterday she says hey i don't know if you heard you got to go because she was so excited of like what we've done just like this group here is saying so um you know we're all about making it right making it good i think what's cool is we can make airbnb in this industry even better i having good regulation like david is talking about like we're trying to work out here so that's my two cents thank you thank you know all right i think this one is b johnson ben johnson okay close thank you so much for for having the same for hosting this meeting um we've opened our first owner occupied airbnb in january of 2019 and bought our next investor occupied unit or investor owned unit in november of 2019 um and i'm asking you to you know with this ordinance with this regulation don't please continue um considering those more like long-term rentals rather than hotels the requirements of the spring for systems and the commercial zonings are particularly onerous and would regulate a majority of the room out of business as i believe they're intended to do um the structure should be compared to other similar structures and in this case generally they're going to be single family residences or small condos or townhouses the city does not want a single family residence to have a spring system because it's generally not deemed as as necessary and that doesn't matter whether it's owner occupied whether it's rented for a year or rented for a night it's just not necessary however of course in a larger structure rather it's a taller condo tower like the heritage building the hub a large student housing complex or the hilton hotel you've got to have springer systems you've got to have more significant life safety issues because you can't just pop open a window and jump out i can many many folks can i'm on the first floor um and and so if a fire breaks out in a single family home on a single story it's easy to get out on the 20th floor it's a little more complicated and those structures should have more complicated systems um by requiring a single family home to have a sprinkler system that's going to be rented by the night that'd be an unnecessary burden to those property owners and this was true with the zoning in neighborhoods like shandon there are single family homes duplexes and quadplexes they're occupied by families of sizes um and and zoning dictates the size that of buildings that are there um and you know the the lot coverage and all that good stuff but the nights that someone lives in a home shouldn't matter whether it's owner occupied again rented for a month or rented for an evening the requirement for commercial zoning again would regulate these operators out of business so i would ask you to please continue to regulate short-term rentals more similarly to long-term rentals and the structures um to be conducive to to a similar structure um as zoning already does thank you man Ben mentioned the heritage and that's where i live well that's why i made the comment i live on the first floor and i can jump out the window okay let's see what we can do on this one i think this is Kyle Edens hey good evening my name is Kyle Edens um Lexington born and raised resident and i've got a few short-term rental properties here in the columbia area uh over the last two years before i forget i wanted to answer your question specific to my units um poor jackson poor jackson graduates 50 of my stays are poor jackson families coming through so it's a pretty significant piece of uh usually i'd say they average yeah four or five days yep they come in early they like experience the city and then go to graduation and head out the next day usually what i see happen so you know i hear problems but i don't see any data to support the problems um you talk about neighborhood complaints you talk about trash violations you talk about noise complaints but i haven't seen any data yet besides maybe individuals coming to you guys and complaining i want to see hard hard evidence hard data because for us those those problems cost us money and we don't like that that's not why i got into this business so i maintain my units to a specific bit of standard we have noise monitoring devices shutdown parties we're not looking for that kind of stuff so i think if you would speak to a lot of the investors in here we kind of nip a lot of that in the bud before it even gets started um so to give you give you a little feedback on my units last few people that have stayed there for jackson graduates um insurance claimants construction crews working on local you know local utility repairs um walmart construction crews you know i've got individual that they're renting my house for two months to to be with her dying mom that's in hospice so it runs the gamut um my properties are are in historic neighborhoods they're in hoa neighborhoods and i haven't had the first complaint or the problem in any of them um we took a historic house and one of the historic districts that was vacant for four years and we spent probably over a hundred thousand dollars are innovating it and we had a homeless guy sleeping in our back porch so those those are the kind of properties that i'm in personally investing in and i'm seeing neighborhood changes with um you know just to give you feedback on on one house in six months for us that we launched you know june july of last year we paid here bnb four thousand dollars in lodging tax i paid probably four grand in income tax on that property i paid out seventy five hundred dollars in cleaning fees to a local cleaner who lives in the columbia area um so that just kind of gives you some of the some of the stuff i see in my personal business um again i i think that this ordinance seems lazy to me it seems like it was just ripped and copied to be just heavy heavy handed approach um i'd like to see some more thoughts more creativity put into it i think you guys have a real opportunity to create additional revenue for the city of columbia so i think you take that for what it is i don't think you take a heavy handed approach to a to a significant need in our our community thank you thank you all right i believe this one is shannon alexander thank you so much for allowing me to speak today i'm shannon alexander and i'm going to come with this with a different perspective because i'm not actually an investor or an owner my parents are um but i am the co-host and i clean them and before that i was a stay-at-home mom and uh unfortunately my son was diagnosed with a rare disease a rare terminal disease and that lasted for about six years unfortunately until he passed we were left with an amazing amount of debt not just for medical debt from also the debt trying to take him and do all the things that you're trying to cram into a person's life in six short years while they're slowly declining in health uh the ability to host for my parents and clean these properties has has given me like a new new chance to pay off all that debt which has just been unbelievably anxiety-ridden but also i'd like to say that i'm the person i'm the face i'm the person that all the guests talk to you and um i make sure in every single instance to recommend family owned businesses brand new business minority owned businesses uh all the brand new amazing fun things that we have going on in columbia i make sure that i talk about um segra park i make sure that i let them know about adventure i make sure that i let them know about the joint downtown with their amazing jazz musician i make sure to let them know what's going on what exhibit is going to be at the art museum i make sure of all of these things so that they actually get to really taste columbia and that's what they really want to do there's always going to be people that prefer hotels and there's always going to be people that prefer to immerse themselves into these neighborhoods because that's where the real fun of airbnb is it's not necessarily just about the state it's about immersing yourself into this neighborhood and what is columbia and yes we do have several properties and they're all downtown but all the properties that we took well except for one nice for jackson and we're we're steadily hosting families for for jackson and i love being able to tell those families congratulation on your child's major accomplishment it means a lot to me to actually and i think you'll find that most of your hosts and most of your cleaners are very very invested in this job and in the process and we're very happy to be there all the time 24 7 for these people with anything and i leave welcome packages that are detailed just for those specific people and we host a lot of special needs children because a lot of people with special needs i just also want to thank you very much for your time kevin garrison right my name is kevin corrigan kevin corrigan corrigan corrigan corrigan okay yes thank you thank y'all for letting me talk today um i can't top any of these stories i'm an airbnb short-term rental owner my wife and i own about six five really and one's our office um when i was pulled into this group about a year ago um before uh one of the meetings here um i heard a lot of these incredible stories from the short-term rental owner side and uh and i kept on saying why is city council considering this well because there's some problems out there and i said what kind of problems i've i've read one article about a cotton town situation that's been recycled in about three different newspapers throughout the state they said no apparently it's more more often than that i said surely they'll give us some data on that and at two of the council members i talked to last summer before that june meeting they said yeah we're gonna get that to you real data um mr brun and i believe you asked mr hatcher a simple question earlier in his presentation as in how many of our register we have to sign up for all of our rental property whether it's 12 month traditional unfurnished or short-term that should just flow off the tongue of any city employee of how many we have on file and so if it that's not his department i'm not picking on him but we should know that we should know paying the fee but it might be it is a manual form i can imagine it needs to be digitized it might not be i don't know but we have all this data and we have i believe mr urbitt you're asking great questions like 80 86 of the properties that we're tracking that would be knocked out of this deal is really where people like your family members want to stay they want their own surface parking they want their own self check in and how how we're just hoping we're being as transparent as possible on our side mr ellor has all those stats from from his line of work mr bergman had 99 percent of his answers today i think he didn't have one he says i will get it to you the next time so i just think that we started out here a year or two ago and now we're in this current current proposal and it just feels really heavy-handed and not thought through that's my point i think i'm at my end any questions for me before i leave uh keith keith anchor keith a n c o ory keith is there a keith anchor uh mike kennedy okay he almost made it mike kennedy he might have left with keith kathryn kathryn on hampton street kathryn plumbing bruise great to see everybody i am not a developer i'm a homeowner and a resident and so i'll be talking from a little different perspective today in 2019 the city unanimously passed a vacant building's ordinance which in short is the demand that the property owners not only keep their properties up and keep them secure but they had to be occupied okay so now we have an ordinance before us that seems to be taken away one of the options that we have to try to fulfill what council asked us to do which is occupy these properties so what are some of the implications one i noticed that the ordinance has in a couple places references to parking and talking about peaceful enjoyment by neighbors no parking problems so far now some of you know my situation at hampton street i am in a residential area uh i guess by the ordinance it would be a place where you can't have a short-term rental however we have a university we have church we have school we have a number of things going on and at one point i had residential parking that was taken by the city so now i have people who sit in front of my house 24 hours a day seven days a week i have a hard time with my herbie putting it out because there's sometimes not room because people part or you know they move it out of the way and it's in front of the driveway a whole lot of stuff which i've already detailed that i won't go into here um but in short if if all of us are to get that peaceful enjoyment it's not the strs that are a lot of times the city has to resolve these issues and you're the one that makes the ordinances you're the one who comes up with how these ordinances are going to be addressed so let's not put all that on the strs you know some of it is what the city is going to have to do so in the meantime i'm looking at okay one day when i'm old what's what do i want to do with the property what do i want my relatives to do with the property i sure don't want them to have to go through what i've been going through for for a while so an str is a very attractive option it would be an opportunity for people to stay in a african-american historic national registered neighborhood and go to railroad barbecue and palmetto seafood and some of our other options but if you're saying we can't do the residential area then i won't be able to do that so i'm asking you to reconsider that i'm asking you to look at the things that the city can fix that are part of this problem and not put it all on the strs and look at the positive things that that can be brought to the table so that's all i have to say thank you okay we've got four more um erica ferrell thank you for um letting me speak um my name's eric ferrell and i um just started doing a short-term rental actually bought a property that was a long-term rental where i had to call the police before it had been people drinking all the time loud right across the street from my house in my wonderful neighborhood um and uh and you know looking at the possibilities i had a baby i was trying to figure out how home and doing a short-term rental has been the way that my family has been able to continue with me leaving my job and staying home with my infant and um so um you know not all of us are these huge investors some of us are just small families who are doing this just to just to have a little something you know it's my job now i go over there i clean up i tidy up at the building you know you were saying bergman that it was a home in the post-incorior article it is a home it is a really cute lovely little home that i take really good care of i have books and toys and things for kids we have a lot of families that come through and stay there i have parents who are working but they work from home so they travel around and they like to take their kids to different places they love coming here they like coming to the zoo um i allow dogs so we have a lot of families who come and stay with their dogs i have had some special need kids too that have their support animals that i know in a hotel they accept them but i don't think it's as easy um you know to have one when you can have a backyard um to let them let them go and um anyway our neighborhood is very supportive of of having um air bmbs and i've met some lovely people i've met people in other air bmbs staying also in my neighborhood so um you know if you were to do it where the residential districts couldn't have it anymore i mean it we just we couldn't we couldn't have this and it would really be hard for just my family and our tiny little one little thing like um and i think there might be other families that this they just do one i mean i'm not looking to buy a whole bunch of places um this is just my one little little thing to help me stay at home um and anyway that's what i had to say so thank you john karson very clear writer good evening um thank you for letting me speak names john karson um i'm actually relatively new to the columbia area um so i was uh i was on active duty uh for five years overseas in korea and in germany um moved my family over here uh excited to start an opportunity with the south carolina national guard actually um part time um drill status but uh but when we moved over here i just wanted to speak to kind of another anecdotal uh case um for the short-term rental community um i do not own a short-term rental um i am a patron of many times over of different short-term rentals um and whenever we actually moved here uh we had a pet uh coming from overseas and nowhere to stay um and we know we wanted to live here and we knew we were going to live here the uh the challenges that when we came over here we needed somewhere to stay while we're a house hunting everyone's known the market's been pretty uh pretty challenging uh for someone looking to to buy a residence um and so i knew of short-term rentals uh because i'd used them over the past several years especially overseas whenever we traveled um and so i looked up to find uh find somewhere to stay here for several weeks while we tried to find a home um and they're all booked up um which which is great for um you know people doing a great job with their short-term rentals um and so we stayed in a hotel that allowed pets which is not the greatest hotel um it had a microwave um that was it and we stayed there for weeks and we had to stay there a week longer and a week longer and a week longer um over and over and over again um and uh uh going through that is a little bit challenging for a family just you know there's some creature comforts that you used to having that you just don't have there um and a lot of the short-term rental opportunities that are out there um you would pay something similar um but have somewhere to stay and spread out and have somewhere for your dog to run in the backyard have somewhere where you can cook and not um not eat you know McDonald's every single night or something like that um so uh so they're really important i think to the community and i just wanted to present my case and um and i'm actually i i thought they were so important that i i actually wanted to start one myself soon which under these current ordinance uh regulations i wouldn't be able to do because i can't afford to put a sprinkler system in my house because i'm leaving uh to go to flight school which i'm excited about but it takes me away for a period of time um and i'd like to um be able to utilize my residence here as a short-term rental for people um so that people facing a similar situation that i went through but have somewhere to stay um and when i come back to columbia um then i can live there again um that's all i have to say thank you john vanessa trailer hello how are y'all um my name is vanessa trailer and i am a licensed realtor along with my husband who um we operate a real estate team here in columbia we mainly help people buy and sell um over the course of the last year with a tighter housing market i will have to say that i've seen the demand for short-term um housing accommodations more than ever and no i don't think it's because the supply is eaten up by the 600 people that have airbnbs i definitely think that um it is just a need for a variety of reasons and so i thought i'd just highlight a few of my own particular clients that i have had one has a very sentimental family home that has been in their families for a long time and um their job suddenly required them to move to another part of the state our six percent tax for a non-owner occupied home has greatly impacted this family they do not wish to sell their home they want to keep it they would love the opportunity to share it with other people but unfortunately because of that six percent tax they cannot have it as a long-term rental our home prices are continuing to rise here in columbia and i don't know if you've noticed but it takes it's very hard for you to make um a good cash on cash return without doing short-term rentals right now in our current situation another family i'm pretty sure one of the hosts was already up here talking about the mother on hospice that's one of my clients they lived in this short-term rental over in forest acres for over a month while they're dealing with their mom and they had to be close to an aging father and so i definitely think that it provides a really unique situation they're now able to look for a home to be able to buy and um it's just needs for ordinary people in a really unique way in a neighborhood and um last i mean you have people everything that's already been mentioned personally i had a two and a half year old that developed um leukemia and a bone marrow transplant he's doing great but short-term rentals here in our city made it possible for our family to be able to be close to the hospital in a germ-free location which is super big to provide for them and so its meeting needs again um both here and in charleston for that and then um i just feel like columbia has really lagged behind um in then with other major surrounding cities um just with short-term rentals and just seeing the need for the positive economic impact that it brings um we need them for increased tourism um and just allowing small business owners to take advantage of all the things that we offer here that we call home and um just my professional experience is that airbnb hosts truly do take greater care for their properties and rather than the long-term rentals we've also talked about that do not um it's important that we provide this as a rental um avenue to be able to provide for the many real estate needs that people um they have in our city thank you thank you and last but not least andrew lucas well thank y'all for letting us come and speak and i will be brief because there's been a lot covered but um just give a little background i'm from columbia richland one grad lower richland high school and i stayed around for uh usc uh even though it was clinton family we won't go there um bought my first rental house uh right out of college with uh loan from usa a and i lived in there for a little while and then went on to manage hotels so i have a kind of a unique perspective on this stayed there for about 12 years and then uh retired from hotels i mean i have to do two real estate investing so in 2018 we both left our day jobs and we became those uh investors that that you talked about so very proud to say that and um one of the things that i wanted to kind of tell you is that um i hate airbnb because it is a lot of work i used to manage hotels i quit that because i didn't want to work that hard so i thought real estate would be the easy way out but it's not uh so that's why i employ uh david and his team to help us manage our airbnb and uh what what's happened is his management of these airbnb has been so revolutionary for us because what i didn't want to do was clean the house every day cut the grass every week install noise ordinance or noise monitors so that we could tell if they were having parties because if you're ever rented in college area you know they have parties every day so we didn't i didn't want to deal with monitoring a ring every time somebody showed up i didn't want to deal with neighbors making sure that our neighbors were happy because if neighbors aren't happy then my airbnb guest isn't going to be happy every time the neighbor bothers so that's going to affect our reviews all of that to say that it took me about three years to finally say you know what i'll do a short term rental and in the last year of doing that uh we have no complaints no ordinance violations on that short term rental but i'm not so happy to say yeah zoning's still here we have had a few uh issues with our long-term rentals those folks that are supposed to be there supposed to take care of the house themselves as you know lots of times they don't so those that's when i get a stack of certified mail from the zoning so all that also goes to a property manager also is a registered rental also is one that we thought would take care of a house this ordinance here is eliminating something that is not the problem i think what we should be looking at is how do we address the bad actors i would also just like to say that this the city has an opportunity right now to take a leap to try to get some of that revenue that we're missing on the taxes if you look back for the last 10 years the only increase or the biggest increase 81 of our income tax property tax was from millage rates not from assess values going up not from more commercial properties is because we had to raise our millage rates so much that we are more than greenville charleston mortal beach everyone else so just too much pressure on the commercial side thank you thank you andrew yep Andrew is a point of order the city of columbia has lowered its millage rate from 98.1 to 93.1 over the last 10 years we haven't had a millage rate increase over i think 15 years man so it's not the city's millage that's going up all right i'm going to make the executive decision here uh david you have been the point person for the sdr community and i'm going to ask you to look around the room or call your friends uh you've got a copy of our ordinance i think i gave you one in a wood bird version instead of a pdf or if not i can give you one um look through the ordinance and and suggest amendments or or deletions to the ordinance that you think would improve it uh and we will be doing the same thing as a committee but i'd like to have your input with suggestions from the community on what what they need to what they think needs to be done to improve this ordinance when we started off this meeting i said this is a process and it is a process we've listened to you for two hours tonight i'm sure at our next meeting we're going to listen to two hours on the other point of view uh from the neighborhoods that are impacted by the strs and we will come up with something that i think will be good for the community that won't hurt your industry but will produce peace in the community which is what we want so um i heard a couple of comments but david is doing a good job and he is he has done what he's asked to do so i want to thank him um because he gets put in um what is the i don't i never know the terms but he's been put in some different kind of waters um but we i just want to say thank you david for putting this draft together for the work thank you david i do appreciate the work that you've done on this too um with with no further comments from the council members we will adjourn the meeting thank you