Boulder County buzz kill on short term rentals
Published in the Boulder Daily Camera, 12/17/20
We all have a bit of petty tyrant inside us who desperately wants to make sure that the people around us are doing what our worldview sees as “the right thing.” But in Colorado, where we’ve always placed a high value on our individual freedoms, most of us eschew our authoritarian impulses in favor of living and letting live, while minding our own business.
However, this commitment to suppressing our inner demons who like to tell other people what to do was absent in Boulder County government this month when, for no good reason, the staff and commissioners obliterated homeowner’s rights to conduct short-term rentals in unincorporated Boulder County.
Limiting property rights is typically done through zoning and a few days in zoning-free Houston, Texas, will help you appreciate the merit of zoning laws. For decades, zoning laws have ensured that the housing needs of permanent residents are balanced with the need to accommodate tourists and business travelers.
However, in recent years, the demand for more-than-a-hotel-room accommodations have picked up. Rather than a family on vacation stacking themselves in a high-rise hotel room, many have sought more comfortable and quiet accommodations in residential communities. Technology platforms like Airbnb have made hookups between renters and homeowners easy, giving travelers a more “genuine” travel experience while letting homeowners make a few bucks when they have space available.
A potential downside is that short-term rentals have all too often turned housing stock that was zoned for long-term residents into full-time guest accommodations. In some cities, like New York and San Francisco, this practice became so pervasive that local residents looking for places to live found themselves dealing with a housing shortage or priced out of the long-term rental market.
That was what led the City of Boulder to develop rules and regulations limiting short-term rentals. These rules were necessary in a town tourists love that also has a serious housing affordability problem.
However, unincorporated Boulder County, where the new short-term rental regulations passed by the county commissioners are targeted, has no such problem. Yet the county staff justified the new ordinance using research from large residential populations, suggesting that “short-term rental of residential property creates adverse impacts to the health, safety and welfare” of our rural and suburban unincorporated Boulder County residents. That’s nonsense.
For as long as there has been a Boulder County, homeowners have had the option of renting all or part of their residences to visitors for a few days or weeks. The county estimates that there are about 700 properties currently listed for rental on a short-term basis.
Many, if not most, of these are for a room in a house or on an “as available” basis, not dedicated short-term rental investment properties. If there is a shortage of housing stock in Boulder County, it’s because of county land-use policies, not short-term rentals.
Aside from the ridiculous claim that these 700 people renting out bedrooms are compromising the health, safety, and welfare of county residents, what other rationale was behind the county’s decision to stop rural and suburban shortterm rentals? To be kind, not much.
At the public hearing last week, the best justifications that the county staff could offer were gems like “existing text is outdated” and “new licensing authority from the state.” The “outdated” existing text is all of 12 years old and I’m hard pressed to understand how “new licensing authority” is in any way a rationale for new licensing regulations.
So, with the thinnest of justifications, the county went all in and developed a labyrinth of regulations clearly designed to kill as much short-term rental in unincorporated Boulder County as possible. All short-term rentals will now have to be reviewed by the county under one of four “use categories.”
Regulatory requirements include formal land use reviews and conformance to 17 categories of “characteristics/requirements,” dictating apparently everything that the county staff can think of that it might ever want to control or require.
This regulatory onslaught will serve the county’s real purpose as a surefire buzz kill on short-term rentals. Boulder County has taken something as timeless and simple as “renting out a spare room” and turned it into a bureaucratic nightmare.
Boulder County’s actions weren’t based upon a community need and showed no respect for our individual freedoms. It looks to me like the wizards at Boulder County government saw all that ruling and regulating of short-term rentals going on in the city of Boulder and recognized it as a great opportunity to indulge their inner petty tyrants.
We all have a bit of petty tyrant inside us who desperately wants to make sure that the people around us are doing what our worldview sees as “the right thing.” But in Colorado, where we’ve always placed a high value on our individual freedoms, most of us eschew our authoritarian impulses in favor of living and letting live, while minding our own business.
However, this commitment to suppressing our inner demons who like to tell other people what to do was absent in Boulder County government this month when, for no good reason, the staff and commissioners obliterated homeowner’s rights to conduct short-term rentals in unincorporated Boulder County.
Limiting property rights is typically done through zoning and a few days in zoning-free Houston, Texas, will help you appreciate the merit of zoning laws. For decades, zoning laws have ensured that the housing needs of permanent residents are balanced with the need to accommodate tourists and business travelers.
However, in recent years, the demand for more-than-a-hotel-room accommodations have picked up. Rather than a family on vacation stacking themselves in a high-rise hotel room, many have sought more comfortable and quiet accommodations in residential communities. Technology platforms like Airbnb have made hookups between renters and homeowners easy, giving travelers a more “genuine” travel experience while letting homeowners make a few bucks when they have space available.
A potential downside is that short-term rentals have all too often turned housing stock that was zoned for long-term residents into full-time guest accommodations. In some cities, like New York and San Francisco, this practice became so pervasive that local residents looking for places to live found themselves dealing with a housing shortage or priced out of the long-term rental market.
That was what led the City of Boulder to develop rules and regulations limiting short-term rentals. These rules were necessary in a town tourists love that also has a serious housing affordability problem.
However, unincorporated Boulder County, where the new short-term rental regulations passed by the county commissioners are targeted, has no such problem. Yet the county staff justified the new ordinance using research from large residential populations, suggesting that “short-term rental of residential property creates adverse impacts to the health, safety and welfare” of our rural and suburban unincorporated Boulder County residents. That’s nonsense.
For as long as there has been a Boulder County, homeowners have had the option of renting all or part of their residences to visitors for a few days or weeks. The county estimates that there are about 700 properties currently listed for rental on a short-term basis.
Many, if not most, of these are for a room in a house or on an “as available” basis, not dedicated short-term rental investment properties. If there is a shortage of housing stock in Boulder County, it’s because of county land-use policies, not short-term rentals.
Aside from the ridiculous claim that these 700 people renting out bedrooms are compromising the health, safety, and welfare of county residents, what other rationale was behind the county’s decision to stop rural and suburban shortterm rentals? To be kind, not much.
At the public hearing last week, the best justifications that the county staff could offer were gems like “existing text is outdated” and “new licensing authority from the state.” The “outdated” existing text is all of 12 years old and I’m hard pressed to understand how “new licensing authority” is in any way a rationale for new licensing regulations.
So, with the thinnest of justifications, the county went all in and developed a labyrinth of regulations clearly designed to kill as much short-term rental in unincorporated Boulder County as possible. All short-term rentals will now have to be reviewed by the county under one of four “use categories.”
Regulatory requirements include formal land use reviews and conformance to 17 categories of “characteristics/requirements,” dictating apparently everything that the county staff can think of that it might ever want to control or require.
This regulatory onslaught will serve the county’s real purpose as a surefire buzz kill on short-term rentals. Boulder County has taken something as timeless and simple as “renting out a spare room” and turned it into a bureaucratic nightmare.
Boulder County’s actions weren’t based upon a community need and showed no respect for our individual freedoms. It looks to me like the wizards at Boulder County government saw all that ruling and regulating of short-term rentals going on in the city of Boulder and recognized it as a great opportunity to indulge their inner petty tyrants.
