David and Diane Nedvidek have had it with St. Louis. They moved here from Birmingham, Alabama, with high hopes last November — signing a two-year lease on a gorgeous old house in Lafayette Square and thinking they could find a permanent place after they were more settled.
Instead, they’re now contemplating packing their bags and getting out of town for good.
“We love the city but this is ridiculous,” says David. “We were planning to stay here for a very long time, but we can’t get out fast enough at this point.”
The problem is not any of the things a St. Louisan might identify as the usual suspects — crime, a catastrophic car accident, bad schools. It’s not their neighborhood (which they love) or their neighbors (same).
Instead, it’s the Airbnb in the basement of the home they’re renting — and the lack of enforcement around a situation they consider dangerously unsafe.
When the Nedvideks leased the large Victorian home, built in 1885, they were admittedly moving quickly. Their fourth child was due in March, and Diane wanted to get settled in with a physician and ready for his birth.
After David found the place in Lafayette Square, they quickly fell in love. Here was a place a family of six could thrive; here were beautiful old homes and families with kids in nearly every other house. The real estate agent noted the separate basement apartment around the back, but they were expressly told it wouldn’t be an Airbnb: “They were just going to lease to travel nurses,” Diane recalls.
For a few months, the basement unit was empty, and everything was fine. But not long after the baby came, the short-term tenants did too.
They soon learned that their landlord (who lives in Webster Groves) had sublet the basement unit to a young entrepreneur (who lives in O’Fallon). And contrary to their landlord’s assertion, the young man was renting out the apartment to just about anybody.
That included two women who brought along a little boy. “The next morning, groups of men were coming and going from the downstairs unit all day, all smoking pot,” Diane says. “It was a prostitution setup.”
Later came the guest who wore scrubs and wanted Diane to stop her kids from running around on the first floor — “she’s trying to get some sleep,” the Airbnb owner explained.
But the biggest problem came over the utilities. The Nedvideks’ landlord announced just before the tenants started showing up that he would give the couple a credit for the utilities. It was only then the Nedvideks learned the basement unit was on their meter.
It was also tied to the same air-conditioning unit. On one of those pleasant days in early June, Diane had the A/C off and the windows open, which led to texts from the Airbnb owner: “Turn on the A/C!” Never mind that it’s the Nedvideks who were paying for it.
Since the Airbnb began operating on site, Diane says, it’s not only been a matter of short-term tenants knocking on the front door or roaming the patio. It’s also been one frustration after another. The gas company couldn’t get access to the meter; it’s in the locked Airbnb in the basement. “They said they’d turn the gas off for noncompliance if they didn’t have access by mid-August,” Diane says. They were also informed the kids had to keep their toys in a locked container if they were on the patio — never mind that the lease stipulated they were in charge of maintaining the patio and the listing agent had said it was theirs. Ads for the Airbnb expressly market the patio as a feature.
David says as much as the shared utilities have led to massive frustration, as much as they’d like to have their own space, it’s the short-term nature of their visitors’ stays that’s the real problem.
“If someone had moved in who was a permanent neighbor, we could probably make it work,” he says. “But every three days it’s something different.”
Adding insult to injury, their landlord told them not to contact him with any issues related to the Airbnb, which just doesn’t make sense to them —- “here’s a guy who has no responsibility to you,” David says of the sublessor now running the Airbnb. Their relationship with both men, unsurprisingly, has turned testy.
The couple has complained to anyone they could think of — the utility company, the board of REALTORS, the state Attorney General, the city’s Citizen Service Bureau. No one seems interested in unraveling the complexity of the situation. The AG’s office offered mediation.
“I don’t want to go to marriage counseling with my landlord who is screwing me over,” Diane says.
The Nedvideks’ landlord, Robert Willmann, declined to comment for this story last Thursday, saying, “I don’t wish to participate in that person’s efforts to discredit me. I am not going to respond publicly.”
Told about the problem by a journalist, 8th Ward Alderwoman Cara Spencer promised to make some phone calls. She said the couples’ woes illustrate the problems caused by a lack of Airbnb regulations in the city.
More than two years ago, the Board of Aldermen resolved to draw up regulations for short-term rentals, but with then-President Lewis Reed now in prison and a series of major upheavals to the city’s political structure, including ward reduction that reduced membership from 28 to 14, members only recently crafted a proposal. And in the meantime, unregulated short-term rentals have become a major problem in downtown and other neighborhoods.
Not to mention for individuals stuck living next to them — or on top of them.
“This is one of the myriad reasons we need to regulate Airbnbs and other short-term rentals,” Spencer says. “This should not be happening in our city.”
But it is, and in some ways, David Nedvidek says, he’s not even surprised: “We’d heard about St. Louis.” When he told locals about their situation in Lafayette Square, they’d respond with a sad shake of the head: “That’s just St. Louis.” The implication: Nothing works; there are no rules.
It can be hard to dispute that in a city that often feels broken, where no one answers when you call 911, where law enforcement long ago pulled back on basic quality-of-life issues, where new businesses face lengthy hurdles just to open, where an alphabet soup of agencies is supposed to take your complaint but no one is really in charge. It’s one reason these brand-new transplants are seriously contemplating not only breaking their lease, but giving up on the city entirely.
Last Friday, Diane Nedvidek says, their landlord came by to say he was asking his basement lessor to cool it with the Airbnb guests. The listing has since been taken down, though it remains on at least one other site. The couple is now at a crossroads, and not sure what turn to take. As Diane notes, it's taken eight weeks of frustration (and a journalist's involvement) to get to this point. She's not sure she trusts the truce.
“We still really love St. Louis,” Diane says. But right now it feels like a place with no guarantees.
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