BRADEN MCMAKIN
Wild and violent parties tied to short-term rentals have plagued St. Louis, but legislation meant to regulate the rentals won't be discussed at the Board of Aldermen until the fall.
The board held its last meeting before summer recess yesterday and won't reconvene until September. Aldermen will take up short-term rental regulations then.
In May, Ward 4 Alderman Bret Narayan introduced two bills, Board Bill 34 and Board Bill 33, that were the culmination of a years-long effort to regulate short-term rentals offered through platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo.
Board Bill 33, as it's written now, would require a permit to operate a short-term rental in the city and for hosts to receive a business license to rent out any units they don't live in. Property owners would also need to assign a "short-term rental agent" to respond to concerns 24/7.
Hosts would be limited to four permits for units they don't live in, and permits could only be held by an individual, not an LLC.
At hearings for the bills, Narayan has said he did not want to rush the process and did not anticipate them getting through the Board of Aldermen before summer break.
"We always intended to have several meetings on this board bill, and with the amount of input we've received from the community, I wanted to implement that feedback into a committee substitute bill and have further discussions," Narayan tells the RFT.
Vitriol toward short-term rentals has boiled in recent months. City officials saw them as magnets for crime or large parties that turned violent. Shootings and other criminal activity has been tied to short-term rentals. Last month, a 23-year-old man was shot after leaving a party at a short-term rental in the Shaw neighborhood.
"Right now, we're in the wild west with short-term rentals in St. Louis," Narayan said at the committee hearing.
St. Louis is one of a growing number of major U.S. cities that has considered regulating short-term rentals as the industry booms — even in the midst of what's been coined nationwide as an "Airbnbust."
In 2021, Airbnb hosts' average income rose 85 percent, according to Airbnb. Analytics site AirDNA reports that available listings rose 18.9 percent from last April to the same time this year.
Some hosts who spoke to the RFT about the city's proposal were all for the regulations.
"There needs to be something," host Scott Schumaier says. "Nobody from the government makes sure there's a basic safety apparatus in place."
But for other hosts, the proposals seem to overtax and exert needless control on what they see as an already "self-regulating" system. Most major short-term rental platforms have a no-party rule, and hosts say the platforms already weed out bad actors.
"That's the problem with the city," says Karl Hawkins, who runs an Airbnb out of an alley house in Soulard. "They take a sledgehammer when they need a flyswatter." Subscribe to Riverfront Times newsletters.
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