 Good afternoon. I'm Howard DeVall. I'm a council member at large for the City of Columbia and chair of this committee. I am joined by council member Will Brennan from district three and councilwoman Tina Herbert from district one as a committee appointed by the city council to hear the positions on the short term rental ordinance and so we're off and running this afternoon. You will note on the agenda that there is no ordinance discussion today. This is a public hearing to listen to the different sides of the argument on short term rental regulation and we will not discuss any particular ordinance this afternoon. We also want to be as brief and succinct as possible not only because of the weather but because Mr. Brennan has to leave us at five o'clock and I would like to see if we could get through around that time so if you if your point of view has been expressed please don't feel like you have to come up and speak for three minutes to reiterate something that's already been said. I'm going to start the meeting off by calling on two people. Kit Smith has been kind of shepherding the neighborhood side and David Bergman has been very good working with us sort of as an unofficial or maybe maybe you've got an official title now David but an unofficial representative of the short term rental people. So we will start off with Kit Smith. Just hit it and it starts. Oh okay so we're ready to start. Got me. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Kit Smith Mr. Chairman. I'm so glad to be here. Council Member Herbert, Council Member Brennan. Thank you for your time in this stormy weather. What I'd like to do is just to go over some data with you that I hope will show you why a lot of the Columbia neighborhoods feel like they're the frog being boiled in water or being cooked and this data comes from a site that is gathered by the STR industry. It's called AirDNA and on their web page they say they are powered by over 10 million global properties on Airbnb and VRBO and 120,000 global markets. They're called MarketMinder and it's the number one leading platform for short time rental intelligence. So if you want to open an Airbnb you go to them and they help you pay them and they provide you with the data to make a decision about whether it's a good deal or not. So let's begin. This is the concentration that we have in Columbia as of a certain date. Can y'all see it? Oh okay good. Now the numbers change from every time you look at a web page and see it but just for the sake of today we'll stick with these numbers that we gathered on a certain day. The thing that stands out here is the concentration. You can see it's widely dispersed but the only folks who really you're going to hear from are those who live in that congested area in the inner city. That's where most of them are. This is the data that's on the greater Columbia area. It tells you whether it's an entire home or a private room or just a shared room, the rental size. The striking thing here is the 18% quarterly growth over the last three years and that's in the Columbia, the greater Columbia area. Now I'm not very good at economics but my husband was at the business school and I asked him what does that mean quarterly growth and he said it's basically kind of comes out to the same thing annualized but if you look at that number you can see that it went from 600 to 1000 in three years. So let's take a closer look at the most impacted zip codes. 29205 is the first one that I selected to discuss with you. It includes the area around five points. It includes Shandon all the way to Rosewood. 232 active rentals out of those 832 are in 29205. A little more detail. The rental growth is 14% a quarter in that zip code. Most of them are independent houses or apartments. Very few of them are what the sharing economy started out to be which is a shared room or shared part of a house. That's 29205. 29201 if you take a look it includes the university on the left-hand side and up into other side of Gervais Street and on the right-hand side you'll see Elmwood, Cotton Town a little bit of Earlwood. They have two but see their number came up to 198 at the certain time that we were taking a look at it and their growth rate was 10% a quarter going from 100 in three years it tripled or went over 200 in just three years. The interesting thing here and the reason that I showed you these is because we can regulate all we want to and if every STR that came into our neighborhoods was beautifully manicured long well taken care of always had polite guests it would still be a problem because STRs disrupt the fabric of the community and the more that we have the more the fabric of that community is threatened. We can have transient people and that's fine but there's a concept in real estate known as the tipping point and that's the point of no return. These two zip codes are already inundated with student rentals. This compounds our problem of the impact on the affordability of housing and the affordability of long term rents. A family or a long term runner cannot compete with a person who is going to buy a home and convert it into a short term rental or student rental. The price goes up so that it's not affordable. So for every one of these homes that you've seen in these 832 and the half of them are in 05 and 01 and they're growing dramatically. So we need your help. We care the most about the fabric of our community. We appreciate the diversity that we have. We certainly don't mind guests coming in but when we reach that tipping point there's no going back. We want neighbors. We want residents. We want people you can go borrow a cup of flour from or bring your casserole when somebody dies or you can run over there and say I've got an emergency. Can you watch my kid for me. We know the names of our mailmen or mail carriers. We know the names of our police force that come in and have come into our region. We know each other and we care about each other and the more transients that you have coming through your neighborhood the more you disrupt the neighborhood and it starts a spiral away from home ownership and community into transient neighborhoods which we do not need in our city. So we need your help. We have discussed this among a lot of us who care and we understand that the investment has already been made by a lot of these well-meaning people that have seen an opportunity to make money off of short term rentals. That's fine. But there does come a tipping point and we feel like that our property values those of us who live next door to an STR they would go up if we sold it as an STR or as a student rental but you have a hard time selling it to a family. I have a good friend who lived in one of these neighborhoods who adored her neighborhood. She was very active went to all the meetings took care of it. She got ready to sell her home because of some health reasons they had to vacate. There was no offer except from people that were going to convert it into it either an Airbnb or an STR. That's a problem for our community. It's a it's a housing market aberration that's been caused by this dynamic. I know it's a huge problem and I think we all want to be fair but I hope that you'll be fair to us as well and keep in mind our concerns. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you and I only got three minutes I thought when I came here so that's what I got prepared. I appreciate Kate speaking about that. I think that you know that helps put that side in perspective. I definitely hear those concerns and I think a lot of us are neighbors too and hear those concerns as well so you know that's what we're here to talk about and you know that's that's what we want to work through solutions as well. You know I just want to point out just really quickly on the data. I think when we look at those big purple boxes it makes it seem like it's overwhelming the neighborhood but those are big boxes just meant to show a particular home and it overlays like an entire block so it can kind of seem like it's taking over but you know this we're talking about one percent of the housing stock. This is not moving the market this is not overrunning these neighborhoods from my perspective and from what I've seen if that's truly more than one percent then you know let's talk about what does there need to be some other solution but what are those percentages I think talking about it in percentages the way to kind of frame that discussion rather than just looking at the boxes in the neighborhoods I think other folks agree. So I just want to say thank you again for bringing this topic to us here today and allowing us to speak. I'm going to go quick so a lot of more people can speak but I think hosting concerned neighbors alike will benefit from a policy that does bring us more certainty on this issue and can address it in a fair way. I'd also just like to point out that I've spoken with a lot of hosts and cleaners who can't be here today and they just it's because of the hurricane and the state of emergency as hosts were being inundated right now with requests from evacuees from Florida and from the South Carolina coastal cities and that's just because they're looking for refuge in Colombia where they're hoping things won't be as bad and I hope that's the case and I've been asked by many of them to just just say to you guys can we have one more meeting so those folks who can't be here because of the circumstances can come out and have their moment to provide comment as well. I think we owe them that. And then I think the gist of what I was going to say here today was just about the underlying problems that we're trying to address some of which we just heard and the method by which we're going about solving it. I just have a few concerns and my first comment is that we still haven't seen the code enforcement data as it relates to STRs. I believe we are tasked with or with David Hatcher going back and bringing that data to us and I hope that that's why he's here is to prepare and present that to us in this meeting because I think the impetus that we've heard a lot for this is that this is related to code issues and the that were problems and it just feels silly not to have that data to support our understanding prior to making these big decisions. And I just asked the council to conduct the research first on the code violations and if you know the housing there needs to be housing studies to understand like okay if there's 1% of the city is STRs is that moving the needle on the home prices and let's let's understand that first before we solve. So that's my big ask there and I think most most hosts would agree on that too and then I think just in terms of the process again it just feels a little backwards we had our first meeting on the topic and we were introduced to an ordinance that basically bans STRs before we had any conversation or discussion and we didn't have the code enforcement data and obviously hosts were really upset by that and we heard that at the meeting I think loud and clear we'll hear some of that today I bet but now we're hearing about a different ordinance that's again kind of being drafted behind closed doors it's been shared now but what why are we drafting solutions before we first understand the underlying issues and why are we kind of bringing that why are we not bringing that that group of impacted areas together to have the discussion first so we as hosts would just like to ask that the sub committee put together some sort of working group with those impacted areas I think that would include people like post city officials and lawyers neighborhood groups like kid and and others other neighborhood board members hotel and restaurant associations and any others who have an interest let's bring them forward and let's all join together and collaborate on this and I think there's just a lot of power in us working together as neighbors and as residents and just you know back and forth let's get it done so those perspectives I think will be really important and again just right now it just feels like it's being dictated to us and I just want you guys didn't know that that's how we feel and I hope that that we can be contribute to the process we understand the industry we want to help but we can't do that unless we we get that seat at the table with everybody else and we can hear what they're saying and solve the issue so we look forward to working with you and let's get it done thank you Michael you have Michael thank you very much Michael Anzelmo resident of Wales Garden former president of the Wales Garden Neighborhood Association my family I live right around the corner from councilman Brandon on Hayward two points I really want to make you're gonna hear a lot from both sides today there's a lot of balancing we need to do one of the main concerns and I think that could benefit both sides is the way to use revenue the city can generate from these short-term rentals to help the city generate more revenue and allow the residents to have some comfort for how this is used I'm gonna preface my comments by saying I know y'all have some litigation ongoing with Airbnb and the other entities about tax fees and revenue I was an attorney I've taken a casual look I'm not offering an opinion I think y'all are in a pretty good spot to be able to tax these entities and they operate much like hotels so to overlay sort of the same tax regime or a similar tax regime that y'all impose on hotel stays for the guests would allow the city to generate additional revenue in addition to the license fee revenues that need to be generated from these entities what that allow the city to do is use that revenue however you want my suggestion is to enforce enhance your code enforcement departments we've come to y'all many times about issues with long-term rentals and now some short-term rental issues and with code enforcement it would show the neighborhoods that we have an outlet to go to to make sure that this the situations you're going to hear about are regulated properly points are enforced correctly and the city is helping us manage the situation in our neighborhoods I think that's a beneficial thing obviously it's going to take a lot of play out in the courts I understand that but I ask you to please keep that in mind as you potentially craft legislation moving forward then my last point is something that I don't think anybody else will mention if you look at the historical overlay situation the city has passed in neighborhoods like Wales garden and voluntarily impose on ourselves one of the things that the city has told us in these ordinances in your description of the ordinances in the materials on the website is the purpose the overlay is to preserve the historic single family character the neighborhoods I think that somehow getting lost a little bit in what the city mandates on homeowners through the overlay and then the short-term rentals that change that characteristic because those are no longer single family residences so it's balancing you have a lot of things to balance but the revenue generated from these entities can be beneficial but you do have to keep in mind that you have specific statutory mandates elsewhere in your code that require you to preserve our historic neighborhoods thanks thank you my Kelsey Kennedy good afternoon thank you all for being here my name is Kelsey I'm a real estate agent a business owner a community member a mom and an investor before I started my business I was on food stamps and I could barely pay my mortgage I couldn't afford daycare but I couldn't afford to work my business now allows me more time at home with my daughter more financial freedom and an opportunity to allow others to enjoy this beautiful historic city that I call home the word investor I think has a negative view and a lot of people's eyes here you hear that word and you think of large corporations but the short-term rental community is made up of a very small group of people who are just like you good people who want our communities to thrive a lot of people ask who would want to come to Columbia and the data shows very clearly that there is a need for short-term rentals here it's the kind of city that brings large families from everywhere to watch their loved ones graduate from USC or Fort Jackson it provides for a more convenient way to travel with children or those with disabilities the way of travel is changing short-term rentals are a new age for convenience hospitality experience adventure and entrepreneurship and to propose such harsh regulations against our business is not fixing the problem that many of you think that we are the problem of a few bad long-term and short-term investors whose character shows in their rentals should not punish those who are doing good work I hope that if you take anything away from listening to everyone speak here today it's that a large group of people here today are proof of hardworking people and business owners who are not the problem that you are facing I hope that y'all are able to draft regulations that are fair and just so that we can continue to do what we love and bring more people to this beautiful city and just to provide more business for our small business owners thank you very much Susan going all these three pages these pages is it three quick things just listening to the few people you've heard so far and that is we are not against short-term rentals I represent for those who don't know the South Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association so while my overall goal is to represent and promote the traditional lodging industry we have members who are short-term rental owners management etc but we have seen across the country that well-meaning unregulated short-term rental situations have quickly gotten out of hand so that is our kind of cautionary tale how do we work together as someone said earlier to make this work for everybody and there's kind of really three bottom lines limit them license them and level the playing field I sympathize with people who say this is letting me earn more money this is helping me stay home nobody's trying to fight that but when it comes to the location of those businesses they are in fact a business and they need to be in a commercial area and not in your residential zoning that you've already established on your own website and with your zoning the second part of it is licensing one of our overriding goals has been we need to know where they are we need to know who they are we know that a lot of people have in fact been bad actors and that's maybe part of the problem is trying to overcome that again it might not have yet been that here in Columbia but it has been that and is growing across the country this is a topic that we are looking at as a priority in our national lodging association so I'm not you know I'm not pulling these things out of air it has been proven that once they start happening in other communities we all have to start watching because they have spread the leveling of the playing field is is kind of again what someone mentioned the taxation the fees the inspections the safety factor we know that this industry has changed and it was initially a great added value of coming and experiencing a community that sharing economy and that was that was how people promoted it it was a warm feeling again the statistics show more and more that as a community allows it to grow unregulated and unlimited that investors and the big investors not the small ones companies investment firms even international are in fact using this to start defacto hotels I beat but thank you for letting me be here thank you see appreciate Jim Ray is Jim Ray and I own a short-term rental and I just want to make a few comments about the regulations I'm for regulations but they've got to be fair if you over regulate the short-term rental industry or any industry you're asking for a black market to be created and it will happen if this over regulation is passed for instance you know it says you can only rent an owner can only rent his property 180 days can you tell the hotel industry or the long-term rental industry they can only rent their property 50% of the time if it's got to be a level playing field so the regulations where basically three strikes that you're out that should be regulated the same way in my opinion it's the long-term rental or the hotel business if someone breaks the law at a hotel that person's one that gets in trouble the hotel doesn't get closed down after three violations same thing in a long-term rental so that shouldn't be part of the regulations in my opinion capping the number of short-term rentals it's just not a good idea you're capping the economic growth of Columbia and in my opinion that's just a very very very bad idea so and that's all I've got to thank you Jim I think David is double-dipping I see Wendy Bergman here my name is Wendy Bergman I have lived and worked in the city of Columbia for 10 years and I'm a proud resident of cotton town for the past seven as a licensed architect my family and I have a deep appreciation for historic architecture and good design my husband and I David have always had an interest in real estate and we're fortunate enough to purchase an investment property in Earlwood we poured our blood sweat and tears into an extensive renovation of a really dilapidated 1919 home that was formerly a rental and brought it back to its former glory it was a passion project it was during this time that we experienced the loss of our first child a son at 23 weeks the loss of our son the complications leading up to that created immense instability in our lives that experience made us want to become more financially independent and take control of our lives and what matters we hosted our first str guest in Earlwood shortly after and we worked hard and we hustled and we learned a lot that first year about what it meant since then we were approached by other local str owners and asked to manage their home some of those people were neighbors we provide the same quality and comfort that we became known for worth our first rental being an str host or manager is not an easy job we are held to very high standards and we can't defer maintenance like a long-term rental or a typical homeowner can we have an established network of cleaners carpenters painters plumbers electricians roofers landscapers pest control services and supply houses that have grown with us as well as residents and neighbors our dollars we make go right back into our local economy we not only provide the opportunity for our guests to shop local and dine local but for them to stay locally too countless guests have told me how much they love the area that they plan to return in the future some are considering moving into the community and after staying at our home that helped them solidify their decision many are here for work for a few days and then they return home for the weekends we regularly host construction crews business groups and staying with us with us helps them save on housing and therefore build their businesses too we house USC professors and they traveled Columbia for class for classes during the week or the semester to teach we house us or we have families that stay with us while a loved one is in the hospital or in hospice our neighbors rent our homes for extended family during a separation a staycation or simply while work is being undone in their homes we are currently housing Hurricane Ian evacuees and providing them a sense of comfort during a time of immense distress we are helping people and they are helping our community too we are all here today because we care about the city of Columbia and we believe that there is value here it is important that we collaborate between all sides of this issue and find a solution that fits our unique needs here as a community thank you thank you the last name starts with B. E. Bowers your own thank you for letting me speak Gustavo Bueno I'm actually a resident in the Elmwood Park so my wife and I moved there about two years ago there was a mark house sitting in a market for almost two years I'm sorry for almost six months and it was falling apart it had four tenants in it and we saw as an opportunity to to bring that house back to life because he was really in bad shape and still is we're working on it it's a very long work in progress and like many other houses in their neighborhood is it's not in good shape and I've seen a lot of the STR people doing a lot of good work in maintaining the houses and I'm doing that myself I have a I have an Airbnb and one of the units because that that really helps us to speed up the the renovation process the overall rent in the neighborhood in those older houses is relatively low so it's not really a good investment for for landlords that are doing long term because it's just them it's just don't pay the bills the numbers really don't make sense so I'm for some regulation as long as is based on science and numbers just showing a number without a context it doesn't really give us the right picture so I think if we sit down with the right data and write information and make an educated decision we can come up with an agreement where everybody's as close as to happy as you possibly can I don't want to see all my neighbors becoming an STR I live there and I don't think that's gonna be a positive impact for the neighborhood but betting it all together is not good for for the neighborhood is not good for the citizens of Columbia overall because you're bringing last revenue we we house nurses families from the Fort Jackson for graduation even our neighbors come to our place every now and then because they're having issues with their own house so I think there's an opportunity to make everybody happy if we if we work with the right data data without context is just not useful thank you for your time thank you Jesse Stevenson my name is Jesse Stevenson I'm a real estate broker and property manager and investor a lot of good points have been made I guess a couple small ones I'd like to make is I don't think Columbia is a traditional tourist town I think we have people that come for for Jackson and USC and things like that but I don't foresee this ever becoming a town where like the whole neighborhoods are STRs because the law of supply and demand won't there's just not that many people that are coming to Columbia to just for vacation purposes you know I mean so I think but I do think regulations good and but and also the argument about you know well they should be in a commercially zoned area the difference between a long-term rental and a short-term rental as just a definition 31 days versus less than 30 days and so but long-term rentals are not required to be in a commercially zoned area and some streets are full of nothing but long-term rentals so I think that argument is not a very fair argument when we could easily just turn them into long-term rentals and it's still a business in a residential neighborhood in my opinion the only difference is one person's there for 31 days and they're one person's there for five or six yes so and when you do do the you know if y'all do go forward with the regulation and the permits I don't see why they would you know want to make them non transferable like if someone did a great job turning a house into a an attractive STR I don't know why they can't sell that to another operator you know down over down the road why does it have to also become you know a single you know I don't understand that stipulation in there and also I would I would hate to see you know one of the recommendations was that permits would be issued like one time and which is basically like a grandfather clause and then as every person either decides to sell the house because they don't want to do it anymore or change you know loses it because of violation there's no new permits I mean to me that's just a backhanded way of eventually getting rid of all of them because eventually there'll be a lot I mean that's just a way of ending it without saying we're trying to end it you know so I think you should always be able to have you know new permits issued in the future not just a one-time you know thing because I just don't think that's fair and like I do I do believe there's only about maybe one percent of the houses in the Columbia market or STRs and so I don't think it's as big of a problem as people think thank you Matt Carol hey there thank you all for having me for being here I think the the underlying question about all of this this whole conversation is who do we want to be as a city and what is the issue that we're trying to correct are we going to be a city that has open arms to guests and meets them where they are and what they want or are we going to be a city that's more closed-doored and more closed for business and I think that's that's the underlying question here I think the issue that is being addressed is focused on short-term rentals but I think it's an overall rental issue the long-term rental ordinance has been in place for a long time that's been a thing but is that accomplishing what it needs to accomplish for the long-term rentals and are we trying to fix the problem that we don't even really know exists for short-term rentals that may also be grouping the long-term rentals into that problem I don't think that 232 houses or 832 houses depending on what area you're talking about creates a problem that's a city-wide nuisance with in a city of what 50,000 houses so I think we have to we have to ask the question is this really a big enough problem specifically to short-term rentals that we need to be going through all of all of these discussions and so just a few points to make one of the the slides that were shown earlier showed the increase the 18% increase and number of short-term rentals I think the other way to look at that is demand is it has increased obviously right because the if demand isn't increasing supply wouldn't be increasing we wouldn't be going out and having more short-term rentals if people didn't want them right and so clearly the people that are coming to our city want these and so are we going to be able to continue to provide them for our guests or are we not I think that's one of the big questions it's been said you know hurricane refugees are are in our short terminals right now this weekend that also includes the linemen we talked to one of the hotel years earlier today he said he's got a hundred rooms right now for Dominion energy we also have people that are staying in our places that are waiting to get down to Florida or Georgia wherever they're assigned to go to so there's a lot of reasons why these exist and why they're necessary I also think it's it's worth considering you know we've been talking about tax revenue and taxing these everybody I think everyone is in favor of some sort of regulation and taxing these but I think you also have to consider the revenue around them I think all of us are very local and you know I have coupons in mind for local restaurants I have the menus for the local restaurants and so all of my guests know that these are the places to go to when they stay so it's not just the revenue from specifically direct revenue from the short-term rentals but it's also the revenue that's generated by the businesses around them that may not have a hotel or another option very close to them to stay and just the last point that I would say is I don't know that these regulations will will fix the overall issue if I have short-term rentals I also have long-term rentals if short-term rentals are banned effectively my short-term rentals will just become long-term rentals and be college rentals so the issue still remains thank you for your time thank you if you live at 25 34 wheat street you have just won the lottery tennis wheel 25 34 wheat street most of the topics that I was going to talk about I've already been addressed I do serve on the Shandon neighborhood council so the only item I would bring up in is that whatever regulations come out of this that the strong distinction between owner occupied and non owner occupied is maintained I think that distinction is important for some of the other issues that were brought up today that people want to use their own home for a short-term rental or people want to make sure that there's neighbors living in the home and still used as a short-term rental so keeping that this distinction I think would help some of those issues that's it thank you last name is Harris first name no one how y'all doing I love Airbnb's there's no secret to that you'll probably memory from the last meeting the energy I truly believe it changed myself and my family's live our memories and it's not about the money for us I have a son with autism we can't travel we can't visit family friends do travel sports for my eight-year-old because my seven-year-old is diagnosed with autism we discovered Airbnb as a guest before a host and I said oh my gosh this is this is amazing like we have a bedroom for our seven-year-old he can go to sleep with headphones on there's not a lot of noises like we have a hotel let's bring this home we're realist my wife and I own a small company a residential redevelopers real estate investors we've flipped rented Airbnb's right around 100 properties here in columbia lexington and some of the zip codes we're talking about here today and we like to be able to do that for other people too and so one of the our crown jewel properties right across the street from finley park and for the longest time it was boarded up neglected you'd sit in the middle of the park look up and you'd see this ugly scary looking house it's right next to the cemetery so like went really well like halloween parties or whatever i'm sure but we renovated it we put over a hundred thousand dollars into that property and when we bought it it was drug paraphernalia all that stuff you know people squatting and getting into trouble there and imagine coming into columbia and that's like the first thing that you see right right in finley park and i can go on and on with all the other neighborhoods every single house that we've bought to Airbnb was rundown i've never looked at myself as a competitor to someone who's buying a residential house in fact i look at myself as someone who helps people who want to buy a home for themselves just recently we sold a home in melrose heights three weeks ago we had it as an airbnb for almost two years we renovated it we fixed it up we made it beautiful we were able to pay the bills make a little bit of money along the way but then we sold it to a first-time homebuyer that wanted to be in that neighborhood so i think it's also important that to understand from the investing standpoint this is like i don't buy a house and say this is going to be an airbnb airbnb is just a platform that allows us to have options when we're trying to figure out what to do with the property time the market and things like that so for us lots of the stuff is temporary as well i would love it if every two years we'd acquire an airbnb property and then after that we would sell it and someone could enjoy it so it's it's and it's great like i moved here 10 years ago from four mires florida and i'm a little rattled because everyone down south is their homes were destroyed their businesses and livelihoods were gone they're coming up here my family once the storm clears here to stay in our houses but i tell you what like 29201 i wouldn't have lived there 10 years ago like with my kids and everything like driving through and you look at all the dots on the maps of where the airbnb's are and it's like oh those neighborhoods are nice because of people like us and what we're doing fixing them up so the end game isn't to always have it as an airbnb and like this is going to be a hotel in your neighborhood it's just an option and it's a nice option to have for people like us and for people that want to come and visit this great city of columbia and i know you're in line with the autism and trying to do all this great stuff for kids like my son adventure and all this stuff i'm telling you if you take that away that's going to stop too people are going to stop people are coming here just see they are coming here to vacation because they have special needs because of this option so just please keep that in mind when you're figuring everything out thank you thank you see k is that k m williams appreciate y'all very much for having me i'm tim williams the owner and broker in charge of 803 realty i think str has gotten a very negative picture painted for it i think that the narrative needs to be changed we're all real estate investors if you own your home you are a real estate investor you're investing in your home you're investing in your community and like no one just said we're doing the same thing one common misconception is that we get a lot of party folks coming into these short-term rental homes the good thing about being in a short-term rental had that if that happens you've got a a nuisance guest we can immediately remove those guests if you have a long-term rental and you have a nuisance tenant with landlord tenant laws it could take 30 sometimes even 60 days to remove those tenants so that's a huge advantage of having short-term rentals in your neighborhood if you're concerned about that two is short-term rental game is very competitive so we've had to pivot we have to keep our properties to very high-level standards guests do not choose to come and stay in subpar short-term rentals it's even the pricing everything about short-term rental is competitive so homeowners the property owners keep their property maintained very highly normally so in turn is going to up the property values in the neighborhood as far as being able to dictate how you sell a home to or whoever comes in to put an offer on a home like miss kitt said that her friend needed to sell their house for medical reasons and the only offer she got was for somebody that was going to use it as a short-term rental i've been in real estate for a very long time i'm sure some of the other realtors here would agree with me that we don't particularly advertise that this house is a short-term rental it is somebody sees the value in the space and that they can capture a nice income using short-term rental also on the list side we don't ask the other side very limited to we're very limited as to what we can ask as to what they're going to use this space for and i don't think that we could dictate how somebody were to purchase their home so to only think that you could dictate the sell-off property to an individual family i i think that's a reach i think it's a stretch level in the play in field as far as tax income very common knowledge that secondary home taxes at six percent huge gap and four percent to six percent so the city is definitely getting a tremendous amount of revenue just off the higher tax rate for secondary homes i2m and i'm all for regulation permitting inspection it is small business i think limiting small business small business is what is driving the growth of your city the growth chart shows that the city is growing because of the positive impact that you guys are doing and being able to open a small business i'm from lexington county the city of lexington it's very difficult and expensive to opening a small business in city of colombia it's not as difficult and it's much less expensive the growth chart is positive the growth of the city is positive that is why you're experiencing and getting more short-term rentals i'm a father of four children it is almost impossible for me i have two teenagers and two small children to find a hotel room large enough to accommodate six people when i go even though i love the hotel industry they've supported me and other ventures i know my time is up but do consider that it allows larger families to be together when visiting the city thank you thank you erin is that bedding is Sarah gonna let you have her time too well a couple a couple things based on what i didn't catch her name the lady spoke first said um she talked a lot about the fabric of the neighborhood and i think a lot of negative things get done in the name of fabric of the neighborhood that has a terrible history if you look at it we've done a lot of if you look at redlining of neighborhoods and a lot of really bad stuff has been done so if we're going to make any rules or regulations please don't do them because of fabric of the neighborhood reasons they're just it is has a terrible terrible history behind it the second thing she talked about tipping point i mean that you're reaching a tipping point with the houses anyone who's run the numbers on a short-term rental there's the supply and demand the occupancy rates on these houses are going down which means we're not going to keep growing at the rate we're growing we are reaching a tipping point they're not gonna you're not gonna see 10 15 20 30 percent of houses being short-term rentals because it just won't support that it's just the math doesn't work so there's going to be a natural cap just based on supply and demand on a math on it and all we're going to be stuck with is all these nicely done nicely fixed up homes that now get sold off and turn to either long-term rentals or get turned in a nice new home for someone to buy so there's no downside to that side so i think just i just asked you don't do it for fabric of the neighborhood reasons and the tipping point works both ways so thank you guys i appreciate what you're doing are you gonna let Sarah speak i think she did have a couple points i didn't use my whole time so you can have whatever is that and i appreciate it my name is Sarah i am 100 for strs and with regulation i think just two points i wanted to add to the many great points that anybody who's been for strs have made so far is that i just want to say that most hosts are not malicious and i really hope that you guys remember that they work very hard as i believe one of the ladies said before in the beginning we were very hard to to make a business not only profitable but we do care about the neighborhood quite a bit and i don't think anybody is going into it to change or disrupt anything they really are trying to add to it and i think if you know anything about hosts we are 100 okay with regulation as long as it's fair and honest and everyone's coming to the table with good motives and the only thing i asked going forward is um i'm a little worried going forward through this process having seen other cities go through this that there's a lot of feelings and thinking about thing and there's not a lot of data and facts that are used when they're making the regulations so i just request that we don't kind of worry about you know the big purple dots on the thing we actually get real hard data as far as what is actually happening and then make decisions based off of that and have both sides have an equal say that's all i ask so thank you very much i appreciate it thank you sir kate is that gully i want to start by saying thank you for the time and for listening to all the different perspectives that have been offered both here and at other meetings my name is kate collie i am the housekeeping manager and operations manager for heartwood furnished homes i've been with them a little over two years and i want to give you a little picture into a perspective that perhaps you haven't heard yet and that's of what i consider kind of the little fish in this big pond that's our cleaners and our maintenance staff and our support staff i hear a lot about hosts and owners and investors and in my perspective these little people that are just trying to make a living they're the real investors in the short-term rental industry we currently at heartwood have 25 cleaners they come from a range of different backgrounds some are subcontractors some are now hourly employees we've afforded ourselves the effort and the ability to offer 401k and medical benefits now to employees our cleaners are mostly single moms as for myself my husband left i have two sons overnight i needed a job and a way to support my kids short-term rental industry gave me that it gave me financial value it gave me self-esteem that i lacked heartwood gave me a step up when i really needed the help we have cleaners that were teachers during covid covid killed their job they needed work one of our best cleaning teams is a former teacher and a disabled combat veteran who's a marine they are our best team they now have their own home listed as a short-term rental property with heartwood and are very happy with the cycle that they're involved in we also have several cleaners that are nurse students and this job affords them the ability to earn a decent wage very decent and also have the time to study and spend time with families where if they worked a strict 40-hour position they might not have that ability um i encourage you to consider these little people that live within columbia i myself don't live in columbia but i cannot express the flutter of pride that i receive when i come over the bridge every morning into work and i see the city skyline i never imagined that for myself i truly love the city we take great pride in the homes we work in the historic communities that we work in we work very hard to preserve the integrity of these places often we're in a home two three four sometimes five times a week we're watching the height of the grass we're watching watching for trash overflow um we're making sure that these homes are safe for our guests we're constantly reporting any maintenance issues little things air filters smoke detector batteries we want our guests safe and happy and as someone else mentioned our guests are not low maintenance they let us know about every little thing i've lived in long-term rentals i've had slum lords and we don't have that ability so please just consider that little bit of perspective i thank you very much for your time i would just like to say i'd like for columbia to be a model of a collaborative effort um i think a lot of shutdown has happened elsewhere and i would be very proud to say columbia started this community effort to keep everybody happy thank you very much okay that might be the best quote of the meeting heart trailer we've got another duet here thank you for allowing us an opportunity to speak um i was born and raised in the city i went to carolina that's where i met my wife we call columbia home we're raising three boys here we love this city and we want to see it thrive and flourish i've been working in residential real estate since 2009 so i work and interact daily with various people in the real estate world buyers sellers other agents attorneys inspectors so on and in my experience and from my conversations with those in the real estate world the majority of the buyers that we're working with and we're seeing come to our city are people looking to achieve the real estate dream or the american dream of purchasing real estate owning a home that they can occupy we're not seeing major corporations and big investments groups swooping in and buying up all the houses and turning all of our neighborhoods into short-term rentals second i work with a number of investors they're not the big corporations but they're average joes like you and me and they bought properties to use as short-term rentals and in all those instances they bought properties that were in disrepair they came in they fixed them up they made them beautiful of course they made their properties value increase but they also increased all their neighbors value but not only do they increase the value in that way but with short-term rentals because of the the more regular turnover there's reason to be getting into the properties more regularly and there's more opportunities to maintain them to fix them to have them nice for the next guest versus the long-term renters who are in there for a year and the property managers can't get into those properties and or they have to dance around their schedules to get in so short-term rentals add value to our neighborhoods as i said at the start i love this city i want to see it thrive and flourish my generation and the next generation has clearly shown we like airbnb's we would much rather stay in an airbnb than a hotel the current proposal will will eliminate short-term rentals in our city but thankfully that hasn't passed and so i think you guys have an opportunity to decide how are we going to embrace short-term rentals are we going to let one bad apple over here taint our view are we going to believe inaccurate depictions and unfounded fears we're going to believe those and then therefore reject short-term rentals and miss out on an opportunity that could better our city are we going to wisely approach this and make fair and just and smart regulations that benefit everyone but also that would benefit our city thank you now for the better half vanessa really most everything i was going to say has already been said so i'll just say that i um if this is just a legitimate need in a healthy housing market and so we have to have some level of short-term rentals and most of the people here are providing excellent options for people um and so i would on a real estate side i just feel as if right now the way it's drafted is that owner-occupied properties really need to have more freedom almost complete freedom they're living there they're using their home how they wish and it's their primary residence so they should be pretty much exempt from most of what's in there um i would also say when it comes to the six percent they also need some flexibility they're already paying extremely high taxes um so the pricing the financial side is um i mean some of it was extremely high and so um i would just say anything we can do to try to make columbia a more friendly place to invest i mean i personally am looking for my first actual investment property we don't have any yet and i'm actually not i want to invest here but it's really expensive i'd rather go to north carolina i'd rather look at georgia it's hard to invest here just with the way it's set up and i would love nothing more than to be able to do that in columbia south carolina so i would just really take that into account um i think that's pretty much it thank you so much thank you venessa catherine bruce phleming phleming bruce excuse me uh the first point is i hope you will look at how each residential area is in reality some blocks are very different from other blocks the block i live in has a lot of institutional commercial interest in it and very little residential so how to have the language so that you can kind of accommodate okay well this is in the heart of a neighborhood this is kind of on the outskirts maybe it will create less agitation so that's one point a second point is that y'all are doing a great job on this on this conversation some of the meetings that i went to of str leaders didn't have a lot of people in the room look like me and i'm not a str owner one day i might like to to do that so if we create language that's going to kind of cut off people who can get in to the str um business i'd hate to see that you know i'd like to see diversity in the population of people who are doing that uh the third point is that people who own these homes are able to create some kind of revenue stream for themselves either from a long term short term whatever addresses the wealth gap so we want to have an opportunity for the racial wealth gap to be addressed so if we can put all those things in to the conversation that says we want to make sure our our neighborhoods retain peaceful enjoyment and we want to make sure that we're able to provide some hosts opportunities uh for visitors to come in so if we can add those three points to your consideration i would appreciate it thank you thank you gatham emily brian i'm a resident of the rosewood neighborhood i moved there about a year ago i love where i am i went um i have neighbors that i communicate with when we see something strange a dog is missing we text each other call each other go next door and say is this your dog um one night i was walking into my backyard at about nine o'clock at night and there was a strange man across the street drinking a beer sitting sitting out on sidewalk and um or there's no sidewalk there the drainage ditch and so i communicated with my neighbors who have children and i said hey i just want you to know there's a guy around the corner they said well you know call it in and i called it in and before i could say there's a tall man in a hat with a blue shirt on the police said is it a tall man in a hat with a blue shirt on so clearly i wasn't the first person that had called um when i spoke with my neighbor the next day they said yes um drug dealers rent out these houses here the airbnb's and use it and then they leave um and i don't know you know what her knowledge of it was they've lived there for a decade or so um i just want it regulated i have dogs i love to go out of town and stay in an airbnb because it's so much easier than being in a hotel or a different type of place i would just like it regulated so that it's a safe place to be thank you and last but not least rick good evening rick lackland director of sales and marketing of the double tree conference center here in columbia also on the board of directors for lake murray country tourism to columbia south carolina we work very hard uh to bring tourism to columbia so i think i disagree with uh someone who said that uh columbia is not a destination lake murray is alive and well and uh we're getting ready to host world bass fishing 25 countries coming into columbia so uh i think that if we talked to south carolina parks and rec they would disagree as well if you need a place to stay i've got five presidential suites 33 junior suites 33 junior suites they can house probably about eight eight people so come see us my point is i think that we're losing focus here um we've heard some very heartwarming stories and my compassion goes out to each and every one of those um the folks that are you know we're impoverished and now they see light um i think that's great what we're talking about here though is the occupancy tax i have an owner that i report to a single man that owns our hotel and he has to pay taxes and there's guidelines and regulations so that's all we're trying to find here is um taxes we pay 13 percent occupancy tax what does that tax go for that goes to help build our roads um uh our parks refurbish all of that we're asking for an equal playing field here recently as as yesterday you could see on the front page of the paper hotel to be built in columbia about a month ago there was another hotel that wanted to go in down by the Girl Scouts if you remember that right down there on off of those hotels you know represent an owner and they have to follow the guidelines and regulations that the city council and the state of south carolina set forth so i think today is all we're asking for is an occupancy tax that would put everyone on an equal playing field and would also refurbish our city and help everyone in the long run thank you thank you jim council members i'm jim daniel i'm president of the wheelie hill neighborhood association i sent y'all something earlier let me just hit the highlights wheelie hill has one short-term rental it's owned by lfc the registered agent is an llc the agency that handles the rental is an llc the cleaning agent the person who is a local contact is a cleaning agency with that agent without any authority we were able to track down the owner they live in cala silicon valley in california we talked to the owner been able to work out an agreement with him that he's going to limit the number of cars a couple quick things charleston i think i sent you the story spent two years on this subject granted a whole different animal down there and they ended up i think with three different sectors for short-term rooms uh the department of revenue just sent out something last week uh that basically says that people renting rooms must have a retail license and electronically file and pay accommodation taxes just as hotels do effective october 1st there was an editorial in the posting courier i think on sunday where the comment was made well if they have to now record this with the department of revenue why doesn't the top of the revenue share this with the city so they have the same information so you can do what you need to do one other issue is the issues we've had if i short-term rental the city doesn't zoning doesn't work on the weekends who do you call you call the police well they don't know anything about parking by permit and wheeler hill uh they have to show up and it actually has to be an issue so we've got that issue there's nobody with in the city zoning structure that's available on the weekends would deal with the issues but on another thing on a legal standpoint there's a merging law around the country that says the renting of short-term rentals in a residential neighborhood is a commercial establishment and is a zoning violation that hadn't gotten here yet but it's something that surfacing and will probably appear sometime in the future thank you thank you final comment we do need to have registration and we have registration we need names of the people who are the owners not a LLC in timbuktu we need somebody that we can get in touch with here to address the issue with thank you John good afternoon my name is John Wilkinson and i'm the president of the elwood park neighborhood association and i'd like to share a statement on behalf of our board and our 170 active members a couple of whom are here today we would like to start by thanking city council and this committee for taking up this challenging topic we often hear this refrain that columbia is behind the times and on this issue we actually are as most of the cities we admire have already taken some form of action on short-term rentals we have the opportunity to learn from other cities and to apply emerging best practices based on what has worked we also have seen the consequences of inaction in the first hearing the benefits for tourists and travelers were made very clear but what are the benefits for our actual residents who have built these wonderful residential neighborhoods that tourists now want to visit elwood park is one of the closest residentially zoned neighborhoods to downtown columbia where we know there's a concentration we have a thriving front porch culture and a strong sense of community our neighbors look out for one another especially given some of the challenges we face as a downtown neighborhood this sense of community and security is critical and it is built upon relationships among excuse me among long-term residents who know each other our neighbors have expressed serious and legitimate concerns about the proliferation of short-term rentals in elwood park and the impacts on safety and quality of life there is some tipping point where that sense of security and community starts to get lost and spirals downward we cannot let it get that far our neighbors have invested vastly more in building this neighborhood than any str investors that being said our neighbors also recognize the benefits of short-term rentals for our community our neighbors have used short-term rentals to welcome family and friends for extended stays and to seek alternative accommodations during home renovations or repairs we have a diverse community and we enjoy welcoming new neighbors and meeting visitors we have several str investors in elwood park and they contribute as much to our neighborhood as individuals as any other neighbor we recognize that these are our friends and our neighbors running these businesses we are not a not in my backyard neighborhood we are seeking outcomes that benefit and protect our residents and homeowners our neighborhood supported the city's business friendly initiatives because we want the benefits of economic growth around our neighborhood let's not lose sight of neighborhood friendly initiatives on this topic though two of the key takeaways we heard from the first hearing were don't hurt the str operators and investors and to regulation that helps eliminate bad actors is welcome we would like to express our strong support for regulation that not only eliminates bad actors but protects our communities where we live as residents we don't have the benefit of easily moving to the next neighborhood at the end of a three night stay these are our homes where life happens where we raise our children where we start careers where we grow old when city council approves this ordinance in its eventual form we expect that it will also be backed by the resources to actually and swiftly enforce it the cities we admire have already done this let's get it done in columbia and get on with building the city we love thank you john and mr brendan do you have anything to add thank you so much for everybody that came out to the second of three look forward to moving towards the third meeting and the the recommendation of let's have a conversation amongst all of us is something we will follow up on very very engaging conversations hopefully we'll come back with something that that works for everybody so thanks again for your time today and look forward to seeing y'all soon i also want to thank everyone for coming out we have to have open what do they call them courageous conversations and so as the city of columbia as we take on new issues we have to have the conversations and look at and really balance the needs of everyone so i'm looking forward to furthering the conversation um with my fellow council members as well as with you all oh and if you have sent me an email yes i did receive it um but no thank you all for your passion about the subject too because we need to hear what your thoughts and positions are thanks and i too want to thank you for your attendance today and for the good comments that you have constructively made to the committee i can assure you that we want to do a to produce an ordinance that is both fair to the industry and fair to the neighborhoods and will benefit the city of columbia and we will be working with members of the your industry and with other people that are interested in this topic to see if we can't come up with something that's that is a well-balanced ordinance thank you for coming without objection we will adjourn