Dallas' code inspectors have received 160 complaints about short-term rentals since last year but city officials say they have limited resources to respond.
Noise, parking and litter complaints are among the reasons residents are calling 311 — the city’s service line.
The complaint data doesn’t include calls made to 911 for similar issues — and doesn’t factor in multiple calls made for one of the over 3,000 known short-term rentals.
When a code compliance officer goes to investigate a complaint, they have few resources other than “engaging and educating property owners” about regulations and issuing notices for “any apparent violations within [Code Compliance Services] authority.” That's according to a presentation city staff made at Monday’s Quality of Life, Arts and Culture Committee meeting.
And according to staff, that's all they really can do until a temporary injunction against the city’s regulation ordinances, passed last year, is lifted.
“It is difficult with the current codes to enforce against short-term rentals, just because of the…nuisance behavior that occurs typically when code compliance staff is not working in residential neighborhoods,” Chris Christian, director of code compliance services, said Monday.
The city council voted to approve a near-prohibition of the rentals last year. Soon after, a coalition of operator sued the city. In December, a Dallas County Judge sided with the STR operators and said the city cannot enforce its ordinances.
Some elected officials say they continue to have issues with problem STRs in their districts — like the properties being used for events.
“I even have a video of an event on Walnut Hill where DPD was blocking the street for the events,” District 13 Council Member Gay Donnell Willis said. “I thought our police department is blocking the streets, which I am sure they were hired to do, for an illegal land use?”
Willis said there have been reports of open drug use, noise “at all hours of the day and night” — and STR tenants bothering neighbors nearby.
Staff said the STR ordinances passed by the council last year included ways to address these issues.
“What [it] would allow us to do is, it gives us a lot of tools, a lot of teeth on the nuisance behaviors that we were experiencing,” Christian said. “The trash accumulation, the parking violations…as well as the noise.”
Christian said the ordinance would give the city the authority to issue citations STR owners and local operators for any violations.
“With our inability to enforce that ordinance right now, we have to rely on our existing codes,” Christian said. “It’s a little more difficult to prove event space use from those codes, but we are working on those properties.”
Other council members said they realized the issues STRs can pose and pointed to other potential consequences.
“[STRs] are running rampant in my neighborhoods, and we've got to get them under control,” District 1 Council Member Chad West said. “This current ordinance that we passed punishes everybody, the good operators and the bad ones.”
West said the ordinances have forces some small business in his district to close down.
“That piece is never discussed, we just talk about the problems, we don’t talk about the good things that came along with this,” West said.
STR operators are required to collect a 9% Hotel Occupancy Tax from guests which gets used to bolster the city’s tourism efforts and art facilities. The city has collected millions of dollars a year from operators in Dallas.
Despite the restrictions and injunction, Dallas city officials say the number of known active STRs has increased since last year, which has brought more than resident complaints.
“One of the key challenges is ensuring that all potential STR owners respond to the city Controller’s Office request to register and remit their taxes,” Christian said.
The city staff says “potential” rentals — or properties that city staff suspects as being an STR — have also gone up. But it’s just a suspicion.
“We send them up to four notifications of increasing varieties of…trying to get them to pay [taxes],” Sheri Kowalski, the city controller, said.
Kowalski also said if complaints are made against suspected STR properties, code compliance officers will be sent to the location — and “a lot of times that will get them to register” to pay taxes.
“What we are doing is not working,” West said during the meeting. “The courts…agree with that fact and as the STRs increase our hotel occupancy tax goes down.”
The city remains in legal limbo until the court hears the injunction case — which might take some time.
“Right now, we are appealing the temporary injunction…we are awaiting a setting for an oral argument on that,” Andrew Spaniol, the city’s deputy chief of general litigation, said. “They have not announced the oral argument schedule for October, but it is possible we will be on that.”
While the city continues to try and regulate the rental operations using the city codes at their disposal, some council members want to revisit the halted ordinances.
“I think that there could be an opportunity for us to reexplore allowing for exactly what we have proposed but to include settled rights for those who are currently operating,” District 7 Council Member Adam Bazaldua said.
“Hopefully the council will be willing to take action so that we can actually provide some relief for residents and not just say we took care of short-term rentals, because we clearly haven’t.”
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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