Lorain looks to revise short-term rental regulations

LORAIN — Short-term rentals in Lorain may no longer need to apply for conditional use permits through the city's Planning Commission. A proposed update to the city's current regulations surrounding short-term rentals like Airbnb and VRBO vacation homes looks to make them permitted uses in residential areas — saving applicants a $500 nonrefundable fee and a trip before the Planning Commission for approval. Short-term rentals are units rented to a tenant for fewer than 29 days. Instead of the city's Planning Commission determining whether to grant a conditional use permit, it would be an administrative decision within the Building, Housing and Planning department to determine whether a short-term rental met the city's requirements. Those requirements would be mostly the same as they are now, including requiring off-street parking based on the number of rental units in a building, and registering on the city's rental registry, Building, Housing and Planning Director Matt Kusznir said during a Building and Lands Committee meeting Monday evening. The only new requirement would be submitting a background check for the property's owner and operator or manager to the city to allow it to know who is doing business there, Kusznir said. In the 18 months that short-term rental owners have had to apply for a conditional use permit from the Planning Commission, he could not recall anyone being denied. In the future, he plans to submit an ordinance that would allow a short-term rental to be denied or revoked based on background check findings or if the property is a nuisance in the community. That second ordinance will be modeled off legislation already in place in Columbus, he said. Short-term rentals have been a point of contention in the city. Discussions started in 2020, then again in 2023 and stretched for months before the current regulations were put in place. During those discussions many owners of the rental units believed they had operated within the city without incident and argued the business was already overregulated. Homeowners against the rentals argued it would affect their own property values and the ever-changing tenants would be a nuisance in neighborhoods. Council member Sylvia DuVall, D-at Large, questioned how Kusznir's department was keeping track of current vacation rentals. He said the city knows if a property owner files a conditional use permit or completes the annual rental registration. His department periodically cross-references its records with the city treasurer's collection of bed taxes for residential properties to determine if a home may be a short-term rental. Based on BHP's research, there are 80 to 90 short-term rentals in the city, he said, and staffers are trying to track them all down. Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.