GAINESVILLE – The path that the Hall County Commission chooses to follow in how vacation/rental properties are regulated in the future is being closely watched by other counties across the state.
Thursday’s scheduled vote on proposed regulations and codes is “under the microscope”.
“This issue is something that we need to get right,” said Gainesville resident Jeff Hilton during public comment. “We’re being looked at.”
At issue: dealing with the growing trend among homeowners to rent out their homes – or part of their homes - on a short term basis, and some of the problems that accompany that practice.
Lake Lanier is not the only reservoir in the state where water front homes are offered for rent on a short term basis; nor is the Lake Lanier Olympic Venue the only sports destination in the state where visitors seek houses to rent for a brief period of time; and the Blue Ridge Mountains are not the only sight-seeing opportunity in Georgia where homeowners offer portions of their homes for rent on a daily or weekly basis.
But Hall is one of the first Georgia counties confronting some of the issues that have been birthed from online web sites such as VRBO.com, AirBnB.com, HomeToGo.com, HomeAway.com.
And as mentioned, numerous other counties are watching closely to learn from Hall’s successes and/or mistakes in dealing with those using these web sites.
“Hall County is a vacation destination,” said Stacey Dixon, President of the Lake Lanier Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, also speaking during public comment. “Over 500-bedrooms are available for short term rental today in the county.”
“Complaints, that’s what’s driving the issue, and the solution is compliance, not more regulations. Hall County currently has on the books enough regulations to get the complaints under control. The problem is enforcements,” Dixon said.
Dixon explained, “There are four major ‘pain points’ with complaints: occupancy, parking, noise and trash. The existing ordinance can resolve all of those issues.”
Hilton agreed with Dixon. “There are a few problem houses that need to be taken care of; we can do this with enforcement of current regulations. The 16-pages that are proposed is regulatory overkill.”
“I think we can actually add a few code sentences to what’s currently there and take care of this issue,” Hilton added.
Dixon said some requirements of the proposed 16-page ordinance cause her group to be concerned. “Specific items in the code proposal that are of concern to us include applying commercial building codes to residential properties; repeated notifications to neighbors (whenever a property is rented neighbors are to be notified) that encourage complaints.”
Dickson and others in her camp feel requiring some homes to become ADA compliant, to install fire extinguishing systems and illuminated exit signs, as well as commercial kitchen components are too burdensome.
Commission Chairman Richard Higgins said after Monday’s work session, “Some want to over-regulate and some want to under-regulate. We’ve got to find a good balance going forward.”
“AirBnB, I’ve used it when going out of town and on vacations and it’s a neat thing, but it’s got to be good for both sides. It’s got to be good for the renter but also for the neighbors,” Higgins said.
“We’ve got to come up with a balance, a good proposal that we can enforce and that will still encourage people to come to our area.”
“Forsyth County,” Higgins said, “I saw where they were looking, they were going to see what we were going to do.”
Higgins said that once an ordinance is adopted it can be fine-tuned at a later date, but he said it might be better to start with a strict interpretation and modify it as things settle.
“It’s better to start hard and ease up,” Higgins said.
Mandy Harris of Douglas Drive in Gainesville likes the idea of new regulations. “If we had the codes on the books already to resolve these problems, why are we still talking about them? It seems like we should have already taken care of the problem homes. It shouldn’t have reached a point where we had a moratorium.”
Higgins ended the work session by saying, “The last couple of weeks we’ve received a lot of emails about this…we’re trying to listen to everybody and we’re trying to have something that will be good for everybody.”
Whatever policy the commission decides to approve Thursday evening will likely fulfill what Chairman Higgins said after the meeting: “We can’t make everybody happy.”
Thursday’s meeting begins at 6 p.m. in the Hall County Government Center.
