Last Updated on September 10, 2022, 9:01 PM | Published: September 8, 2022
OKLAHOMA CITY (Free Press) — What’s convenient for some has turned out to be monumentally bothersome for others as OKC’s all-hands push for increased tourism and getaway appeal has seen an explosion in the number of Airbnbs and other short-term rental properties.
But, a particularly worrying spike in the number of unlicensed and unregulated listings is becoming the downside of that rapid development.
As Oklahoma is slowly becoming a more active travel destination, and as OKC is becoming an even bigger weekend destination even for residents from elsewhere in the state, the city’s supply of short-term rentals has skyrocketed.
The number of city-approved licenses for those rentals, however, has not.
“We only had six of them actually licensed, but we have at least forty we have found online,” said Sean Cummings, businessman and The City of the Village City Councilman.
The Village takes in about five square miles on the north side of the metro sharing a boundary with The City of Nichols Hills.
Unsurprisingly, this trend has sparked a rise in both the number of police involvements and direct complaints from neighbors, leading city officials across the metro to mull ways to refine city ordinances, expand enforcement, and to search for any viable path forward for this booming industry in our city.
“No Control”
“When I first got on city council,” Cummings told me, “I told our city manager, ‘hey, I think this is something that we have to deal with because it’s getting bigger and bigger.’”
For Cummings, the complications of tracking down unregulated Airbnbs around The Village and moving to get them properly inspected and licensed is only scratching the surface of the issues when there is so much potential neighborhood impact to consider.
“We had a lady convert a house into a party house,” he said. “It had a pool and it was in the middle of the neighborhood with loud parties and took up all the parking on the street, like twenty-five cars out front. Believe it or not, that one house is what launched all of this.”
The online complaints flooding in about that particular house led to Cummings co-hosting a town hall to hear from Village residents about their own issues and experiences with unexpected short-term rentals popping up in their neighborhoods, and it turned out to be a more pressing issue than he’d expected.
“One of the other big complaints was that nobody was notified that an Airbnb was going in,” he said. “So all of a sudden, you think you’re living in this quiet residential neighborhood, and somebody just pops in and you have new guests every night right next door, and you have no control over it.”
‘Playing Cleanup‘
For all the growing pains and potential frustrations of the booming short-term rental industry, in particular those listed and supported by Airbnb and primary challenger Vrbo, there is also a great deal of tax benefit and possible revenue for the city.
Or at least there is supposed to be.
“One thing I will say is that Airbnb is very well organized and will circle our specific city and make sure that we get our sales tax money, but Vrbo doesn’t do that,” Cummings explained. “So the people that are only on Vrbo, which is an Expedia company, by the way, they’re literally running an illegal business and not paying their taxes.”
That’s a glaring problem as the potential solutions for many of the lingering municipal headaches relating to these rentals are all about licensing, regulation, and in the most problematic cases, in-person code enforcement, all of which cost city money and would be much easier to fund with dedicated tax revenue.
Raising money for more code enforcement officers is of particular interest in The Village, where there are currently no officers available on weekends, the most common time for short-term rentals to be occupied and in clear violation.
Nichols Hills, in contrast, has already outright banned Airbnb rather than deal with the complexities of regulating them, and while Cummings doesn’t feel like that’s a likely option for The Village, he does want much stricter, clear legislation and regulation.
“No governance is not working,” Cummings told me. “We’ve got to wrangle it in, or they put us in a position where we’re playing clean up for somebody else’s business, and we don’t get any money for that. We get some from Airbnb, but not any of the others.”
Getting Involved
According to Neighborhood Alliance of Central Oklahoma City Executive Director Georgie Rasco, the most effective way to address frustrations or concerns surrounding Airbnbs and short-term rentals is for neighborhood residents to get involved.
“Neighbors have to be proactive,” Rasco said. “If you get a letter that there’s going to be an Airbnb on your block or near your home, you have the responsibility to let your other neighbors know, and then to figure out what you guys want. Do you want that? If you do, what are your restrictions that you want with it?”
While The Village is exploring options for a new city ordinance, OKC proper is currently right in the middle of writing a new one, and Rasco believes that short-term rentals are likely to be a hot topic when considering new rules and regulations.
Already, the City of OKC Board of Adjustment has limited short-term rental licenses to just one year, allowing annual reviews to consider any neighborhood complaints or issues, and there are restrictions already put on things like maximum occupancy and code compliance.
Rasco is quick to point out how these abiding Airbnbs around the city can have plenty of positives and benefits, ranging from spurring neighborhood-wide renovation and upkeep to bolstering the city’s image for out-of-town visitors.
Of course, most of those upsides – as well as the more obvious tax benefits for the city – only apply if the rentals are officially licensed, regulated, and respectful of neighbors who live next door year-round.
So what can residents do to push city officials to address the growing number of unregulated Airbnbs, Vrbos, and others?
“The only way they [city officials] know that is if citizens show up and tell them,” Rasco explains. “If you see an advertisement or anything that’s inviting the public to come comment or speak, then go to that, or just call your councilman and leave their assistant your information or send them an email, and let them know what’s working for you and what’s not. That’s how more serious codes for Airbnbs will happen.”
“We’re not going to get rid of them,” Rasco continued. “They’re here. They’re going to be here. But how are we going to live with them in a better way so that we can all be good neighbors? That is the better question.”
Correction: The original captions for the two City Council for the City of The Village photos were in fact from Sean Cummings’ first night on the Council but the date was incorrect. We have corrected the error. It was May 2, 2022, instead of September 8, 2022.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
