Last Updated on August 6, 2023, 2:51 AM | Published: December 18, 2022
OKLAHOMA CITY — As the ballooning number of Airbnbs and other homeshare rentals in Oklahoma City continues to drive complaints of noise, safety, and unlicensed operation, city employees say that current policies and staffing shortages make it nearly impossible to regulate the industry.
In recent reports, Free Press has spoken to city leaders and council members in OKC and The Village about the effect of short-term rentals on the already strained affordable housing market as well as the ongoing proliferation of unlicensed and unregulated rentals creating neighborhood concerns.
According to some city staff, the path to a more efficient and better-equipped framework for licensing, regulating, and enforcing the rapidly expanding short-term rental market looks rocky, as it would require not only filling some major gaps in policy, but addressing the city’s ongoing staffing shortage as well.
‘Reactive enforcement’
As Director of Development Services for the City of Oklahoma City, Rick Wickenkamp oversees both the licensing and code enforcement departments handling Airbnbs and other homeshares.
“The Development Center actually issues the license for the homeshares, so they just make sure they have all the information they need, and if the homeshare needs an approval from the Board of Adjustment,” Wickenkamp explained. “And then the other piece is Code Enforcement, which enforces business licenses, so if somebody is required to have one and doesn’t. And they also enforce zoning violations. If somebody’s operating an Airbnb without a license, it’s kind of both of those things.”
But while all official licensing for any short-term rental in the city has to pass through Development Services for approval, there is currently no inspection process for the home in question to ensure safety or neighborhood impact.
“Well, we don’t have inspections on long-term rentals either,” he explained. “The application to get approval for a homeshare requires that you list safety equipment like smoke detectors, et cetera to meet approval.”
Even such a lax requirement is only reviewed in the case of officially licensed homeshares, of which there were only roughly 450 when last examined in September of this year.
At that same time, the Airbnb website listed more than 1,000 available rentals in OKC.
Responding to the persistent issue of unlicensed homeshares across the city has proven to be particularly difficult, as there is currently no policy of proactive enforcement against homes listed for short-term rental with no active licenses or filed applications.
“Our code enforcement is primarily reactive enforcement,” Wickenkamp said. “For the most part, we’re just responding to complaints that we get.”
‘Historic shortages’
Creating new city policy necessitating regular on-site inspections of short-term rental homes or proactive investigation and enforcement for online listed homeshares without proper licensing would require more than just city government approval.
Even if policies like those were put into place in OKC, it’s unlikely that there would be enough staff to enforce them.
“I think this is absolutely critical for people to understand,” Ward 2 City Councilperson James Cooper told me. “Right now we’re experiencing, in OKC, historic shortages of our city workforce in everything from Information Technology to Public Works, and that includes Code Enforcement. We don’t have enough folks that could go out and proactively look at these listings.”
The same concern was echoed by Wickenkamp in response to questions about designating a separate department or position to focus on the overwhelming number of homeshare applications currently coming through his department alongside all other city commercial licenses.
“We’ve got about nine staff members that deal with every license in the city,” Wickenkamp said. “I don’t think it’s the most efficient way to operate to separate people out for individual kinds of licenses. If you dedicate one person for just one kind of license, then what happens when that person is gone? It just would really bottleneck it out.”
Cooper remains convinced that addressing the city’s longstanding staffing crisis may be a required first step before any more meaningful action addressing homeshares can be taken.
“Until the city reckons with this,” he told me, “nothing will change.”
What can be done?
As new regulatory departments or increased oversight would require added manpower that the city currently does not have, some of the more realistic actions to take might be considering tighter regulations on out-of-state, multi-homeshare owners and even a possible cap on the number of homeshares in the city.
“I’ve asked our legal team and the City Manager’s office to start looking into all of this, and the good news is that the City Manager’s office was already looking into it,” Cooper told me. “What I am deeply concerned about are these out-of-state, sometimes out-of-country property owners that have an Airbnb here and have no idea what’s going on. That distance can lead to a lack of accountability and a lack of transparency. So I really worry about that.”
Cooper says his top priorities on the issue are to make sure that the rules are fair to local, rule-abiding owners in the city.
“Some of the most responsible Airbnb hosts exist in Ward 2,” he said. “I don’t think it’s fair for the hosts who do their due diligence and play by the rules that someone can have an illegal one listed on these sites and not face any sort of consequence for that.”
In Nichols Hills, homeshares of any kind have reportedly been outlawed completely, a move that The Village City Councilperson Sean Cummings said he would be willing to consider as the number of unlicensed homeshare properties have exploded across The Village.
Has there been any talk of a similar total ban in OKC?
“We haven’t heard anything from policymakers about that,” Wickenkamp said, “but as homesharing evolves in the city, I anticipate there will be discussions, and I think those topics will be looked at, at some point.”
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.
