DALLAS — Dallas City Council members received new details on how short-term rental registration and enforcement would work.
Short term rentals, or STRs, have been a topic for debate in the city for four years.
“Every time we meet and discuss this, we’re a step closer,” Councilman Adam Bazaldua said. “Every time we vet out legal challenges, we’re a step closer.”
A focal point of Wednesday’s presentation was how STRs like Airbnb and Vrbo compare to the rest of the city in terms of 311 and 911 calls.
The presentation showed 95 STRs received 3 or more calls for service between January and the end of April, but 80% of properties did not receive any call. In past briefings, Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia said enforcement of city ordinances at STRs could be a drain on resources for the department.
Before this weekend, Sonya Hebert hadn’t been involved in the fight against STRs, but Wednesday, she was one of the two dozen people at the city council briefing wearing a shirt that read “Homes Not Hotels.”
This weekend, she recorded and reported this party at an STR on her Northwest Dallas street.
“It was just a super big raging party,” she said. “The police didn’t shut the party down. The drive-by shooting shut the party down.”
Hebert said she witnessed a shooting at about 1 a.m. that sent people running through yards. Police said no one was hurt.
“No child should have to wake up to machine gun fire outside their home,” she said. “I mean, this is where they play every day.”
The current plan for short-term rentals would ban them in residential neighborhoods, making about 95% of the 1,765 registered STRs illegal.
Most are in Oak Cliff, Deep Ellum and around the Knox-Henderson area.
Bazaldua says owners who register, pay hotel occupancy taxes and don’t have issues would be unfairly harmed.
“It’s not sensible and it doesn’t give us teeth to regulate,” he said of the proposal. “We know that there are issues with short-term rentals, but we need to be legislating with a scalpel and not a hammer.”
“I’m sorry to say there are enough bad actors in these short-term rentals that are ruining it for everyone,” Hebert said.
Bazaluda has a different plan which would let each neighborhood decide if they want rentals. He says some operators rely on that income to continue owning a home.
“We’ve allowed for neighborhoods, quite frankly, north of I-30 to dictate zoning that has been extremely harmful for neighborhoods that I represent south of 30,” Bazaldua said.
City staff told council members during the Wednesday briefing that they could begin code enforcement within six months, but enforcement would need to be from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Fort Worth recently went through STR changes, too. The city allows them in mixed-used zoning as well as most form-based, commercial and industrial zoning. The new change it adopted requires STRs to also register and pay a hotel tax.
For Hebert and families like hers, there’s urgency for resolution.
“I can only hope that they’ll do the right thing and protect our communities,” she said.