After three drama-filled hours, the Athens-Clarke County Commission approved new restrictions on short-term rentals Feb. 6, but the compromise reached means commissioners may be having the same debate again in a couple of months.
The proposed regulations, under discussion for two years, ban new short-term rentals like those advertised on booking sites like Airbnb or VRBO in single-family neighborhoods, unless the host lives in the home. They are aimed at out-of-town investors that have been buying houses in neighborhoods like Five Points and converting them into full-time vacation homes, prompting complaints from neighbors about parking and noise, as well as concerns that short-term rentals (STRs) are taking houses off the market that would otherwise be bought or rented by full-time Athens residents, thus helping to drive up housing costs.
At the same time, the new regulations allow STRs in multifamily, commercial and industrial areas with fewer restrictions, as long as the owners obtain the proper permits and pay taxes, treating them much like hotels. In single-family zones, homeowners can still rent out a room, an outparcel or the entire property as long as they actually live in the residence otherwise. A new code enforcement officer and a third-party vendor will be hired to track STRs and enforce the new laws.
Athens-Clarke County’s zoning code, originally written more than 20 years ago, doesn’t account for STRs. “STRs are not on that list because platforms like Airbnb and VRBO didn’t used to exist,” Commissioner Carol Myers said. “STRs in single-family zones are a kind of loophole that exists because our county, like those across the country, has not caught up with online booking platforms like Airbnb and VRBO. We are now trying to enact local legislation that addresses this.”
The main issue was a sunset provision inserted by the ACC Planning Commission, an advisory board on zoning issues. The planning commission recommended a two-year sunset on existing single-family STRs, overruling the advice of county attorneys who said that such a sunset would violate Georgia’s vested property rights. Local attorney David Ellison, representing an LLC that owns multiple STRs in Athens, all but said he would sue the county if it enacted the regulations with the sunset provision.
Commissioners Dexter Fisher and John Culpepper moved to reject the proposed regulations on the grounds that ACC would be sued. “We’re going to spend money on outside counsel, most likely, to fight a lawsuit that we don’t have to fight,” Fisher said.
Public opinion at Tuesday’s meeting was fairly evenly split, whereas at past public comment opportunities it’s been overwhelmingly in favor of the strongest regulations possible. Many Five Points residents even panned the two-year sunset provision as too weak at a recent town hall meeting held by Culpepper and commissioners Allison Wright and Mike Hamby, all of whom represent part of Five Points, a neighborhood that’s seen a particular influx of STRs due to its proximity to UGA and Sanford Stadium.
After more than an hour of public comment and nearly two hours of commission debate, commissioners deadlocked. The votes were 5–4 in favor of enacting the regulations, then 4–5 to reject them, with Myers, Hamby and commissioners Melissa Link, Patrick Davenport and Tiffany Taylor supporting STR regulations, and commissioners Ovita Thornton and Jesse Houle joining Culpepper and Fisher in voting against them.
As a text amendment to the county zoning code, the regulations required six votes to pass, not a simple majority. With Airbnb owner Allison Wright recusing herself, Mayor Kelly Girtz, who votes only to break a tie, was unable to tip the balance.
Girtz called for a break after the impasse. When commissioners returned 20 minutes later, they voted unanimously for the regulations, with a caveat: Girtz assigned the commission’s Government Operations Committee to immediately take another look at the new rules and bring back a recommendation on potential changes within two months. He also tasked the planning commission with reviewing the procedure for text amendments.
The compromise downplays the threat of a lawsuit by affording commissioners the chance to repeal the controversial sunset provision more quickly than if they sent it back to the planning commission. May was the earliest the planning commission could submit a new recommendation if the regulations were rejected, Assistant Planning Commissioner Bruce Lonnee said. And there was no guarantee the planning commission would have followed the mayor and commission’s directive to remove it, potentially putting the county commission back at square one.
“Thanks for coming to this evening’s presentation of parliamentary procedure,” Girtz told the overflow crowd at City Hall.
Despite the new regulations, “my area is going to be primed for short-term rentals” when the new Classic Center arena opens this summer, Taylor said when discussion turned to a distribution of tax dollars in eastern downtown and East Athens.
In 2020 the commission approved six tax allocation districts, including one stretching from the arena site to public lands across the North Oconee River, such as the Nellie B housing project, Heard Park and Dudley Park. Similarly to the Georgia Square Mall area, future growth in property taxes from new development must be spent on infrastructure within the district.
In September, Thornton had asked for a 70/30 split between downtown and East Athens, which an attorney specializing in TADs advised Girtz is legal. Taylor proposed—and her colleagues unanimously approved—a 70/30 split the other way, so that 70% of the revenue growth from development around the arena will go toward East Athens.
“What I don’t want to see is that monstrosity go up and have my community look the same as when I was a little girl,” Taylor said.
That was the intent all along, said Hamby and Girtz, who unlike Taylor were serving behind the rail four years ago. “The way [the TAD district] was drawn was to draw some wealth into that part of town, without a doubt,” Girtz said.
But there are still some arena-related expenses that will have to be paid for somehow, Manager Blaine Williams warned, like intersection improvements at a new parking deck and stormwater management work.
The commission also approved, by an 8–2 vote, Houle’s proposal to raise the wage floor for ACC employees from $15.60 to $16.29 an hour to match MIT’s most recent living wage calculation for Athens. The bump only applies to an upcoming study on county wages and wage compression, though; any actual raises would have to come through the annual budget the commission will approve in June. But it does lay the groundwork for such raises.
In a rather odd alliance, Houle was joined by Link, Fisher, Culpepper, Myers and Thornton in rejecting staff’s warnings that Houle’s proposal would lead to further wage compression and possibly raise the cost of the study. Davenport and Wright then opposed Houle’s commissioner-defined option.
This article has been updated to correct background information about the East Downtown TAD.
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