Beaufort task force supports short-term rentals but suggests new regulations

Short-term rental properties should not be banned in Beaufort, but the city ought to consider adding new regulations to ensure such properties don’t harm the community.

That’s according to a final report issued earlier this week by a city task force that has been studying issues surrounding properties such as those found on Airbnb — a popular website that connects property owners and renters.

Beaufort Mayor Billy Keyserling said Wednesday, “The short-term rental issue has been on our radar and on our plate for about three years, maybe even longer.”

“We started realizing that these (rental properties) were popping up in residential areas, so we created a process to get them permitted.”

That process involves the property owners going before the city’s zoning board of appeals to seek a permit.

But city leaders and would-be rental property owners began to realize that was a “pretty subject process” in which a few unhappy neighbors could block the permit from being issued, Keyserling said.

Concerns about the short-term rental properties mainly centered on issues such as noise, traffic and crime.

Keyserling said the Beaufort City Council “is pretty much universally on board” with the concept of short-term rentals.

But City Councilman Philip Cromer said, “The council hasn’t made a final decision on anything yet.

“We are still studying (the issue) and mulling it over,” he said.

Keyserling said he understands both sides of the argument.

“One one hand, (renting the properties) may encourage owners to renovate historic homes,” he said. “Plus, having more visitors is good for our economy.”

But, if the properties “become a problem in the neighborhoods, it’s obviously a bad thing,” Keyserling said.

Those problems have yet to emerge to any major degree, he said.

The city’s short-term rental task force — made up of local volunteers and aimed at “being as balanced as possible” — was assembled to look for ways to improve the permitting process while also ensuring “the character of our neighborhoods isn’t damaged,” he said.

The task force’s report includes a host of regulatory recommendations, including limiting the number of short-term rental properties in a given neighborhood to no more than eight percent of total lots zoned for residential use.

“The objective is to prevent over-concentration of short-term rental units in any one neighborhood,” the report said.

The recommendations also include requiring a property manager be available to handle any problems arising from the use of a short-term rental.

They suggest limiting the number of people and vehicles that can be present on a property at a given time.

The recommendations also include changes to the way short-term rentals are permitted by taking the approval power from the zoning board and giving it to city staffers.

Keyserling said he expects a formal ordinance with those new regulations to be drafted within the next few weeks.

That ordinance would go before the Beaufort-Town of Port Royal Metropolitan Planning Commission for vetting, then onto the Beaufort City Council for approval. The public will have the opportunity to weigh in throughout the process.

Cromer said he expects there to be “some tweaks” to the task force’s recommendations before a final council vote, “but I don’t think its going to be anything extremely major.”

This story was originally published April 12, 2017 at 3:47 PM with the headline "Beaufort task force supports short-term rentals but suggests new regulations."