South Haven continues talks around short term rentals

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South Haven officials are continuing deliberations regarding the city’s short-term rental ordinance.

During a special city council meeting on Thursday, the council had conversations about specifics in the ordinance, which included the cap among other issues.

City Councilwoman Mary Hosley stated the draft, coming from the planning commission, did not meet the goals the council sought.

“It did not address a concern of setting the cap at the number of currently existing short-term rentals,” Hosley said. “[It] fails to take into consideration that there may be some short-term rentals that were improperly granted and as we have been advised, if it hasn’t been properly granted, a zoning right does not apply,” Hosley said. 

Based on the discussions held during the meeting, the city council approved developing a work group to review and change the ordinance draft before it goes back to the planning commission for a public hearing. This group would include two city council members, the city attorney, and city manager Kate Hosier.

During the meeting, Hosier noted that putting together a group would be better to get the ordinance done in a specific amount of time while also having real-time feedback.

“We can make sure that we’re meeting regularly and getting this through the door, but again, I think that because we know that there’s a lot of documents that go back and forth, it might be just easier just to meet in real-time and have these discussions so that we’re making real progress instead of just trading documents past each other in email,” Hosier said. 

The council gave the city manager and the workshop group four weeks from Thursday to come up with a new ordinance draft that addresses a cap with a potentially lower number of rentals, parking concerns, occupancy of STRs, and maintaining a neighborhood feel.