City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, good evening, everybody. I will call to order the meeting of the July 13th, 2026 meeting of the Housing Planning and Development Committee. First order of business. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes of the July 6th, 2026 HP&D meeting.

Second.

Moved and seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Two items on the agenda. Communication from Council Member Bullock. Regarding rules for short-term rentals in Lakewood and then a proposed ordinance, I'm just going to have a quick couple opening remarks and I'll turn it over to my colleague. This is something that we've been hearing, us on council, I mean, I'll speak for myself specifically, have been hearing quite a bit about this. We know it's an issue. People are just very, I know, justifiably frustrated with some of these circumstances of short terminals in the in the city and And we don't currently have the means to regulate that so that's what we're here to talk about this evening I'll thank councilman Bullock in advance for his work on this to this point and in putting together an ordinance to debate. And I will say as well for the record, this is something we've been working on as a group for quite a while, talking to other communities and working with other departments within the city. So that said, I will turn this over to Councilman Bullock to talk through his thoughts on this issue. Councilman Bullock.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. And I'm interested also in the response and reactions of my colleagues and the administration to the degree that we can get into that tonight. I did notify a couple of members of the public who have been talking with me about these issues and let them know that tonight's a beginning, not the only discussion here. So where to begin? First, Mr. Chair, you were a co-sponsor last year in a proposal that began the discussion. I charged ahead with the current draft really just because time was short. So apologies if I didn't include you in that. It's just, you know, getting started is in my view. And I'll repeat what I said at the council meeting, to my colleagues and to the administration. First, I sincerely am looking for collaboration and feedback and dialogue on this one. Second, there's a number of choice points, kind of small, medium, and large available to the city in my view. What's before you is a starting point that makes some of those choices but not all. A major component not currently in this draft that I do want to get to is the consideration of fees and taxation. Because right now, the way that rental properties are taxed is through property tax and through tenant income tax. There is no tenant income tax for short-term rentals by definition. And short-term rental properties currently do contribute property taxes, that's true. But you've got a commercial activity that's most like HOTEL OPERATIONS. HOTEL OPERATIONS HAVE A WHOLE SERIES OF FEES AND TAXES THAT THEY PAY THROUGH THE COUNTY GOVERNMENT IF THEY'RE PROPERLY REGISTERED AND OPERATING IN A HOTEL. HOTELS ALSO HAVE A HIGHER THRESHOLD OF FIRE CODE, HEALTH AND SAFETY STANDARDS, HEALTH AND SAFETY POSTINGS, PARKING REQUIREMENTS, A BUNCH OF OPERATING CONSIDERATIONS none of those apply here automatically unless the city government applies. So what we essentially have is either a new definition of a new commercial activity or we have a commercial activity that should fit under an existing city definition, but because of its NEW FEATURES, IT HASN'T BEEN CLEAR TO THE CITY GOVERNMENT THAT IT DOES FALL WITHIN CERTAIN DEFINITIONS. WHAT THAT MEANS IS THERE'S A BUNCH OF operational impacts on the surrounding community that aren't currently being captured or fully factored in, into our planning, into our cost structure, into our safety oversight, and into our housing and building quality oversight to a degree. Some of our housing and building applies here like anywhere else, largely on the exterior, but perhaps on the interior side, there's there's a question. So that's a preamble to say, the research I've done, including conversations with peer local governments is in support of our enhanced oversight here, because there are many impacts that are not currently being captured by city regulation, city oversight, city health and safety engagement and city cost reimbursement, which we might also call fees and taxes. I'll pause there because that was already quite a lot. And then there's more to talk about when it comes to city enforcement and staffing, and then design of a legal schema, which this proposal takes one view of and we certainly should discuss whether this something different is called.

Thanks, Councilman Bullock. Appreciate that. And I think in a moment, we'll ask you to kind of walk through your thought process when you're putting together the proposed ordinance. Just for the record, I do want to say that before we end, before I forget, that we have already gotten quite a bit of online feedback tonight for tonight's meeting and people having concerns about this issue. So it is, and I'll say anecdotally myself, I'm certainly getting quite a bit of resident feedback about this as well, concerns. And also thank you for, I do agree the entire fee side of this is something that's entirely appropriate for us to be looking at because we're just basically allowing businesses to run without any kind of structure for that. Um, so yeah, if, if, unless, uh, anybody else have any questions at this point or should we, do you want to, uh, let councilman Bullock dive in?

Uh, yeah, I'll, um, thank you chair.

And I'll, I'll say that this is, um, I do think, and we had some discussions with, um, law director before the meeting. I do think that we kind of have to decide, cause I've gotten a lot of, um, feedback from my constituents as well. probably more they want to see some regulatory framework, some want to see it banned, some like, or strictly regulated. Some would like to see, like that it's here in Lakewood, but understand that some regulatory framework is necessary if we continue to allow it in Lakewood. What I will say is that if, so I think we have to decide kind of as a, AND THEN WORK WITH THE ADMINISTRATION TO FIGURE OUT WHERE WE WANT TO FALL ON THE KIND OF REGULATORY FRAMEWORK. AND TO COUNCILMAN BULLOCK'S POINT, IF YOU DO WANT TO HAVE, ALLOW IT BUT HAVE A PRETTY DETAILED REGULATORY FRAMEWORK, THAT REQUIRES A LOT OF COORDINATION WITH THE ADMINISTRATION BECAUSE THAT'S ESSENTIALLY A FULL-TIME EMPLOYEE TO KIND OF ADMINISTER THAT PROGRAM. Different communities have done it differently. So I recently pulled the city of Cleveland's short-term rental legislation that they passed a month ago yesterday, and it became effective on July 1st. And the way that they seek to regulate it is high level. No more than 10% of a city block can be an STR. That's the short-term rental. That's the way the city of Cleveland has outlined it. No more than 10% of a building can be a short-term rental. So think of a multi-family apartment building or something like that. If you go over the 10% cap, you have to get a variance from BZA. So let's say you're the next license and you put it to 11%, you'd have to go to BZA to get that approved. And there's kind of like a building code framework where each room has to have a bathroom, you know, in the structure. You can't have to leave the structure. some health and sanitary code issues. There's a $150 kind of licensure fee. That licensure requires a lot of things like having a local agent that can be at the property within an hour of being called at any time. It has a nuisance component to it that if there's more than three nuisance violations in a given year, then your license is pulled. And then it also has a grandfathering in that the 10% cap in a neighborhood doesn't apply to currently existing STRs as long as they get a license and they don't have any nuisance violations in the last year. Interestingly enough, the city of Cleveland already has essentially a bed tax for any hotel rooms and it adds short-term rentals to that bed tax. And it says that basically 3% of your fee becomes a tax to the city. And I believe that's how they will seek to then fund the position that will manage that. We have hotels in Lakewood. We don't have a bed tax. I'm interested as to why we don't. It'd be a good discussion to have, I think. Because from a perspective of regulating this, I think it's a nice amenity to have in Lakewood potentially if done right. The challenges, and we talked about this, is that let's say 100 houses are short-term rentals and there's no residents in them. That's 100 houses that don't have income. Like all of us on this dais and many of our neighbors, we pay income tax in the city of Lakewood. We contribute to our trash pickup, to our snow plowing, to our city streets, to our police force. If you come in as a guest to an STR to stay, you are not contributing to Lakewood's upkeep. So we have to think about that and how we want to do that. So I think from a regulatory framework, we have some decisions to make. I do think there are models we can use, and I'm excited to work with all of you and the administration to try to find the right one.

Thank you, Councilman Baker. And I really do appreciate the time you've taken to investigate some of our neighbors and go through that and stress that here in Lakewood, any legislation we adopt We want it to be absolutely enforceable and infer to work. We're not just going to make laws for the sake of making it. And I would be interested to see how Cleveland's doing with their regulation and actual enforcement. Because I've heard a lot about that, too, in the community. Well, they've passed, you know, this city's done this and this city's done this, but it's like, well, how's it going, actually?

So that's an important point.

Councilman Bixensine, do you have anything or... So I'll turn it over to Councilman Bullock again. So just please kind of just start, you know, how you got to this point with the proposed ordinance.

Thanks. And I'm looking forward to the part of the meeting where Director Vargo says this is great and we're moving forward full steam ahead or whatever you're going to say. I'm tongue-in-cheek there. We do want, of course, the law department's view, which is going to be multilayered. legal approach that is proposed and what I proposed is in some ways the simplest approach that I as a non-attorney could make, which is to edit existing liquid codified ordinances. We have a pre-existing law providing for conditional use permits for bed and breakfasts. And it's been on the book since 2006. I'm uninformed, although I'm looking at the planning department, Ian Andrews, as to how many times that's actually been used historically. I think maybe a, remember Sloan subway there used to be a, not a single one in your time. And there was a Irish cottage. at the top of Sloan subway for quite some years. I don't know if that was ever registered as a bed and breakfast under our laws. It was a florist, wasn't it? I thought it was. It might have been both. Maybe it was. I don't know. I never went in. So that was on the books before I arrived. And according to the research I've done, 2008 was the first time an air bed and breakfast ever was. created at all in San Francisco. So I don't understand why air bed and breakfast wouldn't be bed and breakfast. And so the simplest way to look at what I've proposed is to clarify in Lakewood Codified Ordinances that the term that we use in Lakewood Codified Ordinances for bed and breakfast also incorporates air bed and breakfast, short-term rentals. And if we follow that logic, let me call up the text of the proposal. What you would do if council were to adopt this proposal would be to capture air bed and breakfast short-term rentals in all of the pre-existing requirements or rules that have been on the books in Lakewood's laws for 20 years. So bed and breakfast establishment, so if you look at section two of what I've proposed, you know, new LCO 1161.03C is hereby established as follows. Bed and breakfast establishment including short-term rental, quote, short-term rental is a term hereby defined as any rental unit that is not classified as a motel or hotel, used and is rented for a period of 30 days or less, And then I also propose adding, provided that it is not located within 1,500 feet of a school, which would be a new addition, whether we want to include that or not, and whether 1,500 is the right distance or not, that's a new proposal, may be conditionally permitted subject to all the following. And then all of these conditions, pre-existing that the bed and breakfast establishment is located in a single family or two family dwelling which serves as a principal residence of the applicant that right there requires owner occupancy that's not something I propose it's been on the books the owner of the bed and breakfast shall live full-time etc the architectural integrity of the structure must be maintained that is already not in the actual practice in Lakewood we know of at least one property that has undergone significant architectural change for the purpose of renting it as a high cost weekend resort type breakfast. There shall be no more than three guest rooms, et cetera. I mean, these, so subsection five, those are things that the previous city council defined. I haven't proposed a change. We could certainly consider all of these things. Bedrooms shall be Part of the primary residential structure, each paying guest. They stay not for more than three nights. That predates. That's in the existing ordinance. Not a total of 14 nights in any given calendar year.

Parking for all vehicles.

I think this is a good one. Including vehicles by the owner-operator shall be in a garage or rear yard on an approved surface. There shall be one off-street parking space for at least each guest room. Let me, as a side note, interrupt myself. parking and character impacts have been cited by neighbors concerned about bed and breakfast operations. That's in a different category than the acute chronic nuisance problems or outright crime that we've heard some occasional but meaningful instances of. Does that matter? I'd like to make the argument it does because same as in a commercial corridor. All the parking considerations, all the refuse. I mean, Councilman Baker's point is a good one. City residential refuse services serving these businesses, if you have a hotel, you're not getting city refuse services. Why the difference, you know? Okay. But back to the parking impacts, are those a big deal? Is that worth our consideration? I would argue yes, because even though traditional residential long-term tenant or property owner doesn't have the entitled right to use the street parking, nevertheless, it's part of the character of the street. And so if somebody's making active money generation, if they're using that as an input to their business practice, then it's valid for the city to consider how we balance the use of that public space that public parking space and the domino effect on other neighbors as part of our calculus. So I think parking consideration is valid. OK, I'm continuing on in the existing law. Only one meal shall be served. That meal shall be breakfast. This is a little bit micromanaging, if you ask me, but this is what the law says currently. Only one kitchen facility. Basically, the previous council went through to ensure that a bed and breakfast was a light intensity use and didn't become essentially a back doorway to get a restaurant in the middle of a residential neighborhood or a wedding reception facility in a residential neighborhood. Because if you keep reading on subsection 13 rental, bed and breakfast establishment for special gatherings such as wedding receptions and parties shall be prohibited. Again, not my proposal. That's on the books right now. Wedding receptions, I don't have a problem with. Parties are probably the primary source of problems that our neighbors have been experiencing today under short-term rentals is the party use.

Wedding receptions and parties could be the same. Well, fair enough.

I've gone to the boring, polite ones, apparently. OK, and then they have signage, et cetera, right? So they go through all these details, but perhaps The biggest one remaining, they require compliance with health and fire and building codes. I don't know if that's happening right now with our short-term rentals. A conditional use permit shall expire 36 months after the date of issuance, but the commissioner can renew it administratively within certain good use conditions. Somewhere there's a zoning provision which I wanted to mention. I've lost it in front of me, but it says it's in multifamily or commercial areas, I believe. Okay, so again, the previous city council was not agnostic about where on the zoning map to allow conditionally used bed and breakfast. They have a clear answer to that. And right now, the actual practice of short-term rentals is everywhere, not in compliance. So the question I have before us, one of the questions is, How is any short-term rental use currently legal unless they've gone through this conditional use set of rules? And we don't have to answer that, but I'm posing that as a hypothetical because that may be a law department question which I'm not going to ask you to answer today. So for Councilman Baker's point, and I'll be quiet after this, An Airbnb, if a short-term rental is not this definition, then what definition is it? It probably does not exist in the code, and therefore, we would need to create a new definition and attach all these regulatory considerations to that new definition if that's the route we want to go. We could also just use this definition and change the Conditional Use Permit. I actually kind of favor that because then what you would do, even though you would slam architectural board of review with a ton of work at the outset, you have a long established process for considering such matters, granting permits, overseeing the permits, resolving problems, leading to renewals that has worked well in a bunch of other categories. So I welcome feedback on all that.

Thanks, Councilman Bullock. I mean, I certainly I certainly see the merits of trying to use things around the books to regulate what we have. So I think there's some good stuff there. And I agree. I think the entire part about fees for what is essentially a business and a bed tax are huge points that I agree with Councilman Baker. I'm not sure why we don't have those things in the books regardless. I think those are good tools in starting to find that balance between carrot and stick for how to regulate these things. Interested to see what my other colleagues, what their initial first feedback is to this idea of trying to just either use existing ordinance or to kind of slightly modify it to push this forward.

Thank you, Councilperson Evans. Thank you for bringing this to the floor this evening. I'm amenable to either way to proceed. You know, I think TO ME, HAVING SOME SORT OF ANNUAL OPERATING LICENSE DOES MAKE A LOT OF SENSE. AND WITH THAT, HAVING A LOCAL MANAGER WHO MUST BE ABLE TO RESPOND IN REASONABLE TIME, LIKE AN HOUR AS COUNCILPERSON BAKER INDICATED. I THINK WE'RE, AND I, TOO, HAVE FIELDED RESPONSES FROM RESIDENTS ON BOTH SIDES OF THIS. I happen to live on a street that has a short-term rental property that doesn't currently cause problems and that I know some neighbors have found to be convenient. So while I certainly empathize with those who are struggling with a problematic short-term rental property, I have heard from people on both sides of that aisle I also certainly agree with this notion. Let's level the playing field from an occupancy tax standpoint and do that regardless of how we land on this issue. So I certainly support that. I think this idea of a three-strikes rule of sorts also makes sense, as does limiting the density on any given block as far as how many short-term rental properties could exist on a given block. I know a more drastic measure, of course, would be owner-occupied versus not owner-occupied, and considering the ramifications of that. And I realize that might not even be where we're currently looking. But insofar as the other measures that we've talked about, and particularly the ones that Vice President Baker brought up, those do seem like they're certainly worth exploring.

Thanks, Councilman. Councilman Baker.

Yes. And so I think, and thank you, Councilman Bullock. I do think that if we, I think we need to do something. SO I THINK THE CURRENT WAY WE'RE OPERATING, AND COUNCILMAN BULLOCK, I THINK THAT THE, YOU KNOW, YOU ASKED WHY NO ONE HAS APPLIED FOR BED AND BREAKFAST BECAUSE MOST OF THESE AIRBNBs DON'T HAVE A LIVE-IN PERSON SO THEY DON'T MEET THE REGULATORY DEFINITION OF BED AND BREAKFAST IN OUR CODE. AND SO THEY'RE SIMPLY RENTAL UNITS AS WE DEFINE THEM IN OUR CODE, I THINK. I'm certainly in favor of some regulatory regime. The argument in favor of outright disallowing them is that right now the city is foregoing hundreds of thousands of dollars of income taxes because our homes are now hotels. So that's certainly one argument in favor of regulation. And that's certainly, I think, Shaker Heights' policy perspective when they instituted their I think the other way is to heavily regulate and impose fees, because the fees would be necessary to allow for the heavy regulation. And I'm reminded Commissioner Parmelee sent me kind of some bullet points that I forwarded along to some of you on departments that need to be coordinated with, and tax is one of them. So I think we talked about police, we talked about fire, we talked about planning, housing, law. Tax needs to be implied too because, you know, we have a whole regulatory regime for income tax collections. We don't have a regulatory regime. Typically, most of our permit fees are paid to departments, the building department, to public works or whatever. So there'd have to be some way to give the tax department the ability to collect that. So I... Certainly, I'm interested in what others think. I'm having a really internal struggle about whether we allow it or not. I'm just being candid with you as my colleagues in the administration, whoever's listening at home. But I do think that we need to regulate it heavily if we're not going to ban it, or at least make it, you know, send a message that, Lakewood's paying attention, and we're going to make sure that the fabric of our communities, you know, are retained and not torn apart. So that's where I'm leaning. Now, I do think it's going to take time. And it's interesting, you look at, you know, City of Cleveland, you know, not everything I agree with in their regulations, but, you know, talks about You know, only two guests per bedroom. You know, they must apply with our parking plans. They must have interior access to a bathroom so that such transient guest has the ability to access the bathroom without exiting the dwelling. They have to have smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, class A, B, and C fire extinguishers. They're subject to nose ordinances. They have to have proper trash. They have to provide the name and contact information of that local representative. They have to have insurance. So there are really reasonable regulations that we can put in place to get our hands around this. I think we have to. I think we owe it to ourselves and the community to do so.

Thank you, Councilman Baker. And I can't agree more. I'm also happy to say that I lean towards heavily regulated in this out of respect for our residents and our neighborhoods. And this is not just a personal opinion. This is what I'm hearing every day from folks. I mean, that may also be my personal opinion, but like we're a city of neighborhoods and people choose here to move here for that spirit. And this is, there are lots of parts of the city that are, for lack of a border, they're really suffering with, from situations that they can't control. And it's frustrating. And I totally get that. We'll take a, did you have a comment? I would like to take a pause to see if there was anybody, if either Lotta Retrovargo or Ian from planning had anything to say, any comments, and you don't have to, just seeing.

Thank you, Chair. No comment from law. Of course, we'll work on any version that council agrees on. I mean, you're talking very discreet policy issues, and it seems like there's a lot of work to be done on just understanding the policy flow before law rolls up its sleeves and drafts. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Andrews.

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be here representing both the Housing and Building Department and the Planning Department. As you know, leadership is out of town, and they really are the experts. So I'm here just to hear what you have to say and to be able to take that back and discuss with them. But I certainly, as you know, would encourage you to spend significant time with Director Parmelee, who has a lot of thoughts on this and I think a lot of really good constructive thoughts about ways to perhaps try to make this work. So I know he looks forward to those future conversations. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Andrews. I'll turn it over to Councilman Bullock for some kind of last thoughts before I wrap things up.

Thank you. So before I forget, Mr. Anderson, which sounds a little 1990s, could we get the number of owner-occupied, well, not one, two families in Lakewood? Do we know that number? And I don't know it off the top of my head.

Yeah, we can get that for you. Okay, thanks.

So, and then to my colleagues, if you look at the communication on the Granicus agenda, on page two of my letter and then page three is the attachment from a Lakewood resident who I thought did a really nice job of laying out different parameters and variables. So, starting with The arguments pro and con. So pro would be amenity to residence. Pro is tourism, perhaps facilitate tourism. Con or regulation would be zoning concerns. Con would be alter the character of the neighborhood. Con would be enforcement challenges. Con would be impact on housing affordability. If we've got 300 housing units, give or take, at any given moment, in the short-term rental market, that's a non-trivial amount of homes or potential housing units on the marketplace. Now, we've got more coming online from the Westline, et cetera, so that's fluid, but that matters in my mind, too. So fundamental question, zoning. Which district should be allowed? Are they appropriate zoning districts? How does this mesh with the city's forthcoming new zoning refresh and our master plan and allowing excessually dwelling units? Right? I mean, so these are fundamental and strategic questions. Should they be taxed? I think we're hearing a consensus that there should be some economic contribution. I agree with that, by the way. Enforcement is absolutely key. Registration, local agent, criminal nuisance ordinance, which is a long, that's a separate but parallel and critically important track. And I continue to say we need our criminal nuisance ordinance to function robustly. And I think that's true for e-bikes and e-motorbikes. And it's true for a bunch of things, and it's also true for this. So that criminal nuisance ordinance may not need to be directly amended by the Airbnb discussion, but we sure as shootin' need it to be functioning if Airbnbs are ever going to be successfully and appropriately operated, okay? There's a whole bunch of inspections considerations, That gets you into, quite frankly, if we're going to properly and robustly inspect all the Airbnb units, that may be more than one FTE. Because we've got probably 20% of the actual Airbnbs that you can find in commercial listings registered with the city. It's not even 20%.

Right now, there's 78 homes registered as short-term rentals.

Okay. So out of 300, it might be. But the point is that now going back to my letter, what I intended to do on page two was list a series of factors, and I read this at the council meeting, to allow for operation in a manner that achieves quality, safety, and operator accountability. we could do that that might be what some colleagues are saying here um easier said than done right so that's the whole game right there is can we allow for operation and manager that he achieves quality safety and operator accountability and then the next bullet to protect against chronic nuisance behavior just address that number three to protect against crime and the risk of crime because safety is outright crime but it's also the perception of safety which is impacted. That's something we talk about in our parks as well, which is why the city for years now has invested heavily in the parks ambassador program. And I think that's a valid and appropriate program that I continue to support. But the perception of safety is also something that matters. And when you're a parent with little kids that you've been allowing to go to their next door neighbors in the front yard, but now you've got short-term rental that's a robust business and you have a rotating cast of characters there and they have occasional parties whether that's parties with prom night teenagers or 20-somethings or 30-somethings that all of that is now changing my ability for my family to function like we have been in a home i'm paying a lot of money for and a lot of property taxes for So I guess what I'm saying is, to me, the benefit of the doubt needs to go with the neighbors who are impacted, not with the proposed business use, especially if we're talking about a business use in the middle of a residential property. And then the critical one is to design a set of oversight enforcement rules that are time efficient and practicable for city personnel to implement without significant strain cost for time. I think Councilman Baker is referring to that like, okay, here's City of Cleveland's thoughtful architecture of rules and requirements. How's it working? Right? And so with a mind towards accomplishing that critical thing, to me, owner occupancy would be one heck of a way to achieve that because an owner occupant is going to have more self-interest than anybody else in making sure that their neighbor upstairs or downstairs is safe appropriate and a good neighbor to themselves and their neighbors and and so why i asked the planning department how many owner-occupant two-family structures we have in lakewood is we've probably got a lot in all four corners of the city and even if we were to take a pretty strong step of restricting it to owner occupancy there'd still be plenty of units available to the community if our priority is to provide an amenity to residents and tourism and so forth. Now, that might inconvenience people currently with an Airbnb business upstairs and downstairs, but that's a different question. So what we're doing right now is we're creating work for the city government to chase All of it. Registration, inspection, postings, taxes, local agent, actual behavior by the tenants, actual parking practices. That's a lot of work. We've got a lot of work to do to track e-bikes. And that's not easy. So I guess what I'm saying is, I RECOMMEND THAT THE CITY, THAT CITY HALL START WITH A HIGH THRESHOLD, A VERY HIGH THRESHOLD OF ACCOUNTABILITY, AND IF IT GOES WELL, BACK DOWN FROM THERE, NOT THE REVERSE.

THANK YOU, COUNCILMAN BULLOCK, AND COUNCILMAN BAKER, I HAD SOME ADDITIONAL COMMENTS.

YES, AND THAT'S CERTAINLY ONE WAY TO DO IT. IN FACT, CHICAGO, I THINK RECENTLY, DID THEIR REQUIREMENTS THAT, AT LEAST AS IT RELATES TO Non like big apartment buildings can have up to 25% I think can be airbnbs and I think the. I had to demise the legislative policy intent behind that is that. If you're a most departments are investor own so you'd want to make sure that. staying there you have a incentive to make sure that they act appropriately and then if you you have to live in so if you you know you have to live in a if it's a quadplex or whatever you have to live there in order for it to be an airbnb or if it's a multi-family you have to live in it that's certainly one regulatory regime the the thing is is i i think making those decisions without really good data inputs i think is difficult um because you don't have what it would do to the market if I don't know enough of how many quadplexes do we have in town, how many duplexes. What I do, and I think about this, and I'd be remiss if I didn't say this, because I think it does belong as part of the affordable housing discussion in the sense that we now have 200 housing units that aren't being productively used as they were intended to be used as either rental, long-term rental for families or HOMES FOR FAMILIES THAT THEY BUY.

SO THAT'S SOMETHING.

AND AS WE'VE LEARNED IN OUR DISCUSSIONS ABOUT AFFORDABLE HOUSING, THERE'S NO ONE THING WE CAN DO. I DON'T THINK AS MUCH AS I THINK SOME PEOPLE MAY THINK WE CAN. BUT THERE ARE A LOT OF LITTLE THINGS THAT WE CAN DO TO MAKE STEPS. AND I THINK ONE OF THEM IS NOT HAVING HOTELS IN OUR COMMUNITIES ESSENTIALLY. Now, and I don't want to be glib because I think there are benefits to Airbnbs and short-term rentals that can provide a vibrancy, provide a convenience. And so it's all about finding that. So this is where the data input and collaboration with housing and planning and development department is going to be really important because you can't just make these rules without having that information about how it's going to affect the fabric of the community. But in my eyes, there's a lot of very compelling reasons to regulate this. heavily. And so I'm committed to working with the administration and all of you to do that.

Thanks, Councilman. Councilman Dixon, it's time.

Thank you, Councilperson Evans. And I agree, there certainly is a compelling case here to regulate heavily. And I think one thing that I'm trying to, you know, is you try to strike the right balance as far as the regulation Clearly, we need to restrict nuisance behavior. I guess I'm also trying to figure out, are we also trying to restrict corporate investors? Is it a two-prong approach here? I know a lot of the feedback we've gotten has been more so on the former, but are both in our wheelhouse here as we try to look at heavy regulation?

Thanks, Councilman Bixenstein. It's a good segue to start to wrap this up. Thank you, Councilman Baker. I think the point about affordable housing, I think, is a critical input to this conversation because you're absolutely right. This is taking living units away from folks who want to make this their home and their community. And that's something we're struggling with, finding enough place to put people who want to live here in Lakewood. So that's absolutely something we need to keep in mind while we're going over these issues. Obviously, we're going to take no action on this evening. We're not there yet. I am committed, and Councilman Bullock, you've been carrying a lot of the weight, but I'm happy to join you in hopefully very near-term conversations with the appropriate departments, starting with, I think, building and Commissioner Parmelee to make some thoughtful edits to the ordinance you've put before us so that, as the law director of Argo said, so we can get it to the law department so they can roll up their sleeves and start to craft something that we know we're going to be able to put in place and enforce properly. So I appreciate the conversation this evening. And to folks at home, I... I understand the frustration on this, and we're hearing from folks who are very upset, and we're all hearing you. We really are. But to make this work, we have to make sure we've – this needs to be, you know, just a very solid piece of legislation that we know we can enforce, and we have the resources to do so. So one last comment from .

Yeah, two points. One is I did receive a letter, I think other council members may have too, from a resident of a Lakewood multifamily, larger multifamily property where there's an Airbnb operating inside. That person was concerned about the safety because now the Airbnb is providing security access to common areas. and so basically out you know we don't know who all of a sudden can be in the common areas in residential hallways so that was an argument actually in favor of stronger prohibitions for multi-families because of that security and safety issue I tend to agree with that the current proposal would as we're saying restricted to one and two family you could also amend it to allow three sweeters or four sweeters too. I didn't try to get that detailed in what we have before us today. The other thing is I just want to let you know I did spend significant time on the phone with Commissioner Parmalee and also the police chief. I have extensive notes. I didn't try to summarize those or share those with others, but there's a lot of thoughtfulness there. One point that Commissioner Parmalee was making is that the building code really isn't your tool for penalties and accountabilities. It's of behavior. It's to find property owners into compliance with building code. So the building code is a tool, I'm paraphrasing him, for getting the buildings right but not addressing the people inside the buildings. So as we think of how we address a mix of issues here. Certainly the building department is a key component, but not the only component. Fire department would be one. The chief would be one. The chief acknowledges that parking will be different to track, difficult to track and enforce. We do have the chronic nuisance behavior. So I've already gotten a running start on all of these matters, but those are not fully reported out, but done the due diligence. And we've also begun to hear from other communities as well whose view is that the acute nature of how badly things go when they go wrong is sufficiently high of a problem threshold that they've taken a strong stand right out of the gate on regulation. It may be true that Eight out of ten are just fine, but those two that aren't make huge problems and then you're chasing problems rather than getting ahead of them. So, to me, that's what I've got in mind. Thanks.

Thanks, Councilman. Appreciate that and, yeah, and thanks for your work on that. And, again, let's make sure we, with all due haste, further those conversations so we can button this up and make something happen. We did have one person from the public. Do you have any? Okay. Just wanted to make sure. All right. Thanks. So with no other comments, no further business before this board, I will, we're through for the evening. And thank you all for being here and appreciate the input and looking forward to working with you guys on this.