I agree that statistics on STR complaints should be provided, and I am aware that the city of McCall, MPD, MFD, and a management company I worked for have complaint stats.
One bill is enough with all the variations and frustrations that got dragged into both bills. I understand there is language in the bill requiring smoke detectors and an occupancy cap. Good.
Sadly, there is no inspection mechanism in the bills. While no bill is perfect, this omission will put STR guests and full-time residents living next to STRs in danger. I quit my job because I couldn't ignore safety issues I witnessed, such as bedrooms without egress, and the excuses some STR owners made for not spending the money to fix safety issues.
It's not unreasonable, whatever the cost to a STR owner, to provide an egress window for bedrooms, and if they are unable, it should not be used as a bedroom. IRC section R310 requires egress windows for all STR's and homes.
If the bill passes, we will need to trust the STR owner and management company to comply with the regulation. And bedrooms have been created without permits and without egress.
Portions of this bill have nothing to do with property rights and more to do with the profits of STR owners and STR rental companies, which lobby against commonsense inspections and state building and fire safety regulations. I am thankful that the City of McCall and BFD move over the past few years have opened important conversations about fire safety for STRs and have improved safety for everyone. It's sad to think we would go backwards on safety, and I don't understand how mandatory inspections would harm anyone's property rights.
Both bills seek to classify STRs as residential uses rather than allow a separate classification that would subject STRs to such things as inspections more often than any other residential property, including long term rentals. Under the IRC you reference, rooms used as bedrooms have to have compliant fire egress no matter what type of residential use it is. So if you found non-compliant rooms in the properties your employers managed, your employers were doing the owners they served a serious disservice. Compliance with standard building codes are required by insurers. Ditto with the other safety stuff you mentioned. So I'm going to guess that insurance plays a big part in assuring safety without the need for government oversight. The potential for financial wipe-out to the property owner if calamity occurs far outstrips the expense of adding any compliance requirement. I'm just giving you the benefit of the exhaustive research that went into our comments. It by no means makes me or Tom experts. But somebody had to give explaining this thing a shot, so we took it.
We're getting a lot of reaction to this post, as we expected we would. So far, you are the only one who spotted the principal point: a lack of documentation—anywhere in this debate. We argue that until some facts are established, law is being made on emotional innuendo. That is not good law.
We explored some of the main arguments being made and, absent any local statistics to draw on, commented on what made sense to us and what did not. We explained the authority under which the legislature is stepping in, and why under Idaho tradition and legal pecking order, they are justified in doing so.
The post was also highly critical of the City of McCall’s open advocacy of a single side when its constituent property owners are divided. We have consistently shown our ire at McCity's repeated "insider's club" impudence. It is one thing for a city to deliberate out in the open and, after inviting and evaluating public input and department documentation, state a policy. That’s not the process McCity followed. It never does. It is also another thing to, having unilaterally “assumed” public sentiment, use public resources including the city’s publicly funded platform, to openly advocate for that policy.
We object to all those actions as matters of process, which is our "beat". Never once in the post, did we advocate for one bill over the other. We actually advocated for no bill this year. We did not take a position on STR classification. We merely set the stage for our readers to watch the drama play out. As always, thanks for reading.
Disruptive industries like STR, Airbnb, and VRBO, and the companies that serve them, have become difficult to regulate because the industry advanced too quickly for governments that are always too slow and bureaucratic to respond to new developments and their impacts on resort towns and local government. It is no secret that the billion-dollar industry aggressively lobbies state legislatures to override local regulations and zoning restrictions. The flaw in this bill is that it prevents cities from conducting inspections to ensure the health and safety of STRs. Inspections are not an unreasonable requirement. Greg's testimony highlighted other issues this bill will not address.
As you pointed out about insurance playing a part, I'm not as optimistic as you are on this, judging from abuses I witnessed and the owners' responses, and I believe some owners and companies would not comply with regulations.
The heart of the issue is the unanswered question for both sides and pending court cases in many states: are STRs residential or commercial? Passing a flawed bill without more data will not answer the question, and I agree with you that the state should not pass the bill this year.
I guess you cannot truly understand another person's experience unless you have walked in their moccasins. As you must have seen on the electronic feed from the House Business Committee meeting last week, I was one of those McCall residents who testified against HB #583. Mine is not a case of xenophobia or disdain for STRs. I have lived in many places in my long life and have experienced the occasional ornery neighbor but I have never endured the misery of having a short-term rental as the house next door. Many short-term renters, as I have learned for the last 14 years, are a different beast. If I have an issue with a full-time neighbor/homeowner I can reach out to them and have a friendly discussion of the nature of the problem. 99.9% of the time, problem solved. Many short term renters could care less about my concerns. They're here to have a good time and "screw you" if I get in their way. I know that, if I see cases and cases of beer being carried into the STR next door when the renters arrive, there's going to be trouble. (many of those beer cans are going to end up in my yard for one thing). As I said in my testimony at the Capitol, every year since I moved into my cabin full-time I've endured loud, all-night parties, large gatherings (bachelor parties, reunions, etc. etc.), blocked streets, renters pitching tents in the yard, (including mine), trespass, trash and litter (I do my morning cruise in my yard to pick up beer cans, broken glass, dog feces, [and occasion human], used Styrofoam food containers, soiled Pampers, etc.), amplified music, (there's nothing like waking up to AC/DC blasting from the boom box at 3 AM), uncontained and frequently unattended bonfires spewing sparks into my fir trees, nudity (for some reason renters who come to McCall think that skinny-dipping in front of my grandkids is their right), drunken brawls, (particularly popular at bachelor parties), and gross disrespect towards me and my family, (I've become nearly immune to F-bombs). None of this kind of thing happens with my part-time neighbors on the other side or when the owner of the STR is staying in his house.
I believe in "property rights" but I have rights as well. The very reasonable rules in the McCall and Valley County short-term rental ordinances have been a small buffer against the insanity and chaos next door. That's all I am asking for as a full-time homeowner. Without those rules, Katy bar the door! What is it that I request from those ordinances? Enforceable quiet hours between 10 PM and 8 AM, no highly amplified outdoor music, outdoor fires contained in an approved fire structure, trash contained in bear-proof garbage cans, reasonable parking limits that can be handled by the on-site driveway, no tents or trailers on the property, occupancy limits (10 for the city, 12 for the county), a local individual or management company who can be contacted in the event of problems (I am loath to call the Sheriff at 3 AM for a noise complaint), use of the STR for residential purposes only, and reasonable licensing requirements (these are businesses after all). The threat of rescinding a STR license for repeated violations is the only enforcement mechanism that has any chance of being effective. I really don't think that this is too much to ask.
Now, in its infinite wisdom, our Idaho legislature wants to take away our community's ability to maintain common-sense and reasonable controls on short-term rentals with HB #583. It's rich that the Chair of the House Business Committee who co-sponsored this legislation is the owner of multiple STRs in North Idaho. I have little sympathy for the real estate representatives and the lawyer for Airbnb who testified at the hearing, money talks. I have nothing against the "Mom and Pop" STR owners who testified and nothing against well-managed and modestly regulated short-term rentals in Idaho. We just need some balance, though, in the form of fair-minded and reasonable local regulations ensuring health and safety for the renters and fairness towards the full-time neighbors who have the misfortune of finding themselves living next door to one of these frat houses.
Thanks for reading! We did indeed hear your testimony at the House bill hearing. As we said in the post, we do not dispute that some STRs are real Houses of Horror. Our post did not take a position on either bill or on STR classification. In fact, our conclusion was that the legislature needs to stick both bills in a drawer for this year and commission some concrete data to replace the anecdotal and emotional appeals they are hearing. Durable laws are not made on anecdotes and suppositions any more than medical diagnoses are :)
You have our deepest sympathy for what you are experiencing. You didn't mention if you had had any discussion of your breathtaking experiences with the property owner. We also encourage you to overcome your reluctance to call the sheriff's office at 3 a.m. That is what 24 hour dispatch is there for.
The travesties you describe are all illegal now and will continue to be illegal no matter which bill the legislature passes or what classification STRs end up under. We urge you to get in touch with the county prosecutor's office (we presume your reference to "sheriff" means you don't live in the McCall city limits). They will give you a clear path to document your complaints. If the police verify serial violations of disturbing the peace and other standard "nuisance ordinance" violations, the owner is ultimately responsible. The prosecutor would file and argue the case for you, with you as witness. The court proceedings would likely be local, either at the magistrate or district court level. The judgments can be quite severe, including use restrictions and heavy penalty fines.
Even if one of these bills passes, they will not solve your problem. In order to revoke an STR license, a similar procedure would have to be followed. Licenses are not revoked without official verification of claims.
This is exactly what our post wanted to air. There are so many misconceptions about what these bills do and what they won't do, that no rational thought based on verifiable data can get any oxygen. In our "xenophobic" comment, we are guilty of using some imprecise language. When we said the "local control crowd," we meant the officials behind the city's policies. These insular policies consistently favor "insiders" over "outsiders." We have documented this bias many times both throughout our newspaper years and in this Substack.
The quickest path to resolving your complaints is to make an appointment or open an email dialogue with County Prosecutor Brian Oakey. He is obviously far more knowledgeable about the process than we are. Our experience with him so far has been very positive. We wish you nothing but success in finding a remedy. If we can be of any further assistance, by all means email us personally at tomigrote@substack.com.
I agree that statistics on STR complaints should be provided, and I am aware that the city of McCall, MPD, MFD, and a management company I worked for have complaint stats.
One bill is enough with all the variations and frustrations that got dragged into both bills. I understand there is language in the bill requiring smoke detectors and an occupancy cap. Good.
Sadly, there is no inspection mechanism in the bills. While no bill is perfect, this omission will put STR guests and full-time residents living next to STRs in danger. I quit my job because I couldn't ignore safety issues I witnessed, such as bedrooms without egress, and the excuses some STR owners made for not spending the money to fix safety issues.
It's not unreasonable, whatever the cost to a STR owner, to provide an egress window for bedrooms, and if they are unable, it should not be used as a bedroom. IRC section R310 requires egress windows for all STR's and homes.
If the bill passes, we will need to trust the STR owner and management company to comply with the regulation. And bedrooms have been created without permits and without egress.
Portions of this bill have nothing to do with property rights and more to do with the profits of STR owners and STR rental companies, which lobby against commonsense inspections and state building and fire safety regulations. I am thankful that the City of McCall and BFD move over the past few years have opened important conversations about fire safety for STRs and have improved safety for everyone. It's sad to think we would go backwards on safety, and I don't understand how mandatory inspections would harm anyone's property rights.
Both bills seek to classify STRs as residential uses rather than allow a separate classification that would subject STRs to such things as inspections more often than any other residential property, including long term rentals. Under the IRC you reference, rooms used as bedrooms have to have compliant fire egress no matter what type of residential use it is. So if you found non-compliant rooms in the properties your employers managed, your employers were doing the owners they served a serious disservice. Compliance with standard building codes are required by insurers. Ditto with the other safety stuff you mentioned. So I'm going to guess that insurance plays a big part in assuring safety without the need for government oversight. The potential for financial wipe-out to the property owner if calamity occurs far outstrips the expense of adding any compliance requirement. I'm just giving you the benefit of the exhaustive research that went into our comments. It by no means makes me or Tom experts. But somebody had to give explaining this thing a shot, so we took it.
We're getting a lot of reaction to this post, as we expected we would. So far, you are the only one who spotted the principal point: a lack of documentation—anywhere in this debate. We argue that until some facts are established, law is being made on emotional innuendo. That is not good law.
We explored some of the main arguments being made and, absent any local statistics to draw on, commented on what made sense to us and what did not. We explained the authority under which the legislature is stepping in, and why under Idaho tradition and legal pecking order, they are justified in doing so.
The post was also highly critical of the City of McCall’s open advocacy of a single side when its constituent property owners are divided. We have consistently shown our ire at McCity's repeated "insider's club" impudence. It is one thing for a city to deliberate out in the open and, after inviting and evaluating public input and department documentation, state a policy. That’s not the process McCity followed. It never does. It is also another thing to, having unilaterally “assumed” public sentiment, use public resources including the city’s publicly funded platform, to openly advocate for that policy.
We object to all those actions as matters of process, which is our "beat". Never once in the post, did we advocate for one bill over the other. We actually advocated for no bill this year. We did not take a position on STR classification. We merely set the stage for our readers to watch the drama play out. As always, thanks for reading.
Disruptive industries like STR, Airbnb, and VRBO, and the companies that serve them, have become difficult to regulate because the industry advanced too quickly for governments that are always too slow and bureaucratic to respond to new developments and their impacts on resort towns and local government. It is no secret that the billion-dollar industry aggressively lobbies state legislatures to override local regulations and zoning restrictions. The flaw in this bill is that it prevents cities from conducting inspections to ensure the health and safety of STRs. Inspections are not an unreasonable requirement. Greg's testimony highlighted other issues this bill will not address.
As you pointed out about insurance playing a part, I'm not as optimistic as you are on this, judging from abuses I witnessed and the owners' responses, and I believe some owners and companies would not comply with regulations.
The heart of the issue is the unanswered question for both sides and pending court cases in many states: are STRs residential or commercial? Passing a flawed bill without more data will not answer the question, and I agree with you that the state should not pass the bill this year.
Ms. Grote,
I guess you cannot truly understand another person's experience unless you have walked in their moccasins. As you must have seen on the electronic feed from the House Business Committee meeting last week, I was one of those McCall residents who testified against HB #583. Mine is not a case of xenophobia or disdain for STRs. I have lived in many places in my long life and have experienced the occasional ornery neighbor but I have never endured the misery of having a short-term rental as the house next door. Many short-term renters, as I have learned for the last 14 years, are a different beast. If I have an issue with a full-time neighbor/homeowner I can reach out to them and have a friendly discussion of the nature of the problem. 99.9% of the time, problem solved. Many short term renters could care less about my concerns. They're here to have a good time and "screw you" if I get in their way. I know that, if I see cases and cases of beer being carried into the STR next door when the renters arrive, there's going to be trouble. (many of those beer cans are going to end up in my yard for one thing). As I said in my testimony at the Capitol, every year since I moved into my cabin full-time I've endured loud, all-night parties, large gatherings (bachelor parties, reunions, etc. etc.), blocked streets, renters pitching tents in the yard, (including mine), trespass, trash and litter (I do my morning cruise in my yard to pick up beer cans, broken glass, dog feces, [and occasion human], used Styrofoam food containers, soiled Pampers, etc.), amplified music, (there's nothing like waking up to AC/DC blasting from the boom box at 3 AM), uncontained and frequently unattended bonfires spewing sparks into my fir trees, nudity (for some reason renters who come to McCall think that skinny-dipping in front of my grandkids is their right), drunken brawls, (particularly popular at bachelor parties), and gross disrespect towards me and my family, (I've become nearly immune to F-bombs). None of this kind of thing happens with my part-time neighbors on the other side or when the owner of the STR is staying in his house.
I believe in "property rights" but I have rights as well. The very reasonable rules in the McCall and Valley County short-term rental ordinances have been a small buffer against the insanity and chaos next door. That's all I am asking for as a full-time homeowner. Without those rules, Katy bar the door! What is it that I request from those ordinances? Enforceable quiet hours between 10 PM and 8 AM, no highly amplified outdoor music, outdoor fires contained in an approved fire structure, trash contained in bear-proof garbage cans, reasonable parking limits that can be handled by the on-site driveway, no tents or trailers on the property, occupancy limits (10 for the city, 12 for the county), a local individual or management company who can be contacted in the event of problems (I am loath to call the Sheriff at 3 AM for a noise complaint), use of the STR for residential purposes only, and reasonable licensing requirements (these are businesses after all). The threat of rescinding a STR license for repeated violations is the only enforcement mechanism that has any chance of being effective. I really don't think that this is too much to ask.
Now, in its infinite wisdom, our Idaho legislature wants to take away our community's ability to maintain common-sense and reasonable controls on short-term rentals with HB #583. It's rich that the Chair of the House Business Committee who co-sponsored this legislation is the owner of multiple STRs in North Idaho. I have little sympathy for the real estate representatives and the lawyer for Airbnb who testified at the hearing, money talks. I have nothing against the "Mom and Pop" STR owners who testified and nothing against well-managed and modestly regulated short-term rentals in Idaho. We just need some balance, though, in the form of fair-minded and reasonable local regulations ensuring health and safety for the renters and fairness towards the full-time neighbors who have the misfortune of finding themselves living next door to one of these frat houses.
Greg Irvine
McCall
Greg,
Thanks for reading! We did indeed hear your testimony at the House bill hearing. As we said in the post, we do not dispute that some STRs are real Houses of Horror. Our post did not take a position on either bill or on STR classification. In fact, our conclusion was that the legislature needs to stick both bills in a drawer for this year and commission some concrete data to replace the anecdotal and emotional appeals they are hearing. Durable laws are not made on anecdotes and suppositions any more than medical diagnoses are :)
You have our deepest sympathy for what you are experiencing. You didn't mention if you had had any discussion of your breathtaking experiences with the property owner. We also encourage you to overcome your reluctance to call the sheriff's office at 3 a.m. That is what 24 hour dispatch is there for.
The travesties you describe are all illegal now and will continue to be illegal no matter which bill the legislature passes or what classification STRs end up under. We urge you to get in touch with the county prosecutor's office (we presume your reference to "sheriff" means you don't live in the McCall city limits). They will give you a clear path to document your complaints. If the police verify serial violations of disturbing the peace and other standard "nuisance ordinance" violations, the owner is ultimately responsible. The prosecutor would file and argue the case for you, with you as witness. The court proceedings would likely be local, either at the magistrate or district court level. The judgments can be quite severe, including use restrictions and heavy penalty fines.
Even if one of these bills passes, they will not solve your problem. In order to revoke an STR license, a similar procedure would have to be followed. Licenses are not revoked without official verification of claims.
This is exactly what our post wanted to air. There are so many misconceptions about what these bills do and what they won't do, that no rational thought based on verifiable data can get any oxygen. In our "xenophobic" comment, we are guilty of using some imprecise language. When we said the "local control crowd," we meant the officials behind the city's policies. These insular policies consistently favor "insiders" over "outsiders." We have documented this bias many times both throughout our newspaper years and in this Substack.
The quickest path to resolving your complaints is to make an appointment or open an email dialogue with County Prosecutor Brian Oakey. He is obviously far more knowledgeable about the process than we are. Our experience with him so far has been very positive. We wish you nothing but success in finding a remedy. If we can be of any further assistance, by all means email us personally at tomigrote@substack.com.