PEORIA, Ill. – The Peoria City Council will need a little more time to discuss changes to policies relating to AirBnB’s in the city.
A nearly hour-long discussion on the topic at Tuesday’s meeting was deferred to a future meeting next month.
City administration cited two recent cases of concerns with short term rental properties as a need for tougher enforcement. One case involves a homeowner operating a short term rental without a special use or license since August, and refusing to pay a fine of $13,500. The other includes a house rented for three days in October that resulted in multiple noise complaints, cars parked on the street that blocked access to homes, and property damage to a neighboring property.
One of the changes proposed included reducing the amount of housing units that could be used as a short term rental, from a 3% cap in a .25 mile radius to a 1% cap in a .5 mile radius. It also would set a minimum distance of 1500 ft. separating each short term rental in a neighborhood. Another proposal would give city administration more authority to approve properties without city council approval.
City attorney Patrick Hayes says it’s about balancing what the homeowner wants and what the neighborhood wants.
“These licensees, they take risks and they make investments, and we don’t want to disrupt that unnecessarily,” Hayes said. “But their neighbors haven’t made any choices about who rents these places, haven’t made the choice to make their residential neighborhood into a commercial outlet.”
City council members raised concerns about those proposals, with 2nd District Councilman Chuck Grayeb calling it a “Trojan horse.”
“To erode the ability of neighborhoods, through their elected representatives, to say yes or no to these mini-hotels in the neighborhoods,” Grayeb said. “Can’t support that.”
4th District Councilman Andre Allen was concerned about whether neighborhoods would receive notifications about a short term rental being set up. At-large member Mike Vespa’s concerns centered around hotels in Peoria being undercut by the short term rentals, along with the lack of a background check on people who would use the rentals.
Some on the council believed the priorities of regulation should be elsewhere.
“We talk ad-nauseum about this subject, yet we don’t talk about the normal month-to-month rental, the student housing rentals, heck, even the property owners that sit in here for code violations,” said at-large member Zack Oyler.
In addition, Oyler is looking for a bigger focus on regulating out-of-state landlords operating in Peoria. 3rd District Councilman Tim Riggenbach is looking to see regulation of long-term rental properties, and addressing absentee landlords.
