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In the Museum District, residents claim short-term rentals are functioning like hotels, but are not being managed like one. Kathryn McNeil is a resident who lives at an apartment complex in the area.
“When I moved in this apartment complex, it housed wonderful neighbors,” she said. “There was a truck driver, there was a woman who was a beautician, there was a mom who lived there so her kids could go to Poe Elementary,” she said at Houston City Council’s public session on Tuesday.
Then about two and a half years ago, McNeil said one person started buying various properties in the area that are now listed on websites like Airbnb and VRBO.
“He’s got listings for one-bedroom apartments that he’s listing for six to eight people for $80 a night. But if you’ve got eight people staying there, that’s a pretty cheap night,” she said.
Other residents near the Galleria and East End are also concerned about short-term rentals but for different reasons. Kathy Yang is a resident who lives near the Galleria and also spoke on Tuesday. She said some of the rentals near her home attract adult filming and prostitution. She described a video that circulated on social media after Fox 26 reported on a couple having sex on the balcony of an Airbnb.
“These owners run this business in our neighborhood as an unlicensed hotel, motel, after-hour bars, night clubs, even brothels,” she said. “… We see the live sex on the balcony Monday morning when parents drop their kids to Briar Grove School.”
In the East End, residents are concerned about crime brought in because of the rentals. Samantha Evans is a new homeowner in the area and said one property is notorious for being used to host large parties. She said that on the first night she witnessed this, party-goers kicked in the gate of a private lot to use as parking.
“It escalated into a traumatic event when two attendees of the party got into a fight, took it to the street, and they had semi-automatic weapons,” she said.
Houston City Council members say they’ve been working with these residents for years in the hopes of regulating short-term rentals, especially because they are often unsupervised. According to Council member Sallie Alcorn, Houston is one of the only major cities that does not have short-term rental regulations. Alcorn said there are legal concerns when it comes to regulation.
“Legal has pushed back a lot on other cities implementing regulations that get challenged and overturned in the courts,” she said.
In Grapevine, near Dallas, the city was sued for trying to place a ban on Airbnb and other short-term rentals. Ultimately, the Texas Supreme Court declined the ban. In San Antonio in 2016, their court of appeals was in favor of a homeowners association that sued a homeowner who was renting out his home.
Residents in Houston argue that the city should be able to regulate short-term rentals by treating them like hotels through the hotel ordinance.
“On the hotel issue, the pushback has been that legal did not feel like (short-term rentals) met the true definition of a hotel,” Alcorn said. “However, I heard from the city attorney at the meeting that he is willing to pursue that avenue.”
Nationwide, big cities like New York have already succeeded in placing some sort of regulation on short-term rentals. The Wall Street Journal reports regulations have made vacationing in New York a little harder.
“No one should be exposed to the conditions that we’re hearing about today,” Mayor John Whitmire said during public session. “… it just got moved up the priority list.”