It really would be easy to inflate the debate over how (or whether) cities in South Carolina should regulate short-term rentals – those residential spaces posted on sites like Airbnb or Vrbo, offering a few-weeks-or-less alternative to hotel rooms, usually in the middle of a downtown or in a neighborhood, or any other place where hotel rooms themselves might be off-limits or cost too much to rent.
It would be easy because a lot of people really hate short-term rentals (just ask Reddit).
There’s the matter of human trafficking in short-term rental units, which Global Citizen first reported on in 2018.
There’s the fact that local officials, like Edward Kinney – a principal with the urban design division for the City of Greenville and one of the (literal) architects of the city’s newly updated regulations regarding short-term units – say that local restrictions as to where new short-term units can start renting are crafted straight from the number of complaints and fears residents express about the idea of living near a house that just might bring party after party to a once-quiet, established neighborhood.
City Councilman Ken Gibson says the same basic thing – that he’s heard complaints from numerous residents in his district (4th) about party houses and otherwise disruptive short-term guests.
And then there is the scholarly evidence from the University of Virginia and the National Institutes of Health suggesting that where local ordinances do not demand accountability from local property managers, short-term rentals correlate with a rise in crime.
All of which makes cities like Greenville, Rock Hill, Beaufort, and others want to get ahead of any real, perceived, or anticipated trouble.
It would be easy to inflate the conflict because there are some state legislators and some in South Carolina’s real estate industry who, if so far unsuccessfully, have tried to push a law that would ban the banning of short-term rentals at the city level.
In short, it would be easy to make the question over what to do about short-term rentals in South Carolina into a corrosive narrative; a fight between those who worry that government overreach will stomp the little guy like a Monty Python boot and those terrified residents fearing their cities will turn into 1997 Detroit a ’la Robocop unless the scourge of short-term rentals is quashed.
But this is public radio. A space for conversation, not a space for histrionics.
So what’s really going on?
When looking at Greenville’s short-term rental regulations, understand that it’s been less a fight than a series of chats.
“It’s been a conversation,” Kinney says. “What we decided to do is simply to listen to what the neighborhoods said they wanted in their neighborhoods. And I think Greenville is particularly astute at talking to our neighbors and talking to our neighborhoods and letting them drive the conversation.”
Most of the conversations, Kinney says, were with residents worried about the presence of too many short-term rentals in their neighborhoods – especially if those units were not being officially monitored to ensure good neighborly relations.
That, Kinney says, is the point of Greenville's regulations. Anyone renting out a short-term space in Greenville needs to be registered and held accountable. The update in the city’s regulations is actually largely an update to Greenville’s zoning, which as of July 15 stops new short-term rentals from popping up in neighborhoods. Existing rentals that are deemed compliant with city codes will be allowed to continue operating, Kinney says. But new units to rent in the short-term will now be consigned to mixed-use spaces that generally have hotels in them already.
By the way, as a brief aside, I walked into several hotels and extended-stay hotels in and around Rock Hill back in February, when I was looking into the potential state law to ban banning short-term rentals, to ask if the managers cared about short-term rentals or felt threatened by them. None would sit and talk with me, but every manager I spoke with admitted they don’t think much about short-term rentals at all.
So keeping existing, accountable, in-compliance spaces operating and formalizing where new rentals can operate hasn’t generated too much controversy in Greenville. Nor, really, anywhere in the state, outside the State House and its occasional forays into local autonomy vs. state authority.
Some nice things to say about short-term rentals
In conversations with city officials in Greenville, Rock Hill, and Beaufort, a common reframe kept coming up – no one is against short-term rentals. They just don’t want unbridled, unmonitored, unregulated short-term rentals that draw disrespectful and disruptive guests.
In fact, Kinney often uses short-term rentals when he takes a trip.
“When I travel with my family, I love short term rentals,” he says. “They're a great way to see a community; to sort of enculturate yourself with the community and feel like you're a part of the community.”
And this is exactly the kind of thing short-term landlords like Linda Goulart are aiming for.
“I show [guests] around the city, I tell them about what restaurants to go check out,” Goulart says. “So I'm actually helping them enjoy their stay.”
Goulart runs a therapeutic massage business out of her house on the outskirts of Greenville, near Swamp Rabbit Trail. She sees herself as a kind of tour guide to Greenville and rents out two of her rooms to short-term guests to help her pay for the property and for the renovations she says she’s put into a historic home.
She also says that many of her guests are professionals who are checking out Greenville as a place to which to possibly move.
“[I’m] giving them information to where they can decide if they want to live here,” she says.
Goulart says she’s in favor of professional, clean short-term rentals and thinks there’s definitely a place for more such rentals in neighborhoods. But she does also agree that such rental units should be owned by locals (remember, she rents out rooms in her own home) and have to follow some solid rules in order to not disrupt full-time residents.
“I wouldn't want to be living near a short-term rental that's having parties or stealing my space or causing some grievance to the neighborhood,” she says. “I don't think anybody wants that. There's got to be certain stipulations involved here, because there's people like me that's professional, that could benefit from the extra income.”
Goulart originally wondered what the city was up to with its regulations on short-term rentals. Then, she says, she called the city and had a conversation with some members of the planning department and found that, by and large, they’re on the same page. What she does hope, though, is that city officials make room for revisiting short-term rental regulations.
For their part, city officials have said they plan to.
