As short-term rentals like airbnb and VRBO explode across the country – and in Warren County – how should they be handled from a zoning perspective?

The issue was raised before the City of Warren Planning Commission during a Wednesday meeting.

The city is working with a consulting firm to revise the city’s zoning regulations.

“There are variations of zoning provisions on short-term rentals,” Denny Puko, one of the consultants on the project, said. “We can definitely look at them.”

Puko said that a 2019 state Supreme Court case established the ability for municipalities to say a single-family home must stay a single-family home and permit short-term rentals in some zoning districts and not others.

He explained some municipalities have implemented specific provisions, for example, banning parties, while others are more general, such as ensuring 24/7 contact with a responsible party.

“There’s two sides to the camp,” Commission member Michael Lyon said. “There’s a happy medium somewhere.”

“(It is) something the city needs to consider as we are moving forward,” Randy Rossey, the city’s director of codes and planning said. “(We) need to stay in step with the times.”

Commission member Randy Gustafson said the “problems seem to come from” rentals where the owner is not on the property or in the immediate vicinity.

Puko said most of the current ordinances do not require the owner to be on site but that most do require a 24/7 contact.

“Some local person within reach has got to be identified and named on the application and on the permit,” he said.

There are “all kinds of varying ways people are addressing this,” Lyon said, calling it “interesting but confusing at the same time.”

He told the commission that it is a “growing trend” for companies to buy homes and then convert them specifically to short-term rentals.

“Even within our county, there are some peculiar facilities, I’ll say,” Lyon added.

“People are renting everything and everything because the market is there,” Puko said.