City officials are debating how many short-term housing rentals should be allowed in Birmingham and where along with other rules for their operation as complaints about their proliferation mount.

Options on the table include limiting short-term rentals to 1% of residential units, barring them from residential areas altogether and requiring operators to take a course and have a responsible party on or near each property.

Members of the City Council’s Planning and Zoning Committee on Dec. 11 reviewed and discussed a draft amendment to the city’s zoning ordinance related to short-term rentals. City staff will be taking their comments along with comments from the public and additional legal research and revising a draft proposal to be presented to the committee Jan. 22, 2025.

The committee’s goal is to present a regulation to the full City Council for a vote.

“We’ve got to do something because the problem is already here,” said Councilor Valerie Abbott, chairwoman of the P&Z committee. “And the lady who’s got one on either side of her, one behind her and one across the street, she’s going to come get us. So, we’ve got to deal with the problems as well as the opportunities here.”

The committee’s discussion comes after multiple, hours-long public hearings in which residents and short-term rental property owners voiced their perspectives. The city, which currently does not regulate short-term rentals, took up the issue after a series of high-profile crimes, including shootings, at such properties. Some surrounding municipalities, including Hoover, Trussville and Mountain Brook, restrict short-term rentals.

The city’s Zoning Advisory Committee made four recommendations in response to the current draft amendment developed by staff in the city’s Department of Planning, Engineering and Permits. The P&Z committee discussed the recommendations and asked questions that were answered by Kim Speorl, the city’s zoning administrator, and Julie Bernard, assistant city attorney.

The Zoning Advisory Committee recommended:

• Prohibiting short-term rentals in residential districts.

Abbott said she is in favor of the prohibition. “The reason is we keep on hearing from our professional staffers that we have a housing shortage, and all of our complaints that we receive are from residential areas,” Abbott said. “So, we have to decide, in my mind, whether we want to turn our residential areas into commercial areas.”

The current draft amendment, which is the third draft city staffers presented to the advisory committee, would permit short-term rentals in all zoning districts, but in residential districts it would cap the number of short-term rentals at 1% of residential units. If applications for short-term rental properties exceed that cap, a random selection process such as a drawing would be used to select properties for approval.

The two other members of the P&Z committee, councilors Darrell O’Quinn and Crystal Smitherman, disagreed with the recommendation to prohibit short-term rentals in residential districts.

“I think that’s kind of extreme, but I do think we definitely need a cap,” Smitherman said.

The committee discussed allowing short-term rentals in residential districts capped at 1% along with a mechanism to ensure there are not many of them grouped together.

Speorl said the 1% cap would be tied to Census Bureau data and currently would equate to 1,068 of Birmingham’s 106,713 total housing units. The number of short-term rentals operating in the city is unknown because they are not tracked, but Speorl estimated that number at between 1,000 and 2,000. She said other cities with caps on short-term rentals commonly limit them to 1% of total housing units.

Birmingham’s draft ordinance would define short-term rental as: “The transient use of any dwelling or any part of a dwelling for overnight occupancy for less than 30 consecutive days.”

• Requiring a responsible party to be within a 10-mile radius of the property.

The draft ordinance included a 30-mile radius

• Requiring a random draw for approval of short-term rentals in any zoning district, not just residential districts.

In the most recent draft, there would have been no caps on the number of short-term rental properties that could be in nonresidential zoning districts such as mixed-use.

“Personally, I like that configuration, so my preference would be to reject that recommendation, O’Quinn said, adding later that he would be willing to compromise on it.

Abbott expressed support for the recommendation, calling attention to areas where housing is being built specifically to give low-income residents access to public transportation.

“If you allow those to become short-term rentals, then the poor people that need transit and need a place to live that’s affordable will be forced out by people who are running a business renting rooms,” she said.

The committee also considered spreading short-term rentals evenly across the nine city council districts, resulting in 118 such units allowed per district.

• Allowing short-term rentals them only by special exception in all districts.

O’Quinn said he was initially leaning toward this recommendation but changed his mind after realizing all short-term rental applications would have to get approval from neighborhood associations and go through the Zoning Board of Adjustments process.

“It would be very, very burdensome,” he said.

Speorl said staff in her department agreed. “The agenda for ZBA will be covered with short-term rentals,” she said.

Other obstacles to this recommendation the committee discussed include defunct neighborhood associations and poorly attended meetings, neighborhood politics and the high standards required to deny special-exception requests.

“Unless you have evidence of a repeat offender, loud parties, parking all over the street, the celebratory gunfire or the non-celebratory gunfire, it’s going to be extremely difficult for ZBA legally to not approve a special exception,” Speorl said.

As a potential solution, the committee proposed having the city send monthly notices of short-term rental applications to neighborhood associations and requiring owners of those properties to notify homeowners whose properties are within 500 feet of proposed short-term rentals. Once applications were approved, the city would notify neighborhood associations where short-term rentals would be located.

• Requiring short-term rental owners to take a course on business ownership and short-term rental requirements.

A local property owner is working on a potential curriculum with the University of Alabama at Birmingham that could be ready for review Jan. 22, Speorl said.

• Requiring short-term rental properties to have on-site managers.

The most recent draft does not make a distinction between short-term rental properties that have on-site managers, including owners or long-term renters, and those that don’t.

 Members of the committee said on-site managers could reduce complaints from neighboring residents. Speorl noted that the most recent draft would give no benefit to short-term rental property owners of having on-site managers.

“Come up with a benefit,” Abbott told her.

“I think they’re distinctly different,” O’Quinn said of short-term rental properties with on-site management vs. those without. “Not having on-site management presents a higher degree of risk for some of the unwanted activity happening. I imagine a scenario in which we treat those two somewhat differently in terms of how we approach permitting.”

Assistant City Attorney Bernard said the next draft of the amendment will have different requirements for short-term rental properties that have on-site managers.

• Adjusting laws to deal with parking issues.

 Abbott noted the city’s parking ordinance also needs to be adjusted to address short-term rentals.

 “We have to go back to the parking ordinance and fix it so that it actually requires parking for these places, because in neighborhoods that already don’t have parking sufficient for residents, you can’t have five SUVs with a bunch of people piling out and taking all the parking up,” she said.

The committee invited members of the public to email them with comments and suggestions related to regulating short-term rentals. Their email addresses can be found on their bio pages linked here.

Watch the full Dec. 11 Planning and Zoning Committee meeting here.