UPDATE: The City Council voted Tuesday night to keep in place the existing ordinance, which bans "transient rentals" in areas zoned as residential.
Original story:
Grapevine is a tourist destination.
And you can see on websites like Airbnb and VRBO, there are a lot of vacation homes that you can rent within Grapevine city limits for Cowboys games, NASCAR races, or even if you need a place to stay before flying out of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.
But now, the city is deciding how it should regulate these short-term rental homes (described as "single-family dwelling transient rentals" by the city), or if they should be banned altogether.
If you ask Andrew Muras, they should be banned. He has a short-term vacation rental right behind his home and he said he's constantly having to call police about the loud noise.
"They put in a pool and a party deck, so basically we have a hotel, pool and party deck 20 feet from our back door," he said. "And the noise and activity is pretty much constant."
Casey Cogburn lives near two vacation rental homes, including one next door, and says they're fracturing her neighborhood.
"It's two or three days," she said. "And these are people I don't get to know, you know. I have to watch out. They're coming at all hours of the night."
If the ordinance prohibiting these rentals is passed, it could go into effect immediately. It's unclear what the fallout would be for people who have reservations in the coming weeks.
Airbnb released a statement in response to the ban proposal:
It is outrageous that Texan homeowners must worry about having their private property rights trampled at the behest of special interests like the big hotel lobby. We have seen time and time again that shortsighted bans never work. We hope the city drops this proposal and allows our hosts a seat at the table to work towards fair short-term rental rules.
Background
At an August 21 Grapevine committee hearing, city staff admitted that this proposal was driven by the Texas hotel industry: [link here, item 7, 14:50] "I can also tell you that our full-service hotel community as well as the select service communities, I mean, there is 100% opposition [to short-term rentals]. It's really beginning to be focused on by the Texas Hotel & Lodging Association. There's some numbers that get pretty extensive. It's also beginning to get into the leisure side but also business travel, etc. And it can have an impact on our own hospitality industry where hotels are required to meet all of the appropriate safety and of course everything else that goes with a hotel. So our own hotel community is certainly very concerned about [short-term rentals]."
Context on the hotel lobby's mission to make it impossible for homeowners to share their homes through Airbnb: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/technology/inside-the-hotel-industrys-plan-to-combat-airbnb.html
We're still waiting to hear back from VRBO on their reaction to what's going on.