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In Hocking County, short-term rental businesses could soon see more regulations
By: Amanda Pirani
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HOCKING COUNTY, Ohio (WOUB/Report for America) — Audie Wykle is the Hocking County regional planner, but he spends a lot of time thinking about Texas. He recalls the summer camps that flooded in July, ill-prepared for the disaster.
“I just keep thinking about us,” he said. “What if we had a situation with a fire?”
Wykle believes the county is at risk for its own tragedy if local laws don’t keep up with the area’s spike in tourism.
Amongst other safety issues, county emergency medical services and local fire departments say local cabin rentals aren’t always accessible in case of an emergency.
Wykle recounted a story from first responders who watched a cabin burn to the ground because it couldn’t be reached by fire trucks. Nobody was inside — but he worries next time that won’t be the case.
Wykle says local governments are still catching up to that growth. In the meantime, short-term rentals have run with few regulations.
“It’s just been kind of the wild, wild west,” he said. “It’s just been too open and not enough oversight.”
The county zoning commission, which Wykle chairs, hopes to change that.
In September, the commission drafted a countywide short-term-rental ordinance, one of five proposed to address the impacts of tourism in the area. Other proposed legislation includes a noise ordinance, permits for large events, impact fees for new developments and new standards for commercial or industrial developments.
But the short-term-rental legislation has received significant pushback from those who’ve staked their livelihood on tourist rentals. Local lodging owners worry the regulations will be yet another strain on an increasingly challenging business model.
Safety concerns drive short-term-rental regulations
The city of Logan adopted a local permit process in 2023, but rental properties elsewhere in the county have remained largely unregulated. The Hocking County Zoning Commission formed the same year to address tourism-related issues countywide.
The short-term-rental ordinance proposed by the commission would create a county permit for short-term rentals and outlines several permit requirements. The legislation includes a process for variances, heard by a commissioner-appointed variance board.
Wykle said the intention is not to overburden business owners, but instead address safety issues reported by the county sheriff, fire departments and emergency medical services.
Many of the short-term rentals in Hocking County are cabins, which Logan Fire Chief Chris Maley said can be difficult to reach in case of an emergency.
“They’re building them deep in the woods,” he said. “The majority of them are just gravel driveways that can be very steep, very muddy … it makes it hard to access those locations.”
The Logan Fire Department serves the city as well as several surrounding townships. Maley said the department also assists volunteer departments throughout the county as needed.
Hocking County EMS Chief Bob Platz echoed issues with accessing renters during medical emergencies. Platz said bridges or driveways not meant for the weight or size of emergency vehicles can pose a challenge.
“I think a lot of focus has been on … making sure we can gain easy access to folks and not put them in jeopardy or our equipment in jeopardy,” he said.
Without state regulations, short-term rentals lack oversight
Right now, Maley said there’s no state requirement that rental cabins are regularly inspected.
That makes it difficult to guarantee short-term rentals are meeting the same safety standards as long-term rental properties.
“Are they equipped with smoke detectors or CO2 detectors or fire extinguishers?” he asked. “We’re just not sure because these things are popping up brand new every day.”
Lodging owners critical of the ordinance have pointed out the text does not explicitly require fire safety features such as smoke detectors or extinguishers.
The ordinance would also require properties to meet county driveway standards to better ensure emergency vehicles can enter. Additionally, to receive a permit from the county, short-term rentals would be required to meet safety standards such as two points of exit for every bedroom.
“The public should be protected, and know that when they come someplace they’re not accepting or need to accept some kind of risk,” Wykle said.
It’s not yet clear who would perform inspections to enforce the ordinance, but Maley said most local governments don’t have the capacity to do it themselves. Wykle said the zoning commission is weighing the possibility of subcontracting to a company that performs code enforcement for other local governments.
The ordinance also creates an occupancy limit for each property — one of many proposals lodging owners argue is impractical.
The limit will be calculated based on the square footage of bedrooms and lofts, and won’t count children under age 6 toward the limit.
Hocking Hills Lodging Owners Association Vice Chair Gabe Stockton said the provision doesn’t account for features such as bunk beds or pull-out couches, and worries it will significantly cut owners’ renter capacity.
Local contact and other provisions prove controversial
The occupancy limit is one of many provisions that have proven to be sticking points between owners and the zoning commission.
Others include a provision requiring property owners to have a local contact in the case of emergency.
The person assigned as a point of contact for rentals would have to be capable of being physically present within 30 minutes of being notified of an issue, creating complications for out-of-town owners. The contact must live within Hocking County, or within 30 miles of the designated rental property.
Finn Fuller, co-owner of a website advertising Hocking County tourism rentals and activities, said the change would be a financial hit to many of the owners who list on his site.
“If you’re a local owner, perhaps you can do that,” he said. “If not, you will have to hire someone, and it’s undetermined what that would cost, likely thousands of dollars.”
Owners can assign more than one contact to be reached at different times of the day.
Stockton of the Lodging Owners Association said the provision is unnecessary, because a contact person would still defer to a property owner for major decisions.
“Business owners don’t want to grant authority for them to make decisions on their behalf … when they can do this just the same as they have been,” he said.
Wykle said the requirement was an attempt to address concerns from first responders that owners were unreachable in emergency situations.
He said it also becomes an issue with a renter who is violating property rules. The owner has the right to ask the person to leave. If they do not, the renter is considered trespassing.
However, Daniel Picketts, chief assistant prosecutor for the county, said in a meeting with lodging owners that someone cannot be considered trespassing unless an owner, or representative of the owner, is on the premises.
“You inform them that it’s a breach of contract, then you ask them to vacate the premises, and if they don’t, it is now trespassing, in which case you call the police department or the sheriff’s department,” he said. “There has to be a local representative … there has to be a victim for the crime.”
Other sticking points include a requirement that renters are at least 21 years old, which owners said would be unfair to young customers and could decrease bookings.
Wykle said it’s possible the age restriction will be removed or lowered in the final ordinance draft as the commission weighs the impacts on rental owners, but argued the requirement is commonplace in the hospitality industry.
“That’s a standard that all of your chain hotels and motels have,” he said. “It’s not just something we made up.”
Lodging owners apprehensive about effects on business
Behind opposition to the short-term-rental regulations is a mounting anxiety that owners will see further strain on their income. Stockton said pressures are already coming from other areas, like maturing loans, increased property taxes and decreasing occupancy rates.
“There’s a lot of concern short-term rental owners are not being considered,” said Stockton. “They feel as if they are being picked on.”
Stockton explained that among other stressors, many property owners took out loans to invest in their short-term rentals, hoping to refinance them at a lower rate later.
“(Interest) rates just haven’t come down to where that has happened,” he said. “Their profits are getting hit there, and I know that’s not this body’s fault, but it’s also something that is a reality.”
Fuller, who owns Hockinghills.com, and Sarah Neichter, who manages a short-term rental business, suggested the regulations could unintentionally decrease the number of local short-term rental owners, pushing revenue out of state.
“It isn’t going to be another local person, another Ohioan buying,” Neichter said. “It’s probably going to be some out-of-state investor … who has legal teams, who can deal with all the hoops and legalities.”
Hocking County Commissioner Michael Linton suggested that regardless of regulations, short-term rental owners may be seeing lower occupancy due to a plateau in demand after the post-pandemic boom in travel.
“My guess is … that’s related to the fact that the market may become saturated,” he said. “Maybe we’re at the point where we have more cabins than we have demand for cabins.”
Stockton said including a grandfathering provision as part of the ordinance would ease some concerns from lodging owners about the potential financial burden.
In a zoning commission meeting on Oct. 30, Wykle said grandfathering will be reconsidered once other requirements of the ordinance have been fleshed out.
Final product will have to balance owner and resident concerns
It’s not yet clear when the zoning commission will have a final product for county commissioners to vote upon. Wykle said they’re prepared to deliberate as long as necessary to produce regulations that satisfy everyone.
While meetings have largely been dominated by the concerns of lodging owners, another voice has quietly made the case in favor of regulations.
“I think sometimes the lodging owners forget that … we as commissioners aren’t hearing just about the concerns over the regulations from the lodging owners,” Linton said. “We’re hearing it from citizens of Hocking County who aren’t connected to the tourism industry.”
Linton said the commissioners’ goal will be to pass a body of regulations that not only benefits short-term rental owners, but also county residents who may have been negatively affected by the tourism industry.
He said the growth of the lodging industry has made it more difficult for county residents to buy property and own a house due to the rise in property taxes.
“I’m a for-profit guy … I’m not judging all of that,” he said. “I think that’s where the zoning commission effort started, is to say how much of our property do we want allocated to short-term rentals versus long-term residences for people in the community.”
After watching the rise of short-term rental properties in his neighborhood, Logan resident Shawn Gallagan said he’s glad regulations will be established.
“I … have witnessed house after house being built only to be turned into an Airbnb,” he wrote in an email to the zoning commission. “I’d love it if my kids (18 and 15 now) could one day afford property of their own in Hocking County, but I can’t see that happening when they’re competing with large corporations.”
For Logan resident Debbie Webb, the regulations feel like too little, too late. She doesn’t believe local lawmakers have done enough to protect residents in the face of rapid tourism growth.
“There’s no reason for people to stay here because there are no jobs that pay enough to keep people here,” she said. “There’s no affordable housing because of the cabins that are being built.”
Webb said her husband has lived in the county for two decades, but she doesn’t know if they’ll stay much longer.
“I really like my house,” she said. “But I really don’t like what’s happening in the county anymore.”
Amanda Pirani is WOUB’s Report for America Journalist covering Economic Livelihood. For more information about Report for America, you can click here.