After sending proposed regulations back because they required hearings for certain short-term rentals, the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission decided there should be some case-by-case approvals.
Under the TMAPC recommendation, homes owned solely for listing on Airbnb and similar sites would need approval from the Board of Adjustment, while owner-occupied homes would not. Both would need a license, and Chairman Michael Covey said there needs to be an appropriate fee attached.
"The City of Tulsa absolutely needs to charge enough in its application fee to pay for an enforcement officer or enforcement mechanism," Covey said.
Covey said only 16 short-term rental listings out of more than 300 in Tulsa have gone through the current licensing process, which requires all applicants to get Board of Adjustment approval.
TMAPC also recommends a limit of four parties and no more than eight individuals in short-term rentals. For owner-occupied homes, the limit on individuals includes people living there.
Several citizens told TMAPC they don’t want short-term rentals in their neighborhoods at all. Commissioner John Fothergill said companies like Airbnb respond to problem tenants quickly, while bad long-term tenants are there until they move out or can be evicted.
"And so, in my opinion, a short-term rental is actually more advantageous for the neighborhood than a long-term rental," Fothergill said.
The regulations would not supersede agreements like homeowners association rules.
"An existing neighborhood, if their homeowners association got together and decided they were going to adopt new covenants, as long as they met the legal requirements for adopting those covenants, they could absolutely still restrict them in their neighborhood if they didn’t want them," said Tulsa Planning Office Senior Planner Nathan Foster.
The city council will take up the proposed rules in the coming weeks.
