LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A Metro Council committee passed an ordinance changing the regulations around short term rentals in Louisville 5-1 on Tuesday. It's now headed to the full council.
During Tuesday's Planning and Zoning meeting, the committee discussed changing the current ordinance to regulate the bad actors in the housing system and protect affordable housing.
Council members suggested capping the number of conditional use permits administered each year, while allowing renewing properties the opportunity to stay as a short term rental.
Council members also talked about creating a system where complaints or problem properties could be reported and easily accessed.
"People complain to 311, both online and by phone, which gets logged a different way," Councilman Ben Ren-Weber (D) of District 8 said. "And if they don't actually tag that's in Planning and Zoning, at least until very recently, you couldn't identify necessarily that it was a short term rental without a keyword search through a seller, and then they also complain on the Airbnb or a short term rental platform."
The committee said while there isn't one single source of complaints, there is a way to find out if a complaint resulted in enforcement action.
"Based on the numbers that I've looked at, since 2017, we've averaged 157 short term rentals per year," Khalil Batshon (R) of District 25 said. "Yes, granted, there's some higher than others in certain years. And there's certain areas of town that have an influx of these short term rentals in their, their communities."
Batshon added that by spreading it out with a cap over the three commission districts at 75 short term rentals per year per district, it would spread the properties throughout the community a little more evenly.
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