WHITE SALMON — The proposed ordinance that entails changes to White Salmon’s short-term rental code is going back to the city’s planning commission following council-recommended amendments to the bill.
City officials are on a short deadline to get the proposed ordinance approved by planning commissioners and city councilors before the end of the moratorium on short-term rental siting and permitting, which is set to expire Jan. 21, 2022. At least three councilors, Jason Hartmann, Jim Ransier, and Ashley Post, have indicated that they are willing to extend the length of the moratorium to allow more time for city elected officials to review the amendments.
Mayor Marla Keethler said the council would need to decide by the Jan. 5 council meeting about whether to extend the moratorium. The planning commission is set to meet this week Wednesday, Dec. 22.
Over a marathon council meeting Dec. 8, councilors went line-by-line and discussed multiple points in the bill at length. Over the discussion councilors focused on a few points of contention. The greatest sticking point seemed to be whether the city should allow short-term rental operations within the downtown core of the city or to extend such exemptions to the entirety of the city’s commercial zoning.
Another controversial area was whether to limit the number of days a residential short-term rental can operate and maximum occupancies within such units.
Councilors discussed a potential edit to the legacy clause (which details rules for current permit owners) to allow 10 years of exempt status for an owner-occupied short-term renal and five years for non-owner-occupied rental. Councilor Ben Giant recommended eight years of exempt status for all legacy owners, to which councilors seemed to form a consensus.
City staff will be creating a fee structure for elected officials to review. Officials will also be discussing a process by which short-term rentals can be annexed into the city from the urban exempt area.
An analysis of census data, conducted by third-party software company Granicus, shows that the rate of short-term rentals within city limits and the urban exempt area has grown by 20% over the last year. The existing 36 short-term rental permits in the city constitute 2% of the city’s total housing stock. In the city, according to its 2018 urbanization study, the share of vacant, seasonal, or otherwise short-term rental housing in the city increased from 6% in 2000 to 21% of the city’s housing stock in 2018.
City staff argued that with leading short-term rental hosting platform AirBnB’s recent move to go public on the stock exchange and its aggressive pursuit in increasing hosts and promoting work from home trends, as well, with White Salmon’s similarities to other tourist destinations, that short-term rental growth is expected to continue.
The push for regulation on this type of housing has been spurred by a lack of affordable housing stock in the city.
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