WHITE SALMON — Planning commissioners proposed a number of changes to the city’s existing short-term rental regulations during their Oct. 28 meeting.
Under the amended ordinance, which still requires city council approval, short-term rentals would be allowed within single-family homes zoned commercial and mixed-use buildings in the riverfrontage district. For the commercial zone, commissioners also adopted a matrix permitting one short-term rental on parcels with up to five units, two rentals on parcels with six to 10 units and so on.
The main concern was a project potentially subdividing to skirt that ratio. Commissioners imagined how one site with 10 townhomes could be built and then split into separate parcels, effectively allowing 10 short-term rentals, so Commissioner Brendan Brown proposed using “development site” in place of “parcel” to capture projects that begin under common ownership.
“I’m not at all confident that this is the most elegant solution, but I do think that the eventuality that you’re describing, where it could be that every residential home in the commercial district, is undesirable for the city,” Brown said.
City Planner Rowan Fairfield and other commissioners worried about administering that standard, however, and the goal was ultimately to encourage more short-term rentals in the commercial district as opposed to residential zones. So, commissioners resolved to take an existing provision that capped short-term rentals at 10% of the total housing stock in residential zones and apply it to the commercial district as well in aggregate.
As previously reported by Columbia Gorge News, short-term rentals currently account for roughly 5% of housing units in city limits.
Commissioners also clarified that short-term rentals are an accessory use, not a conditional one, across all residential zones when the property serves as the primary dwelling.
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