Whitefish seeks increased regulations for vacation rentals

Saying vacation rentals are having a large impact on Whitefish, City Council says it wants to explore options to regulate further short-term rentals in the city.

“Short-term rentals are having a significant impact on the landscape of our town,” Councilor Ben Davis said last week. “I don’t have any moral issue with short-term rentals, but it’s the collateral impacts on the town that rubs me. There is a whole economy in short-term rentals and people making money on it, and there are a lot of people in the community being impacted by it in terms of high housing prices and traffic.”

During a work session, Council last week directed city staff to draft a proposal that would require long-term rentals to be rented for 90 days or longer.

City Manager Dana Smith suggested that the issue return to Council for another work session with multiple options being presented. A few other ideas to regulate short-term rentals also came forward, including, requiring the license number to be listed in the rental advertisement, increasing enforcement of illegal short-term rentals and potentially capping the total number of allowed short-term rentals in the city.

There are roughly 260 short-term rentals licensed with city limits. A study by the University of Montana found that Whitefish had the highest number of vacation rentals in the state in fall of 2020 at about 1,000 in the 59937 ZIP code.

City code defines short-term rentals as visitor accommodations of less than 30 days and such rentals are only allowed in certain zoning districts of the city — WB-3 general business, resort residential and resort business districts. Such rentals are also required to register with the city and obtain a business license.

The city’s sustainable tourism management plan committee last month came to Council asking it to address the issue of short-term rentals, prompting the Council to hold a work session on the issue last week.

“This is a pretty big issue — it’s gutting our community,” Lauren Oscilowski, who chairs the committee, told Council last week. “We need housing for our workforce and maintaining the integrity of our neighborhoods.”

Mariah Joos, who also serves on the committee, says in looking at priorities the committee felt that tackling the issue of short-term rental housing was top of the list.

“This last year really pushed this issue forward,” she said. “We need leaders on this issue. The community is in desperate need to be on a different path than we’re on.”

Whitefish in 2018 issued permits for 103 short-term rentals and in 2019 there are about 160 short-term rentals.

Requiring long-term rentals to be designated for a minimum of 90 days is one idea brought forward by the committee as a way to attempt to eliminate units that are essentially illegally functioning as short-term rentals. Rentals are reportedly being rented for 30 days at a time or for portions of a month and then left empty so as to not appear as operating as a vacation rental.

Several Councilors seemed to favor the idea, however, city officials point out a potential list of problems that could arise if the regulation is changed to 90 days.