For weeks I’ve looked forward to celebrating the New Year at 12:01am, knowing that short-term rentals (STRs) will soon leave our Residential Neighborhoods for good. Our residential neighborhoods will start turning back to what they used to be and we all want, neighborhoods with neighbors, our family and friends.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

A last-minute legal move by an Alliance of primarily out-of-towners, will allow Short-Term Rental businesses to operate in our residential neighbors for a few more weeks. This is not a waiting period for us to sit back and see what happens. Now is the time to become vigilant and help our city make sure our enforceable short-term rental rules are being followed. These rules have a penalty of up to $1,000 per day.

To operate, they must have a current business license, and that license number must be on any advertisement such as VRBO and Airbnb. If you see an ad for a short-term rental in Woodland Park without their license number, that’s a violation that should be reported to the City. It could be an unlicensed/illegal operating short-term rental.

While the house is occupied with short-term renters, there must be a responsible person noted in their license application. This contact person must be available twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week for the purpose of; (1) responding within sixty minutes to property code violations and/or complaints regarding the condition, operation, or conduct of occupants of the short-term rental unit and (2) taking remedial action to resolve such violations and/or complaints. This is the person to contact to solve common problems we have found with short-term rentals such as snow and ice removal, trash and refuse removal, overnight parking on the street, noise and disturbances along with numerous other past problems.

The City can provide the name, phone number and email address of any short-term Rental contact person.

Of course, you can always contact the City to solve these problems; including assessing fines if necessary. Such contacts should be well documented to include pictures, when possible.

Problem short-term rentals have only one strike to get it right. That is, to keep operating, in the last twelve months they can have no more than one violation of any of the short-term rental business license requirements, application requirements or any violations of our City Municipal Code.

A great source of information for understanding their responsibilities are the Good Neighbor Guidelines which are required for those who stay in short-term rentals in our city. You can find these guidelines on the City’s Short-Term Rental Resource Center webpage or simply go by City Hall to pick them up. https://woodlandpark.gov/483/Short-Term-Rental-Resource-Center

Rather than helping with compliance of our short-term rental rules, I would rather see them phased out of our neighborhoods. That should happen soon.

From a recent City press release pertaining to on-going short-term rental legal actions, “The City intends to defend the lawsuit vigorously and, like the earlier lawsuit filed on this issue, believes the Plaintiffs’ Complaint is without merit.”