After a Marathon Hearing, Dallas City Council Won’t Vote on Proposed Short-Term Rental Ordinance April 12
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In case you missed it, the Dallas City Council held a seven-hour meeting on short-term rentals Tuesday.
It’s challenging to cull down all that talk into a 1,000-word report, and we encourage those interested to watch the video.
But there was plenty that didn’t make it into the CandysDirt.com coverage, including a lively discussion among elected officials that culminated in City Manager T.C. Broadnax’s assessment that staff has more work to do before a vote can be taken.
While Broadnax was clear that he takes direction from the council, he explained that “there’s still some vagueness on the zoning aspect, particularly as it relates to how it would be administered.”
“I’d be remiss if I did not repeat the statements you heard from Code or DPD that the ordinance as written … there are going to be challenges and expectations of enforcement that will not be met at the level that I believe the community would expect,” Broadnax said. “It’s a long process to eliminate illegal uses. I did not hear a majority of the council that is around this dais [calling for a vote]. We’ll go back and do our due diligence as quickly as we can with another briefing for the council on what we heard.”
The next regularly-scheduled council briefing date is April 19, so a vote could be taken April 26 at the earliest.
Code Enforcement, Land Use, And Zoning
Following feedback from more than 50 speakers in a close-to-even split of for and against STRs, city staff gave a presentation on a registration ordinance and implementation plan requested by the City Council last year.
Assistant Director of Planning and Urban Design Andreea Udrea, Code Compliance Director Chris Christian, and Code Compliance Assistant Director Jeremy Reed reviewed zoning changes, the current registration process, proposed regulations, and resource needs.
The “Keep It Simple Solution,” approved by the City Plan Commission in December, defines STRs as a lodging use, effectively removing about 95 percent of the existing registered STRs from residential areas because they don’t comply with zoning.
District 1 Councilman Chad West said he surveyed his constituents and found that 45 percent wanted a compromise rather than an outright ban.
“I saw my charge from my constituents is to figure out a solution that lets our good operators survive and shuts the bad ones down,” he said. “We need regulations now, without delay, and we need to shut down the party houses once and for all.”
West pointed out that all the feedback has been related to single-family neighborhoods, but “multi-family has been thrown in with this.” He also had concerns about short-term rentals for corporate use and those staying near hospitals while a loved one is receiving medical care.
The number of STRs in a multi-family dwelling could be capped at 10 percent, as discussed by the Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee, Udrea said.
How Many STRs Actually Operate in Dallas?
Councilwoman Gay Donnell Willis provided data that there are 1,774 registered, tax-paying STRs and about 3,100 identified as potential STRs. A 911 administrator said of the 3,100 properties, during a period from January 2021 through March 2023, there were 7,700 calls on a major disturbance or report of violence in a 27-month period.
Of the 3,100 addresses, 46 percent got a 911 call. About 49 percent got a 311 call in one of 10 nuisance categories, half of which are assigned to the Dallas Police Department.
“I just wanted to call that out because we’ve had a lot of folks quote the ‘88 percent have never had a 311 or 911 call,’ and that was about 2 percent nuisance-oriented criteria,” Willis said. “There’s a whole dimension of this that we have not examined. It’s not perfect; we haven’t had a lot of time to scrub it, but I think it’s cause for concern.”
Chief Data Officer Brita Andercheck filed a white paper Nov. 10 that compiles much of the data.
Police Chief Eddie Garcia said his department is “incredibly short-staffed,” about 244 officers shy of what is needed in the patrol force.
“At this time, I wouldn’t recommend us being the head or the lead of this type of enforcement,” Garcia said. “If [Code] is not available, we are the go-to. We are the 24-7 department. We handle the problem and then unfortunately we have to move on to the next call.”
While Chief Garcia acknowledged he knows of murders and human trafficking that have occurred in STRs, those crimes also are committed in hotels and single-family owner-occupied residences, he said.
Garcia said he empathizes with those who live near STRs but also wants to be credible when presenting data.
“The data is incomplete,” he said. “From the information we have, 2.5 percent of our calls — 1.38 million calls — have to do with this. Of those calls, we don’t know how many are duplicate calls. I don’t know yet at what point those individual addresses became a problem, before or after they became STRs.”
Next Steps in Adopting an STR Ordinance
Toward the end of Tuesday’s lengthy meeting, it became clear that some council members wanted to vote as originally planned on April 12, even if it was just to confirm the CPC recommendation of defining STRs as a lodging use.
“The biggest problem is the gutting of our communities that is changing neighborhoods into commercial areas,” said District 12 Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn.
District 6 Councilman Omar Narvaez suggested the council could approve a zoning change and come back later to iron out the ordinance.
“Let’s get something passed and then we can start to massage and see what will work and what won’t work as we collect some real data,” he said.
Just approving zoning would create a problem, staff members said, because once the zoning is changed, it would make a lot of existing STRs illegal. Code Compliance officials said it would take about a year to implement staff, training, and software needed to enforce the ordinance.
A mid-year budget amendment would be required to fund the monitoring software and staff to implement a neighborhood STR ban, Broadnax said.
“If we have additional revenue, it might be something we could absorb [in the next fiscal year], but it would get in front of enhancements and other things the council has requested us to do next year,” he said.
If the council goes forward with the KISS solution and an STR is found to be operating in an area not zoned for lodging, the city could file a lawsuit against them, and that could take up to three years for resolution, a staff member said.
District 7 Councilman Adam Bazaldua suggested an alternative proposal, “KISS 2.0,” that would allow neighborhoods to petition for a zoning overlay if they want to ban STRs in a particular district.
“Essentially our council is faced with a decision to legislate lazily with governing overreach to address one population’s concern or to legislate pragmatically and provide a solution,” he said. “We must take this opportunity to craft policy that is thoughtful, inclusive, and equitable.”
Irresponsible policy-making led to redlining and Dallas becoming “arguably one of the most segregated cities in America,” Bazaldua added.
The KISS 2.0 proposal didn’t get much traction because it has not been considered or vetted by the council’s appointed recommending bodies, ZOAC and the CPC.
District 2 Councilman Jesse Moreno said his district and District 14 account for more than 40 percent of the city’s STRs. He wanted to remove the “bad actors” but asked for more data and information.
“Obviously we have more homework and lingering questions,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
