Complaint about alleged party at College Hill Airbnb rental raises legal questions

If you’re thinking about putting your house on Airbnb, you might want to think twice. In certain cases, you might be in violation of local zoning code.

Sophie Rotola has been using the app to rent out her College Hill residence since 2018 and is listed on the app as a superhost, which means she’s a highly-rated host.

Patricia Hileman, president of the College Hill Neighborhood Association, said a party put on by a renter in July at the Rotola residence resulted in several complaints, and a post on the app from Rotola alleged the cops were called on a renter that goes by the name of Cesar.

“(The neighbors) contacted me when it had been a few nights of people being loud enough to be obnoxious and not being neighborly,” Hileman said. “(The renters) were mean, honestly, to the neighbors that told them to quiet down.”

After neighbors of the house shared their concerns with her, Hileman said she is one of many people who went to the city asking questions about Airbnb-type rentals only to find that renting your house out through Airbnb can be in violation of some of Wichita’s zoning codes.

And this isn’t the first time this year there have been complaints about Airbnb renters causing problems in Wichita neighborhoods. In January, residents of a downtown apartment building run by Trinity Property Consultants were upset when the management company started using short-term rental providers to rent out vacant spaces in the building. An Airbnb renter in the building had the cops called on them for a domestic violence incident.

Scott Knebel, planning manager for the city of Wichita, said the legality of renting a house on Airbnb is weighed on a case-by-case basis. Residential houses must be rented for a minimum of seven nights and no more than five unrelated people can stay in the house.

While the city could go on the app and make a note of all the properties listed and watch those properties to make sure they were following the code, that wouldn’t necessarily be a good use of limited resources, Knebel said. Such a tactic wouldn’t necessarily catch anyone violating the code either.

“It would be very difficult to enforce. In order to issue the citation, you have to have evidence that it’s occurred,” Knebel said.

Wichita isn’t the only city in the country grappling with Airbnb or similar short-term rental providers. According to a Pew study, other cities across the United States are dealing with a variety of issues like how to tax short term rentals, how to regulate their usage and like Wichita, how to enforce existing codes.

On their website, Airbnb encourages hosts to specifically say parties are specifically prohibited in their homes on their property profile.

In Arizona, the governor signed a law in May this year to further regulate short-term rental properties. This law, which is the second passed by the state on the matter, further codified which departments in the state were responsible for regulation of short-term rentals in an attempt to cut down on party houses.

In an effort to protect long-term rental and hotel industries within the state, New York recently established funds to enforce renting laws. In the state, renting property for less than 30 days with more than two guests is strictly prohibited. These rules, however, were overturned in court and the Associated Press reported in April that lawmakers in the state were working with Airbnb to draft new regulations.

Hileman said she doesn’t necessarily think the Wichita zoning code is set in stone.

“Any code has to grow with the new situation of the city and this is a fairly new thing,” Hileman said. “This is how that stuff happens, so they are probably going to be looking at that in the future.”

Violation of a zoning code is classified as a misdemeanor. Knebel said if a person was charged with the violation and convicted, a judge would determine what the punitive action would be, but the maximum could be a $500 fine and up to six months of prison time.

So far, nobody has been charged with violation of the zoning code because of renting out a home on Airbnb in Wichita, Knebel said.

When homeowners sign-up to list their homes on the app, there’s a clause in the Terms of Service that says by “activating a listing” the owner agrees to follow all local laws and regulations regarding short term rentals. That agreement is further iterated in the Responsible Hosting Guide on their website.

Airbnb also lists a number of cities with links to their specific regulations for short term rentals on their website, but Wichita’s codes are not listed.

Hileman said Rotola and her husband “didn’t foresee the issues that this was going to cause and they’ve taken some steps to mitigate the issues.”

To file a complaint about any suspected violations of the zoning code, call the Wichita Planning Department at 316-268-4421.

This story was originally published August 26, 2019 at 4:37 AM.