After almost 9 months of meetings and draft proposals, the Town of Highlands Board made their final ruling on Short Term Rental (STR) regulation on this past Thursday night and it is beyond problematic. I fully understand the concerns of certain citizens regarding the proliferation of STR’s in Highlands as well as the direct impact certain STR’s have on residential neighborhoods, but I also believe the Town Board exceeded its legal authority as well as its discretionary authority. To be clear, prior to Thursday night, the Town of Highlands had no specific regulations relating to STR’s in the Unified Development Ordinance, and this fact was proven out by their rescinding the prohibition of STR’s in Residential District 1 (R1) that was made in August 2021.
The STR ordinance passed on Thursday night made some progress toward stopping the proliferation of STR’s, but it also failed to respect the property rights of those who invested in homes when it was perfectly legal to operate a STR. As a citizen of this community for more than 15 years, I have always been impressed with how we work together to solve our problems. I am proud of the openness of our Town Board meetings and the willingness of commissioners and the mayor to consider various opinions and reasoning on issues. Unfortunately, with regard to the STR issue, I am not sure we followed that historic protocol.
As an owner of two STR’s in R2, I was consistently told by members of the Town Board and other parties involved in the process that R2 would not be significantly impacted by the new STR ordinance. Based on the draft ordinance distributed on the Monday before the Thursday meeting, this was mostly true with a few caveats. However, during the discussion on Thursday night, the Town Board decided R2 should be treated the same as R1 and the draft ordinance was amended to eliminate STR’s in R2 moving forward. This caught property owners in R2 by complete surprise and the community was not even able to address this issue to the board in the public comment period because we were not aware R2 was on the table for prohibition.
The ordinance that passed on Thursday night will not allow any new STR’s to operate in R1 or R2, but it does provide for limited non-conforming use to those STR’s already operational in these zoning districts. On the surface, this seems to be a fair remedy to individuals or entities who purchased property with the full understanding the law allowed for such uses in these zoning districts, including myself. The main issue with the ordinance’s application of non-conforming use is that in many instances it will significantly impact the property owner’s ability to rent their property because of an “intensity” clause added to the non-conforming use provision. This provision is completely unfair and will impact some property owners more than others, likely creating an underground market for STR’s.
In conclusion, enforcement of the STR ordinance passed on Thursday night will require a significant amount of time and energy to ensure the new rules are being followed. I do not speak for all STR owners, but I know many of us have been willing to sit at the table with all parties and attempt to find some common ground to avoid making the lawyers rich and helping heal some of the wounds created by this issue. We all love Highlands in our own unique way, and I hope we can move beyond the STR battle. Unfortunately, Thursday night’s decision was not a step toward the healing process.
- Jerry Moore
Highlands, NC