Pleasant Ridge moves forward with short-term rental ordinances

PLEASANT RIDGE — For almost a year, regulating short-term rentals has been a consistent topic in the city of Pleasant Ridge, but it’s now one that has reached a conclusion.

At its June 9 meeting, the Pleasant Ridge City Commission approved ordinance amendments designating the zoning and licensing standards for short-term rentals operating in town.

The ordinance amendments state that short-term rentals are permitted to operate in multifamily residential and commercial zoning districts, which are located along Woodward Avenue. Existing and legal short-term rentals will be able to have nonconforming status as long as they apply for and obtain a short-term rental license in 90 days of the effective date of the ordinance, said City Manager James Breuckman.

“Currently, any rental in the city must hold a landlord license,” he said. “Anyone who is renting out their house or using a property as a short-term rental without a landlord license currently is not a legal use and will not qualify for nonconforming status under the new ordinance, because they were not legal to begin with.”

The city will be sending letters to all registered landlords who are licensed to operate rental properties informing them of the ordinance amendments’ passage and how they can apply to continue using their properties as short-term rentals, as long as they can prove that they have used their properties as short-term rentals prior to the enactment date of the ordinance. Breuckman stated there are 33 licensed landlords in Pleasant Ridge.

Licenses for short-term rentals must be renewed annually and are nontransferable. The occupancy for properties are two adults per bedroom maximum and a total overnight occupancy of eight people per unit. Quiet hours are from  8 p.m. to 7 a.m., and there are bans on the usage of fireworks, open burning, recreational firepits, subletting and commercial events such as yard sales. The owner or designated agent for the rentals must be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond to any complaints that arise.

A license can be revoked if the property receives two substantiated complaints or violations within a single calendar year, city documents state. Penalties for violations range from $250 to $500 civil infractions. Those can escalate to a misdemeanor for repeat offenses. Intentional false reporting of a violation is a separate civil infraction, with fines of $100 for a first offense, $250 for a second, and $500 for a third or subsequent offense within one calendar year.

Breuckman said the city also is moving forward with Granicus to use it as a monitoring service and complaint hotline.

“They can assist us with getting letters out and handling follow-up on enforcement, but they also have a tool that crawls, I think, 60 short-term rental listing sites and identifies any that pop up,” he said. “That’ll be our primary way of identifying anyone who advertises a short-term rental that’s not licensed.”

Both ordinance amendments were approved unanimously by the commission. Mayor Bret Scott told the Woodward Talk that the city landed on a good solution.

“I wanted to find a balance between limiting the spread of short-term rentals and also managing the needs of the existing short-term rental owners,” he said. “I highly encourage our state legislators to look at short-term rentals in general, as this may have a large impact on housing affordability and availability.”

Commissioner Ann Perry stated during the meeting that the commission had heard from residents that they didn’t want short-term rentals in Pleasant Ridge, herself included, but the city worked to craft something she was happy with.

“The city manager and our city attorney worked hard to help us understand that the legal nonconforming … was something that we have to work with because of just legal pushback — that we will get lawsuits,” she said. “I want everyone to know we’ve pushed to keep it as limited as possible, because I know a lot of people are like, ‘Well, I stay at Airbnbs, but I don’t want one next door,’ which is totally right, but we shouldn’t be putting one next door to anyone has sort of been our feeling. So anyway, I think we’ve gotten as close to that as we can and I appreciate all the work that everybody did on that and diving into it.”