Whitefish Council receives update from city’s first short-term rental enforcement specialist

After about five months in office, Codi Evenson, Whitefish’s first short-term lease enforcement specialist, updated the City Council earlier this week on her observations and the progress of her work to date.

In November 2023, the Council approved the hiring of an employee with the specific task of enforcing the City’s rules and regulations governing short-term rentals, at a time when the City’s busy tourism economy and ongoing housing crisis have led to increased scrutiny of this particular type of vacation rental.

According to a memo Evenson submitted to the City Council for the Aug. 19 work session, there are 380 short-term rental permits and licenses in the city, and about 313 of them are actively listed online. In total, 34 new short-term rentals have been approved this year, according to Evenson, with about half of those being due to enforcement actions by the city and the other half due to new owners taking steps to comply with the city ordinance.

Since work began in March, Evenson said it has taken enforcement action against 51 unapproved short-term rental units, including 19 in areas where zoning prohibits their operations. In addition, Evenson told council that 22 short-term rental units that were operating outside of permitted zones have been removed from the market or, in some cases, converted to month-to-month rentals. According to Evenson’s presentation to council, short-term rental unit listings in Whitefish are expected to have declined by approximately 11.3% between July 2023 and July 2024.

The number of approved and unapproved rentals is lower than some council members expected, but Evenson said afterward she expects that number to continue to rise as she gathers more information, including using RentalScape, software the city purchased to pull hourly data from websites with short-term rental listings. The software helps cut through some of the noise when it comes to getting a picture of the short-term rental market in Whitefish by identifying specific addresses rather than simply aggregating all the listings, which can provide an inaccurate snapshot of the market. Evenson said a single rental property can sometimes be listed on three different websites, but that she has seen a single rental property on as many as 10 websites.

Evenson said the software likely hasn’t come across some listings yet because bookings were made before it began working for the city in March. In other cases, rental properties may not be listed, but owners retain licenses for occasional bookings.

She also pointed out that some short-term rentals are arranged without permits and licenses through word of mouth or fake contracts.

“As I said in my presentation, we need to prove that advertising is happening and money is flowing. I am convinced that as my position evolves and these offenders receive more and more attention, we will see more and more compliance and more opportunities for compliance,” Evenson said Friday.

“I’m not really surprised that the numbers are not as high as we thought they would be. However, it seems like good progress is being made and it seems clear that there are now potentially dozens of homes that are not for short-term rentals but should be rented out illegally,” Councillor Ben Davis said at the end of the council meeting. “In my opinion, we should continue as we have been. I’m perfectly happy with achieving the easy and moderately difficult to achieve targets without trying to kill myself on the really difficult to achieve targets. And it’s still early days and hopefully these results continue into the future.”

The biggest challenge so far is enforcing the city’s regulations on short-term rentals, which advertise only for short periods of time to avoid detection. Evenson referred to some of these ads as “vampire ads,” which are posted online only outside of City Hall’s business hours and then taken offline.

Other challenges Evenson presented to the council include getting owners to cancel bookings after being notified they are operating in an area not zoned for short-term rentals. In several cases, owners have not responded to warning letters sent by the city. Evenson told the council that City Attorney Angela Jacobs has gotten involved and is working to “take legal action” in some of these cases. Evenson has also helped design bright red door hangers with notices of violations that can be used in some cases to get owners to comply. The door hanger comes after an illegal rental was identified and owners were served with two warning letters.

The first notice allows 15 days from the date of the letter to comply with the request. The second notice comes by certified mail and allows an additional 10 days to comply. The red door hanger states that the owner has 48 hours to comply with the request. After that time, failure to comply may result in action by the city attorney.

Evenson described an overarching process that prioritizes those rental properties that do not have a license to operate, then focuses on resolving licensing issues and ensuring that rental properties comply with city requirements and their license is indicated in listings.

“I feel like there’s going to be more and more layers that come with this position, right? We’re just peeling an onion,” Evenson said, adding that some of the work would take the city into uncharted waters and there could be some trial and error.

While work continues to regulate short-term rentals, Evenson is also working to become certified as a fire inspector. Short-term rentals must undergo annual inspections, including a fire safety inspection. This fire safety inspection is currently performed by the fire marshal, so Evenson’s certification should help ease his already heavy workload. Fire inspections include inspections of fire exits and smoke detectors. Inspections also check for off-street parking and that both emergency contact information and a registration number are posted in a visible location near the front door.

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