SALT LAKE CITY -- A Utah lawmaker has short-term rentals in his sights for the upcoming legislative session.
Rep. Neil Walter, R-St. George, said he plans to propose a repeal of a 2017 law that made it harder for cities to use an online listing as proof that someone is violating short-term rental rules.
That law currently prevents a city or county from prohibiting someone from listing a short-term rental on a short-term rental website, like Airbnb or Vrbo.
Walter said he wants to target short-term rentals that are operating illegally.
"We're not telling the municipalities - the cities and counties - what to do," Walter told KSL TV. "We're just giving them the power to enforce their existing zoning ordinances the way that they were constructed and the way that they were intended."
This comes as a new report is shedding light on the landscape of short-term rentals in the state.
According to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, Utah had just over 23,000 monthly short-term rental listings in 2023, which was up by 39.4% from 2021.
Overall, short-term rentals account for 1.9% of the state's housing stock, said housing analyst Dejan Eskic. That number is still a "relatively low share," he said, but it's growing.
However, in some places, Eskic said short-term rentals are having an outsized impact on the ability of Utahns to find and afford housing.
Take Summit County, for example. The home of Park City and skiing is also home to the highest concentration of short-term rentals in the state, with 23.8% of the county's housing units classified as such.
"Summit County is losing existing housing stock to short-term rentals," Eskic said.
Eskic said for every 10 homes built in Summit County in 2023, there were 14.2 new listings for short-term rentals.
It's a similar story in Grand County, which is home to Moab and Arches National Park. For every 10 new housing units, there were 10.3 new short-term rental listings in that county.
"Our tourism communities is where we're seeing the concentration of these short-term rentals," Eskic said. "It's impacting affordability and availability of housing."
Heather McKell lives in Cottonwood Heights and loves her neighborhood. But there's a short-term rental house next door - even though city zoning doesn't allow that in a single-family area.
Under the prior owners, McKell said, the house was trouble.
"It's loud and obnoxious sometimes because they have parties," McKell said. "The parking is horrible."
It's better now with new owners, she said, but it's still frustrating.
"I see why people want to do that and the amount of money you can make, but what happens is it hurts the neighborhood," McKell said. "It hurts the families that actually live here in the neighborhood."
The Gardner Institute report found roughly 40% of the state's short-term rental units are apartments, with another 39% of them in single-family houses.