AI-assisted summarySeveral mayors from northern Arizona municipalities met in Prescott to discuss problems caused by short-term rentals.Sedona Mayor Scott Jablow estimated that almost 30% of homes there are short-term rentals.Lake Havasu City passed an ordinance to track and manage short-term rentals in 2014, but a state law overrode it two years later.Longtime Sedona residents are moving because of noisy short-term renters and the traffic and trash they bring to neighborhoods. Payson firefighters and police officers commute from Mesa because they can’t find affordable housing in the city where they work due to investors buying homes to rent out.Engineers, teachers and doctors are turning down job offers in Page, Lake Havasu City and Sedona because they can’t find homes they can afford in the area for the same reason. People filling necessary first-responder, restaurant, hotel and other service jobs must make long commutes to several northern Arizona cities because housing is out of reach where they work.Several mayors from northern Arizona municipalities with a growing number of short-term rentals met in Prescott last week to discuss those problems and others the rental properties create for their neighborhoods, economies, traffic and schools.“SB 1350 has crushed the town of Jerome,” said Mayor Christina “Alex” Barber about the 2016 legislation that makes it illegal for any Arizona municipality to prohibit property owners from using their residential property for short-term rentals.She said more than 20% of the houses in the historic landmark town Jerome are short-term rentals and is worried that number will jump.Arizona cities struggling with short-term rentalsSedona Mayor Scott Jablow estimated that almost 30% of homes in that popular tourist destination are short-term rentals.“Our schools are losing children and funding because families can’t find homes here, and we can’t attract much-needed medical staff,” Jablow told the group at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “Long-time residents are selling and leaving because of loud parties at short-term rentals.”He said the rentals drive up home prices because investors are paying more than asking prices for houses.Prescott Mayor Phil Goode said police having to respond to neighborhood complaints about short-term renter noise and trash redirects the city’s public safety resources from where residents want them utilized.But he said the rentals have generated about $25 million in revenue for Prescott, which “is a good thing.”Arizona short-term rental owners are required to pay Transaction Privilege Tax, which is 2.5% of revenue from the business.Williams Mayor John Moore said 15% of that city’s housing is now short-term rentals, and 80% of those are owned by out-of-state investors “who don’t come forward, so we have find them to do inspections like we do for hotels because that’s what they are.”He said the city has an affordable housing problem for the many workers needed for the rentals, hotels and restaurants.Moore said after using 50 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development housing vouchers to get residents into affordable homes for several years, Williams has only been able to use 17 of those during the past few years because there are not enough landlords willing to take them. Instead, many landlords are turning their homes into short-term rentals.Fixing short-term rental problemsArizona Neighborhood Alliance estimates there are at least 66,175 short-term rentals in the state that drive up rents, cost residents tax revenue and burden local police with nuisance calls.Also, not all short-term rentals are registered and paying the required tax, according to the grassroots group.Jablow said he knows there’s no going back, and investors who own the rental homes are making lots of money and won’t sell. But he and other mayors want to be able to limit the number of new short-term rentals to protect their neighborhoods.Lake Havasu City passed an ordinance to track and manage short-term rentals in 2014, but the Arizona statute overrode it two years later.“We need to be able to control short-term rentals at the local level,” said Cal Sheehy, mayor of Lake Havasu City.Arizona Sen. Mark Finchem hosted the forum on short-term rentals and said they are having “an adverse economic impact on communities across Arizona.” …
