After establishing life and safety guidelines for the properties last year, the Hamilton County Commission may ban short-term vacation rentals from operating in unincorporated neighborhoods, citing concerns from residents.
“Neighborhoods were built for neighbors to live in — for people to enjoy, kids to play, not to get new neighbors every three to five days,” Commissioner Gene-o Shipley, R-Soddy-Daisy, said during the meeting. “I don’t think any of us sitting up here when our children were small … would have sent them out in the yard with different neighbors coming every week.”
The panel April 17 will take up that change, which would prohibit ownership and operation of the properties in residential-zoned parts of the county.
In April 2023, the board approved new zoning rules that allowed vacation rentals in all zones except manufacturing. The properties were previously prohibited in low-density residential areas. The commission also required the rentals to receive regular inspections to operate.
Commissioner Joe Graham, R-Lookout Valley, cautioned against Shipley’s change Wednesday, saying officials worked diligently with the fire marshal and the Sheriff’s Office to establish rules for enforcement last year.
“This is going backwards,” he said. “We identified that we had no rules — it was the wild, wild West — and we put some very good rules in place.”
Comparing it to Prohibition-era bans on alcohol, Graham said rental owners will find a way to operate the properties illegally without county rules. The guidelines give county officials a way to control bad actors, he said.
“The internet is a crafty thing,” Graham said. “They’ll be figuring out a way to advertise their property and build illegal, and it goes back to where we started. Then we’re nowhere.”
Last year, Chattanooga approved new rules that restricted absentee vacation rentals — those where the owner doesn’t live on-site — to commercial zones in the city that allow hotels. Commissioner Ken Smith, R-Hixson, said during the meeting that vacation rentals don’t belong in neighborhoods. Smith also sits on the Chattanooga City Council.
“If you’re going to do commercial business, you should be in an area where commercial business is allowed,” Smith said during Wednesday’s meeting.
Smith added the Sheriff’s Office cannot enforce anything that isn’t state law.
“Our rules don’t frankly mean a whole lot,” he said. “However, the one rule that does is whether it’s illegal or not.”
Shipley invited a resident, Jo Peckinpaugh, to the microphone Wednesday to address commissioners about her concerns regarding the properties. She said six cars parked at a vacation rental in her neighborhood over the weekend, four of which remained on the street.
Men were taking pictures of the neighborhood, and vehicles were “pouring in” one evening between midnight and 1 a.m., causing a “great noise disturbance,” she said. Neighbors saw men carrying small bags and containers from the house and called the Sheriff’s Office because they were concerned about “illegal activity because of all the cars.”
“They all contained single young males,” Peckinpaugh told commissioners. “In addition, two of the cars had Mexican tags on the front. One tag had the state of San Luis Potosi. … It’s a major drug trafficking state in Mexico.”
Graham said the visitors Peckinpaugh referenced should have parked in the driveway rather than the street, but that was the only rule they broke.
“The bags that were coming into the house were DoorDash,” he said. “They were having food delivered. Now … why were they from Mexico? They were not just from Mexico. They were from California, they were from North Carolina, they were from New York City, they were from all over the country.”
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There was a car show in Chattanooga over the weekend, Graham added, an event that acted as a huge economic boost and brought a few thousand cars to the area.
Commissioners asked Sheriff Austin Garrett to address Peckinpaugh’s concerns.
“I can’t speak or respond specifically to that limited information,” Garrett said. “You can say broadly the cartel is involved in narcotics trafficking all over the world. So the potential is there. The potential is for it not to be accurate. So all I would say is if anyone in this county has information on any kind of crime, especially narcotics, fentanyl, that type of thing, we have a tip line, you can send an email and you can provide that information to me.”
Development Services Director Nathan Janeway told commissioners his office is using specialized software to track illegal, unpermitted short-term vacation rentals and is working with the county attorney prosecute several properties that have not come into compliance. The county has brought in nearly $40,000 in fees since December, Janeway said, which doesn’t count hotel-motel tax revenue. The rules have also helped bring homes up to modern standards.
“A lot of these houses that are older, that have septic systems that were installed before we had records, that had homemade tanks, we’re able to bring those houses up into compliance to protect groundwater and potentially reduce fire risk in the unincorporated county,” Janeway said. “And so from that perspective, it’s working very well.”
Contact David Floyd at dfloyd@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249.