What to do about short-term rentals is an issue many Northern Michigan communities face, including Cadillac.
Homeowners are concerned about a short-term rental on Sunnyside Drive by Lake Cadillac.
“My property has a clear view of Airbnb. We’ve had some really tough times here in this neighborhood. We’re in a very nice neighborhood. We’ve had a lot of partying going on, a lot of disrespect to the neighbors,” said Terry Marquart.
“They renters drive across the yard, they have fires during red flag warnings and stuff like that,” added Andy Van Alst.
“It’s just not what we bargained for when we bought our R-1 residential homes,” said Brian Gudowski.
Sunnyside Drive zoning ordinance is one family residential district, meaning no short-term rentals.
“If there’s a complaint, we send an initial letter asking them to stop using the home in that capacity. If that doesn’t happen, we slowly have to increase our enforcement activity, which might proceed to issue tickets,” explained John Wallace, Director of Cadillac Community Development.
Linda Durant is for short-term rentals in Cadillac.
“I believe they’re really good for our town. Why wouldn’t we want tourists and visitors to come and stay here? And when they do, I always recommend I give them the names of stores downtown. They go downtown, they buy souvenirs,” said Linda Durant.
The city of Cadillac plans on updating its zoning ordinances and will hold the first public hearing in June.
“The real issue that we have is our existing ordinance is probably about 30 years old. In that time, short-term rentals were not a key zoning issue, so there was not a lot of regulation written specifically for that,” explained Wallace.
The host of the Airbnb on Sunnyside Drive said the property owner is taking the property off Airbnb and will decided how to move forward after the city decides on new ordinances.
