Youngstown city leaders call for Airbnb regulation in neighborhoods

Some members of the Youngstown Zoning Committee said Airbnbs homes are creating a nuisance in neighborhoods and want to take action to regulate them better.

Mike Durkin, Superintendent of Code Enforcement and Blight Remediation and First-Ward Councilman Julius Oliver said some Airbnbs are causing problems by offering short-term living options to multiple families in a given home throughout neighborhoods. 

These are homes that they said should be sold to permanent residents with plans to stay here permanently instead. 

"When there's strictly a residential area, the landowner, the homeowner, can rent it out to a single family, but you can't rent it out to multiple families," Durkin said, "They're renting out the room, or whatever the case may be and you know, there are 10 cars parked all over and then our sanitation trucks can't get through, fire trucks can't get through."

Oliver said out-of-towners can take advantage of affordable housing in Youngstown, leaving locals with fewer options.

"As we grow and start to build new houses, you have out-of-town people looking to say, 'Oh, hey, there's a brand new house. I'm going to buy that in Youngstown and make it in the it an Airbnb,'" he said, " So what we want to do is create some language and be able to specify exactly what an Airbnb is here in Youngstown, as well as say, well, we don't want to have too many of them popping up here, because we want our residents to have a chance to have fair housing, fair pricing, as well as fair rent." 

Oliver and Durkin said they don't want to negatively affect commercial Airbnbs downtown that bring economic activity, but they do want to develop and enforce new policies for Airbnbs that are in residential areas. 

The next plan of action is to determine exactly how many Airbnbs exist in Youngstown and then research what legislative options they have.

The committee plans to discuss the findings at their next meeting on December 18 at 11:30 a.m.