Eureka Springs City Council aldermen recently expressed support for a proposal by City Building Inspector Jacob Coburn to establish minimum safety requirements for all short- and long-term rentals in town.
At a council meeting last month, Coburn said he has more than 2,500 photos of safety problems with housing, including wiring improperly insulated and near other hazards such as gas lines or water heaters. He suggested establishing a basic required inspection list for property owners that would be minimal and reasonable.
The proposal has caused concern among people with rentals who are not keen on the idea of more city regulations. Many Eureka Springs rentals are older building constructed before modern building codes were adopted. Some landlords have said if they are required to do expensive renovations, they would have to raise rents.
Coburn said he receives a lot of calls from tenants whose landlords will not invest to bring their rentals up to code, allowing a decline in the property conditions and creating numerous potentially dangerous conditions. Eureka Springs has a severe affordable housing shortage, and Coburn said renters were fearful of retaliation if they made complaints.
“They are in fear of expressing their concerns openly because they are concerned that they will be evicted,” Coburn said. “I’m simply saying that I’d like to see the landlords in town work with the city to provide the minimum requirements for a safe habitable home, encouraging property maintenance with everyone commercial or residential, and working with the other department heads, citizens as well as property owners, to find a flexible reasonable solution to this problem without having to hurt anyone financially is my goal here.”
Average rental rates have increased significantly in recent years, and long-term rentals at any cost are difficult to find. With many local workers employed only seasonally, affordability is a huge issue. A Florida State University study found the average weekly wage overall in the U.S. is $710, while it was $311 per week in the leisure and hospitality industry.
It also impacts employers when businesses can’t find enough workers during the tourist season.
Mayor Butch Berry said there are valid reasons for rents to be raised, such as costs for maintenance, taxes, insurance and mortgages. But making sure your rental units, especially short-term rentals, are safe is not a valid reason.
“Meeting fire by having smoke and fire alarms, adequate and safe electrical systems and mechanical units are a minimum standard – not a maximum standard,” Berry said. “It is important for people to know that. The fire marshal and building Inspector are just doing their jobs.”
Berry also said that Coburn has been the building inspector less than six months, and rents were increasing long before that.
One barrier to providing more affordable housing by converting hotels or motels more than one story into long-term housing has been requirements to install expensive fire suppression sprinkler systems. This has been discussed at meetings of the Mayor’s Task Force on Economic Development, which has placed a priority on developing more affordable housing in Eureka Springs and surrounding areas.
Berry said most of the Eureka Springs hotels that are for sale and are possibilities for conversion to long-term housing were built before International Building Code was changed to require all hotel/motel occupancy groups to be sprinkled, as code requires now. So, any changes in occupancy use will have to conform to the 2021 IBC and the International Fire Code.
Coburn said no one will force property owners to install sprinkler systems in existing rentals.
“Those systems would only be mandatory on new construction or complete renovation projects that deal with larger occupancies,” Coburn said.
Previously, inspections were required before someone opens a short-term rental, but not annually. Coburn and the fire marshal have created a checklist to provide property owners before inspections are made.
Another concern being raised is the capacity of Coburn to do inspections of a large number of homes in addition to his current workload. Coburn said after the checklist is approved, he plans to coordinate with the fire marshal.
“Hopefully, the items addressed on the checklist for minimum code compliance will already be taken care of by the landlords before we perform the inspection, making it faster and easier on everyone involved,” he said.