SANDUSKY — Those in this city of 26,000 used to know which parts of town to avoid when summer brought the annual influx of more than 3 million visitors to Cedar Point.
But with the increased popularity of short-term rental services such as Airbnb and HomeAway, some residents no longer can be sure that their neighborhoods will stay secluded from increasingly frequent — and at times, rowdy — vacationers.
Recently, controversy has grown in Sandusky over these services that allow people to place their home, apartment, condo, or even a single room for rent online for as short a time as one night.
Neighbors complain about noise, disorderly conduct, and unfamiliar people on their streets; property owners flaunt increased tourism and a chance to showcase their community to the rest of Ohio and visitors from all over the world. The city’s efforts to regulate transient rentals — defined as any rental less than 365 days — have had a negligible effect at best.
Al Peugeot, a retired teacher, coach, and administrator, heads the effort in Sandusky to crack down on transient rentals in residential zones.
“Capitalism is great — it’s what I taught,” Peugeot said, “but zoning has been in effect since 1920.”
While the city of Sandusky does prohibit transient rentals in areas zoned as strictly residential, it lacks the means to enforce the ban. C. Wesley Poole, a Sandusky city commissioner and regular member of the planning commission, acknowledged the need to resolve inconsistencies in zoning and regulations.
“We aren’t on a hunt every day for people who might be violating regulations, but people in neighborhoods might complain,” Poole said, referring to locals’ grievances about unruly visitors who might be in the house next door and not at a hotel.
Marie Avramaut, who uses VRBO to rent out her Port Clinton vacation home, recalled problems with tourists.
“The clientele are not in their typical state,” Avramaut said, mentioning multiple occasions during which young men became angry and punched holes in the walls. “There is too much alcohol and testosterone.”
Yet for Avramaut, the rentals pay most of the upkeep costs, so these disturbances are not bad enough to offset the advantages of renting.
Smaller communities on Lake Erie like Port Clinton, Put-in-Bay, and Kelleys Island also have had a rapid growth in transient rentals. But unlike Sandusky, where many residents prefer separation from tourist activity at nearby Cedar Point, many say these towns are more familiar with widespread tourism and are not experiencing strong opposition to rentals.
“Anyone can turn their home into a bed and breakfast here,” Kelleys Island Zoning Commissioner Bill Minshall said. “We don’t have the same controversy as Sandusky — yet.”
The Sandusky debate has played out most prominently in the area known as the Cedar Point Chaussee, the historic road leading to Cedar Point comprising lakeside homes with lush front yards and private beaches on Lake Erie. A couple developers have recently purchased several homes on the street to rent year-round to tourists, often for just a weekend.
Sandusky real estate mogul Doug Ebner splits his time between the Chaussee and Vail, Colo., where he too owns and rents property. He rents out six homes on the Chaussee and lives in another with his 10-month-old daughter.
A night at one of Ebner’s properties costs, on average, from nearly $300 to nearly $600. Guests must stay for a minimum of three or four nights.
“This region needs every dollar it can get,” he said, rejecting one of Peugeot’s main arguments: that visitors who stay in short-term rentals spend less money in the city because they spend more time in the house.
Ebner’s assessment — that short-term rentals are a boon to the local economy — is, generally speaking, correct.
A “white paper” prepared by the National Association of Realtors that analyzed the positive and negative effects of short-term rentals found that restrictions on short-term rentals in tourism-centered economies can be harmful. By this reasoning, eliminating short-term rentals from Sandusky would almost certainly be detrimental to the local economy.
But to a lot of Sandusky residents, particularly those on the Chaussee, the bigger issue is that some believe short-term renters disrupt the serene lakeside atmosphere. That tranquility is what led most families on the Chaussee to buy homes there.
Wendy Schmiedl, a teacher, has lived on the Chaussee year-round for more than 20 years. Her neighbors rent out their home, but they enforce a strict 10 p.m. curfew, screen all guests, and do not allow one-night rentals.
“We all work, we all have stuff to do,” Schmiedl said as she expressed frustration at rentals farther down the Chaussee that she thinks are not as discerning.
Debates about short-term rentals are not unique to Sandusky. Airbnb recently raised $8 million to fight a San Francisco ballot measure that tried — and failed — to restrict the service. Austin and New York have experienced public battles too about these rentals.
But those cities all define a short-term rental as less than 30 days, as opposed to Sandusky’s definition of less than 365 days. By issuing such a broad definition of transient rentals, Sandusky is, in practice, allowing them to continue; enforcing regulations against all homes that rent for any amount simply less than a year is practically impossible.
Three years ago, Ohio’s 6th District Court of Appeals ruled in favor of short-term rentals in a case Ebner brought against the city of Sandusky. The decision found Sandusky’s regulations, passed in 2011, “unconstitutionally vague.”
The city has since updated its ordinance, but the gist of it remains the same: Transient rentals are prohibited in residential areas.
Now, the city of Sandusky must choose a path forward. Poole, the Sandusky City Commissioner, indicated that the city is in the process of researching possible policy solutions.
Sandusky Planning Director Angela Byington noted that the city “will be coming back to the public in the near future with a recommendation.”
“Currently our position is that the regulation will work until it doesn’t,” Poole said.
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