Several city officials are concerned with the travel website Airbnb because its users do not have to follow local safety regulations.
The travel website Airbnb is a practical option for parents of Ohio University students and others who visit Athens, but some Athens City Council members view the website as problematic because its users do not have to follow local safety regulations.
Councilwoman Chris Fahl, D-4th Ward, and Athens Planning Commission member Nancy Bain expressed their concerns with the bed and breakfast establishments that are advertised on Airbnb at the Oct. 12 city council meeting.
Airbnb is a website and app that allows its users to find places to stay or to host a room for other users to stay in when visiting an area.
“We have to protect the people that come to town,” Bain said at the meeting.
Bain said her main concern is that all local bed and breakfasts have working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Airbnb users do not have to follow the guidelines that would require them to have those detectors and other safety precautions, she said.
“That’s an issue, and there’s questions about it that will have to be looked at when we go forward with looking at the planning commission’s recommendations, what council has to say and what we’re hearing from other people,” Fahl said.
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The planning commission took a closer look at the current local regulations after the owners of the apartment on Stimson Avenue above Lamborn’s Studios were granted a temporary variance to use it as a bed and breakfast.
The planning commission recommended that bed and breakfasts in Athens should be defined as owner-occupied dwellings with no more than three guest rooms that provide breakfast to paying guests that do not stay more than 30 days. A rental permit and parking space per guest room would also be required as part of that definition.
Athens resident Abe Alassaf is one of the more than 40 hosts on Airbnb that rents space to visitors in Athens. He said he rents out a room in his house to guests using the service.
Alassaf said if there was legislation created and passed to try to limit the amount of Airbnbs, he and his wife would not have the chance to expand their business like they are planning to.
“It sounds like a law enforcement nightmare and an extreme waste of city resources and tax payer money if they really want to enforce this,” Alassaf said.
Some city council members said they believe bed and breakfast establishments are good for tourism at the Oct. 12 meeting, Fahl said.
Fahl believes that more bed and breakfasts that follow the planning commission’s recommendations would help the city’s image, but she disagrees on one recommendation that limited where bed and breakfast establishments could be in Athens.
That recommendation states that bed and breakfast establishments would be allowed in business districts, Uptown Athens, officially designated state or federal highways, Richland Avenue, East State Street, West Union Street, Stimson Avenue or Columbus Road. Previously they were not allowed on Stimson Avenue.
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