Eureka Springs OKs moratorium on B&B permits in residential areas

Eureka Springs has imposed a six-month moratorium on permits for new bed-and-breakfast inns in residential areas.

The tourist town has 37 B&Bs, with about 25 of those being in residential areas. Since Jan. 1, 2013, five permits have been issued for new B&Bs in the city, including two this year.

Alderman James DeVito made the moratorium proposal at Monday night's meeting of the Eureka Springs City Council. DeVito said B&Bs are displacing rental property in a town that already has a dearth of affordable housing.

"I'm not talking about low-income housing necessarily," DeVito told the Council. "I am concerned about the future of the community and the future of the community is about families.

"The fewer homes we have available in this community, the fewer families we're going to be having living here that support the tax base, that send kids to the schools, that shop at the local grocery stores, that frequent the restaurants in the community. When we lose the fabric of being a community, we lose probably one of the best draws we have about being Eureka Springs."

The moratorium gives the Council six months to study the topic.

DeVito has said he doesn't want Eureka Springs to become like Aspen, Colo., where workers have to be bused in because they can't afford to live there.

Alderman Mickey Schneider voted against DeVito's proposal.

"I do not understand cutting off B&Bs," Schneider said Tuesday. "It doesn't make any sense."

Schneider said people who stay in the city's B&Bs are "temporary locals," and Eureka Springs has always had a lot of those.

"They are like locals who go downtown and spend money," she said.

Alderman David Mitchell told the Council he understood the concerns of area residents.

"They want their residential area. They want the security. They want the environment," he said. "They don't want it necessarily overburdened with transient people in tourist lodging or B&Bs."

In Eureka Springs, "tourist lodging" refers to a place that's similar to a B&B but there's no owner or manager on site and no meal is provided to customers. A city ordinance has prohibited new tourist lodging in the city's Victorian residential zone since 2000.

Airbnb.com, a marketplace for B&B rentals, has made it easy for people to list property online, Mitchell said at Monday's meeting.

"What happened is that people saw the opportunity to rent a room in their house and stick it on Airbnb," he said. "But the only way to legitimately do that, legally -- although we had several people do it illegally obviously -- was to rush over and try and grab this B&B license because those have not been restricted. And that is a big concern."

Mitchell owns Heart of the Hills Inn, a Eureka Springs B&B.

DeVito's proposal passed 4-2, with Mayor Robert "Butch" Berry providing the fourth vote necessary to approve it.

Metro on 06/29/2016

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