Local Government Regulation Sound Like Discrimination

[Cassandra-And-Robert0]

I live in a remote tourist destination in CO. Our local policy-makers are trying to create some strange new regulations for short-term rentals that sound discriminatory. Here is an excerpt from a recent report:

"Meeting the intent of a Vacation Rental within a residential zone requires additional management requirements and full notification and acceptance by the renter. The intent of renting a residental home is to have a quite (sic) home for a family, for a weeklong stay...It was not intended to be short-term housing for multiple individuals that are not related."

When I read this it appears that we are being requested to make sure that all renters are "related". Define 'family'. Define 'related'. I am concerend about the people in realtionships who may not be legally allowed to get married. I am concerned about people with disabiltities that have a non-related care-taker who travels with them. I can think of so many scenarios in which our policy-makers are asking us to discriminate against people in regards to economic status, sex, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, mental illness or ability, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity/expression, sex charachteristics, religion, or creed. 

I am really curious what the Airbnb community has to say. 

[John1027]

As you probably realize, the goal of city leaders when they write this language is to maintain "community standards" which is reasonable. They want to avoid traffic issues or hosts creating other "public niusances" for their neighbors, like wild parties that you might expect from partying College students. If you are confident that you can control the behavior of your guests (which the Airbnb rating system supports) then you can probably safely host guests under the radar without checking family statuses.

I suggest you look at the ordinance for the penalty. Odds are, if a nosy neighbor "outs" you, but there are no other complaints, you will not likely face anything other than an inquiry by a city clerk that you can make to go away. I cannot imagine any penalty higher than asking you to cease hosting unrelated people going forward.

If you really think there is a more ugly, discriminatory intent, there are an infinite number of public interest law firms (certainly some in CO) that may want to challenge the ordinance. City ordinances are not like Congressional laws written by teams of attorneys and lobbyists. They usually have a local attorney tapped to be the city attorney part time. As they practice their art trying to satisfy the creative whims of the elected officials they serve, they often get sloppy and write ordinances that get struck down by courts. Do not be intimidated if you think they are wrong.