Ordinance Review Of City Of Wilmington On Short-Term Rentals

To: Professor LeAnn Nease Brown

From: Nik Reasor

February 1, 2023

Re: Memo 1; Ordinance Review of City of Wilmington on Short-Term Rentals

Introduction

Short-term rentals and their regulations are a topic of immense conversation currently, with cities across the nation crafting their own ordinances to attempt to limit the spread of short-term rentals. This is especially the case as short-term rentals become increasingly popular via companies such as Airbnb and Vrbo, which make short-term rentals easily accessible. However, cities' attempts to regulate rentals can become issues when they directly contradict protections afforded to individuals. This is not to say that no regulations exist within cities, but that ordinances must be crafted with

General Statute 160A-174, states “A city may by ordinance define, prohibit, regulate, or abate acts, omissions, or conditions, detrimental to the health, safety, or welfare of its citizens and the peace and dignity of the city, and may define and abate nuisances”. This in turn means that a city may regulate matters which it views as vital to maintaining the vague concepts of health, safety, welfare, peace, and dignity, and as such, create ordinances to assist the city in this regulation. This is the basis by which the City of Wilmington created its Code of Ordinances, which lays out the rules and regulations that define things like short-term rentals, as the city views these regulations as vital to maintaining the previously established vital

These standards do serve to regulate how and where short-term rentals operate within the City of Wilmington, however, this was a recently debated topic for the city in a court case part of the ordinances that require annual registration for