Airbnb property owners in Dallas have cause for concern.
According to a report from WFAA-TV Channel 8, the Dallas City Council voted to ban short-term rentals (STRs) like Airbnb and Vrbo in areas with single-family zoning last month.
“You’re ignoring current zoning and abdicating responsibility,” Dom Thomas told the council. “No one is coming forward who lives next to an STR begging you to keep them around.”
“I want to thank the residents who have shown up,” Councilman Omar Narvaez said. “You haven’t given up. You’re fighting for your neighborhoods.”
The outlet reported that this decision could potentially affect around 1,000 STRs that are currently registered in single-family areas—if they continue to operate as STRs, penalties could be enforced beginning in December. WFAA also reported there are thousands of others across the city that are STRs, and could potentially face the same fate.
While a myriad of factors played into the banning decision that was four years in the making—including zoning and taxation—complaints about predatory Airbnb hosts that often operated the properties from other states, have become more pervasive among guests. Some took to social media to share their negative experiences.
The chatter reached such a fever pitch that Airbnb changed some of its policies to reflect an attempt to become more transparency about fee allotment and other egregious actions hosts had taken over the years.
As ESSENCE previously reported, the vacation rental company announced a new pricing feature that allows users to see all fees being charged upfront.
“What we’re asking hosts is to do a reasonable task, not ask for anything unreasonable,” Brian Chansky, the company’s leader said in a recent Yahoo interview. “We’re setting new guidelines. And anything a host requests, we want to make sure that’s up front stated so you know what you’re getting into before the booking. So I think the combination of showing an upfront price, showing better values up top, providing more discount tools for hosting, providing better deals and better– more guidelines to provide more reasonable checkout tasks, hopefully people will feel like this is an even more guest-friendly service to them.”