You’ll know by Wednesday about the future of the Airbnb on your block. After four years of studies, City Hall is ready to act. Council will vote on whether to regulate and tax these operations or zone them out of residential neighborhoods.

On Wednesday, Council learned its options during a briefing. The city can choose to enact regulations and collect fees and taxes from operators. Or it can follow the recommendation of the City Plan Commission to make those rentals illegal in single-family neighborhoods.

The city would use zoning as a cudgel: categorize STRs as businesses similar to hotels. But the folks responsible for the real work—city staff—don’t seem confident that they’ll be able to enforce a broad ban by way of zoning. Regulations would give the city a mechanism to control the bad actors while collecting revenue for the city, they argued.

“I worry that … we’re adding regulations within the zoning ordinance that are going to either create confusion or inefficiencies with the enforcement piece,” said Julia Ryan, the city’s director of planning and urban design.

Regulating short-term rentals would give the city control over where they can operate, how close they can be to one another, and whatever other enforcement mechanisms it can come up with to try to control how people rent them. 

The entire debate over STRs highlights the difficulty municipal governments are having as they try to contain the rapid ascension of the sharing economy. Councilman Omar Narvaez compared the short-term rental issue to the scooter mess from a few years ago, when, he said, the operators “would make all these empty promises” that led the City Council to ban them. But scooters can be picked up and removed. Homes are here to stay, and regulating how their owners use them is difficult.

City Manager T.C. Broadnax said that staff would spend the next few days crafting a recommendation, which Council could choose to support or ignore. It seems like they will advocate for coming up with a series of regulations and fines rather than an outright ban.

That won’t go over well with some of those who have spent years organizing to zone these out of existence under the banner of “Homes Not Hotels.” They believe the issue goes beyond party houses; they don’t want short-term rentals near them at all, whether they’ve had dozens of 911 calls or none.

But it’s clear the city believes a ban doesn’t come with a way to enforce it, while regulations give Dallas a chance to contain them. What do you think? Shoot me an email.