On January 15, the Chapel Hill STR task force held its fourth meeting. This was supposed to be its final meeting, but the group did not finish its discussions and voted to have one additional session:
MARK YOUR CALENDARS
Final Task Force Meeting
February 5, 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm
The Chapel Hill Public Library, Meeting Room A
Important Reminders:
- Per advisory board rules, task force members and members of the public who attend the meetings must abide by non-attribution when reporting on the meetings, meaning we cannot attribute specific comments to specific people. The CHSTRA will uphold this rule. Therefore, the only way for members to get complete insight into meeting discussions with specific comments made is to attend the meetings.
- The task force is not writing an STR ordinance, only submitting recommendations to council. Town staff will draft an ordinance and the council will have the ultimate say after a public hearing process. Stay tuned for an updated timeline of critical events and milestones after the task force process is complete.
- The task force is focused on only dedicated STRs, or properties that never have a primary occupant. Town staff and council are discussing hosted/homeshare STRs and primary occupant STRs separately and have expressed that they are not considering banning these two STR types. However, some task force recommendations for dedicated STRs may influence requirements for the other groups, such as safety, occupancy tax, and registration.
Meeting 4 Recap
The group approved the minutes from the third meeting, available here.
Read our full recap of the STR task force meeting 3 >
The objective of the task force’s fourth meeting was to review and wrap up some unfinished discussions about health and safety from meeting 3 and then finalize a list of recommendations to provide to council.
To create a starting draft list of recommendations, the task force discussed several key areas of ordinance provisions to identify statements of general agreement. These statements are captured below. Please note the list below is only a working draft and that discussion on some of these items was tabled to revisit in the newly added fifth meeting.
What Happens Next
At the February 5 meeting, the task force will discuss the following to finalize its recommendations to council:
- Where/in what zoning districts dedicated STRs should or should not be permitted
- Safety Standards and Checklist
- Grandfathering existing dedicated STRs
- Whether, with all the provisions discussed, dedicated STRs should be an allowed use in Chapel Hill
There is not an option to have an additional task force meeting after this.
After the final meeting, the task force co-chairs will present the group’s recommendations and findings to the city council. Town staff will draft an ordinance with the assistance of the UNC School of Government, to be followed by a series of informational meetings, advisory board meetings, and public hearings. A revised timeline of these events will be posted on ChapelHillSTRA.org and the town website as they become available.
MEMBER ACTION ITEM
While the task force is focused on dedicated STRs, a resulting ordinance will eventually affect all hosts in Chapel Hill. The task force and our community as a whole has not heard nearly enough from all of the good, responsible hosts who are great neighbors doing amazing things for our town.
If you want to protect your right to rent, staying silent is not an option. Pull up a seat in the conversation by emailing your story to Anya Grahn at agrahn@townofchapelhill.org.