Fireworks at the Village of Empire monthly workshop meeting lit up the room as council, committee, and community members sparred over possible regulations regarding Short-Term Rentals (STRs) Thursday, May 9.
“Since this whole short-term rental thing has started, there’s been nothing but pure contention and fighting between neighbor and neighbor about this,” Tina Dunphey said in a public comment. “This is such a hot mess. I was born and raised here ... I have never, ever, ever witnessed anything so incredibly destructive to the community as this topic alone.”
All sides were displayed on the fiery night that led to more questions than it solved as Empire continues the STR debate.
“An ordinance isn’t necessary for a village 1-square mile. If we were Frankfort or Glen Arbor, Traverse City, et cetera, there may be some need for that ... The argument that this ruins the sense of community is baloney. Most of us found out about this place by coming up and renting at one point or another or visiting relatives that had a place here,” Empire resident Karen Baja said.
Barbara Ludlow had this in response: “I don’t understand how you can say one square mile. There are 17% of our homes that are short-term rentals and that is going to go up exponentially as it has in every coastal community in this state ... I don’t know if I’m supposed to call the zoning people to disband the 50-person party next to me,” she said. “We have to make regulations, registration. We have to make sure we have good boundaries so we can be good neighbors to one another ... We lived through a nightmare in Saugatuck where a village of 900 became over 50% short-term rental and hollowed out that community.”
Ultimately, the STR committee of March Dye, Meg Walton, Carey Ford, and Bob Chase were unable to come to an agreement on a single ordinance by the deadline of May 1. They did commit to meet again this month with the possibility of bringing recommendations to the council to consider in June.
The committee has been working on refining language for registration, licensing, and regulation of short-term rentals in the village across 11 meetings from January through April after being created in November 2023. “We do understand that short term rentals do contribute to life here. However ... This (possible ordinance) does not address the abundance of STR in our village. We hope that the council will adopt an ordinance that will regulate and restrict the growth of the number of STR in order to preserve the sense of community that we have here and that we particularly enjoy,” Empire resident Steve Young said in a public comment.
On November 9, 2023, Empire established a committee to draft a registration ordinance and any other forms that may be necessary to implement a Short-Term Rental Ordinance.
During an April 9 committee meeting, Ford stated that the committee had overstepped in creating a registration ordinance and various forms. At an April 25 meeting, Chase and Ford decided they did not want to proceed with the ordinance the committee had been developing. It was decided that Ford and Chase would come up with an ordinance for registration only, and Walton and Dye would continue with an ordinance requiring licensing to fulfill a commitment made to the council for the May 9 meeting.
“This ordinance is for data gathering and to understand how many of the STRs are currently in place, as well as to understand how many of the property owners would like to have the option of using a property in this manner,” Ford said.
Empire is made up of full-time (Homestead) and seasonal (Non-Homestead) property owners. According to the data collected for the 2023 STR Council Report presented in November: 147 were full-time; seasonal, 131; long term rental, 22; and 63 short term rental units.
According to figures gathered by village officials, 17% of Empire’s roughly 350 homes are STRs, although this figure was widely debated during the 3-hour marathon meeting. Roughly 6.4% is the average of STRs in Leelanau communities, according to report gathered by Empire that was originally from Suttons Bay.
“STR owners in Empire are not investors interested in cashing in. They are property owners that see the opportunity to recoup some of their own costs,” Ford said in a prepared statement called ‘Proposal 1.’ “They are families that have owned property and now are faced with trying to hold onto it. They are young families that are buying or building with the aspiration of providing a lifetime experience for their children.”
Ford continued that STR owners pay 40% higher taxes, and there is no correlation between property market values and increased regulation of STRs.
There have been several Michigan Appeals Court Rulings, but there is no current legislation that defines STR as a commercial enterprise.
“Meg and myself believe in an ordinance to register license and regulate short-term rentals in the village is needed based on the rising numbers of short term rentals,” Dye said. “All existing short-term rentals would be given the opportunity to receive a license through this ordinance.”
Proposed rules Dye and Walton want in an ordinance include: STRs must have a local contact person that will respond to emergencies and nuisances within 45 minutes; create a onepage instruction sheet to be posted in each rental unit that highlights village services guidelines and renter responsibilities; provide a structured fee system for owners to register short-term rentals within a range of $100 to $200 annually and make the registry easy to complete with no inspections required.
“What we decided was based on the recommendations from the original short-term rental committee, the growth that has occurred in four years, which is a 28% growth that’s occurred in the four years since they did this original report. In fact, my 28% was based on a number that was last year in 2023. We probably have a few more give or take since then,” Walton said. “We’re not talking about prohibiting them, we’re just talking about limiting the growth and being more selective about how we’re going to manage this going forward. I think it would be a little bit outrageous for me knowing the figures of over a million visitors to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, that all of a sudden they’re gonna stop visiting us because we’ve began to limit.”
The committee has researched the communities of Benzonia, Elberta, Elmwood Township, Long Lake Township, Frankfort, Suttons Bay, and dozens of other communities down the state’s west coast regarding STRS.
“Our approach covers a commercial activity in all zoning districts with a cap of 12% of housing stock computed each year by August 31st. And 12% is double the amount of an illegal municipality that regulate STRs the front street quarter and M 22 zone would not be subject to the 12% gap, but they would be required to obtain a license in the first year of 2025,” Walton said. “I got to tell you, we aren’t necessarily going to come to an agreement and we might have to just turn it over to an attorney and say ‘What is legally workable for this community and why can we live in, ‘cause otherwise, unless we wanna put a referendum and go through a vote in this community. I don’t know what else to do.”
Committee members said they’d like to have some regulations in place by the end of October, ready for the 2025 calendar year.
