Montrose resident Jason Ginsburg has been fighting alongside other Houstonians for over a year to protect longstanding neighborhoods from being overrun by party houses advertised on short-term rental platforms like Airbnb.
Sebastien Long hosts dozens of short-term apartment rentals for business travelers and cancer patients and hopes that regulations imposed by the city are not so costly and onerous that they put him out of business.
Neither side got exactly what they wanted when the Houston City Council adopted its first short-term rental ordinance on Wednesday, but Long said the regulations aren’t overly restrictive and it’s good to have some certainty so they can move on to the next phase, which is implementation. A registration process for operators who are not already in the city database starts August 1, and the ordinance goes into effect January 1, 2026.
“When a big city like Houston passes something, it sets an example. It’s important that big cities pass something that’s sensible and fair,” Long said. “This is better than other cities have passed but it can still be made better.”
Here’s what the ordinance does: Short-term rental operators are now required to pay an annual $275-per-unit registration fee, list an emergency contact who must respond to complaints within an hour and take a free training course on human and sex trafficking. Based on an amendment introduced last week, Houston can remove all short-term rentals from booking sites for a particular owner or operator if at least three of their registrations have already been revoked in a two-year period.
“We’re trying to narrowly tailor this to give the city some leverage,” Council Member Abbie Kamin said. “This is the first stab at this ordinance, and we’re trying to tread as lightly as possible while still addressing the concerns and needs of the city of Houston, so this is what was recommended to us.”
About 8,500 short-term rentals exist in the city limits and repeated complaints have been lodged against just 27, council members pointed out last week. While there’s been a lot of talk about creating a framework to restrict “bad actors” who operate party houses, some of the original restrictions appeared to target multifamily complexes. A proposal to cap the density of short-term rentals within a multifamily development, which could be as small as a triplex, was removed last week.
“It’s discriminatory language to say that one type of housing is worse,” Long said. “No one throws a party in a one-bedroom apartment. Party houses are usually big and they’ve got pools. We pushed back on that and to give them credit, they changed it.”
The per-unit fees also hurt operators like Long who have numerous listed apartment rentals, Long said.
When the ordinance came up at Wednesday’s council meeting, most of the discussion centered around whether owners or operators should be ultimately responsible for what occurs at a particular rental property. Council members debated and cleaned up the language to say the “owner and/or operator” is responsible for the certificate of registration. Other minor amendments were made to address concerns raised by hosts and neighbors.
But there are still some kinks to work out. While the City Council wants short-term rental hosts to ensure that their properties are safe, Council Member Letitia Plummer suggested that there’s a limit on what the city government can regulate.
“If I’m staying in a hotel and I pull out a gun on someone and I shoot them in the hotel, is [the hotel] responsible for me killing them?” she said.
“Accountability is the bottom line,” Mayor John Whitmire added.
Council Member Twila Carter supported the ordinance but said it has created another “layer of heavy lift” for the Administration and Regulatory Affairs Department and law enforcement.
“I think you need a … task team to address this … When it comes down to it, as reported, 834 calls were made to 149 out of 786 multifamily [short-term rentals]. There’s no record of citations being issued,” Carter said. “We’ve previously addressed all of this piece by piece, but we’ve really not enforced it. If this allows you, ARA, means of enforcement, God bless you and good luck. But I think if HPD couldn’t address the noise and the lewd, bad behavior, prostitution, human trafficking, shootings and all that, I don’t know that this solves the problem, but now I believe it’s your problem.”
Long said after Wednesday’s meeting that some multifamily properties that are being criticized as problem short-term rentals aren’t actually short-term rentals; they’re government-subsidized housing units that are rented to individuals for more than 30-day stays.
Ginsburg and others who are concerned about illegal activity and nuisances in single-family neighborhoods say the ordinance sets a solid framework but won’t be effective unless city leaders commit extensive police resources to enforcing it. It’s difficult to secure a conviction against an operator even if numerous complaints have been filed, Ginsburg has said. He could not immediately be reached for comment after Wednesday’s council meeting but provided the following statement by email Thursday morning:
“Houstonians Against Airbnb agrees with Council Member Carter that enforcing this ordinance will likely require divine intervention as the City of Houston has thus far proven incapable of providing the peace and quiet that its residents are lawfully entitled to. Here the Mayor and City Council have agreed to subsidize short-term rentals by committing public resources to monitor their guests while their owners sleep soundly miles away. It will be interesting to see how Mayor Whitmire, Council Member Ramirez, et al, adjust to their new jobs as night watchmen for Airbnb and VRBO.”
Elected officials appear to agree that the ordinance is far from perfect but it’s not due to a lack of effort. Council members Kamin, Plummer, Julian Martinez and Sallie Alcorn have worked with residents and operators for months, taken feedback and incorporated suggestions into the amended ordinance adopted this week.
Since 2019, Long’s Lodgeur has safely hosted more than 10,000 guests. Long said he’s working to establish a statewide trade association for responsible operators. If the goal is to eliminate party houses, the focus on multifamily properties is misguided, he added.
“We’re not party houses; we’re part of Houston’s hospitality and housing infrastructure,” he said at a council meeting on Tuesday. “We don’t want bad actors giving us a bad name. That’s why we support [the ordinance] in principle.”
Ramirez maintained his stance that enforcement is key to ensuring the ordinance is effective. He thanked stakeholders on all sides of the issue for their engagement.
“Part of the reason we’re at this point is that the city hasn’t been adequately enforcing its noise ordinance and other ordinances,” Ramirez said. “There are going to be a lot of people that aren’t satisfied with it entirely, but that’s the way the process works. This is not final; we can always amend it … We have to enforce this now. If we don’t take the steps necessary to enforce it, then people will still be unhappy.”
