Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Housing Policy topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Whitestown debates rental-registration updates; councilors push to remove tenant names and note state limits on fees
Summary
Council heard first reading of an update to the town’s rental registration and inspection ordinance. Councilors asked staff to remove tenant names from forms for privacy, confirmed a $5 statutory cap on the annual registration fee, and noted that short-term rentals (Airbnb) are not currently regulated under existing local code.
The Whitestown Town Council on May 14 took up a first reading of an ordinance that would update the town’s rental registration and inspection program, which covers single-family homes converted to rentals and requires registration and turnover safety inspections.
Town staff said the proposed changes largely clean up language and process items in the decade-old ordinance. The program includes annual registration, an initial inspection and periodic inspections at tenant turnover; inspections focus on basic life-safety systems such as heating, hot water, windows and electrical safety. "The document that you have there, the red essentially shows the new text that's being added," staff said.
Council members raised privacy concerns about collecting tenant names on registration forms; a council member suggested removing the tenant-name field while retaining owner- or owner-representative contact information. Staff said tenant names had been part of the original ordinance and that removing that field would be acceptable. Councilors also asked about the $5 annual registration fee; staff and legal counsel said the legislature limited local fee authority in recent state action and that $5 is the statutorily permissible amount for that registration fee. The council discussed whether older grace-period language should be removed from the ordinance; staff suggested the earlier grace provision might no longer be necessary.
Members asked whether the ordinance covers short-term rentals. Staff said the rental-registration update does not regulate Airbnbs or other short-term-transient rentals under the town’s current UDO (Unified Development Ordinance) and that state law enacted in 2017–2018 constrains local regulation of short-term rentals unless local regulation pre-dates January 1, 2018. Staff suggested the town should update the UDO separately if council wants to take a different approach to short-term rentals and noted the town currently does not have the staffing capacity to enforce a broader short-term rental regime.
The item is at first reading; no final vote occurred. Council directed staff to refine the draft to remove tenant-name collection and to bring back a clean ordinance for a second reading.
