PEORIA, Ill. — Peoria’s elected leaders continue wrangling over short term rentals. About 90% of them are operating without a license.
City Council took a step toward changing that Tuesday night, with two properties receiving special use permits, after initially being denied.
A city ordinance has been amended to allow short term rentals, as long as property owners follow city code and permits are approved for their particular addresses.
At-Large Councilwoman Beth Jensen voted against changing the ordinance.
“We’re not against short-term rentals, we just don’t want our neighborhoods saturated with them,” Jensen said.
Council members Chuck Grayeb and Denise Jackson also voted against changing the ordinance.
“When things go wrong, what’s our enforcement capability? We know our police enforcement is stretched thin,” Grayeb said.
Grayeb added, “We can’t even keep up with the code enforcement issues we have now.”
Meanwhile, At-Large Councilman Zach Oyler got fed up with disagreement around the horseshoe, saying the situation has “reached an absolutely unacceptable point.”
“If we want to continue to dig into this and come up with more solutions, we can do that, but, we need to start moving forward with what we told the public we were going to move forward with, months ago when we passed it,” Oyler said.
About 60 short-term rentals are up and running in Peoria without a license. If that were to continue, those home owners could eventually face citations, according to Community Development Director Joe Dulin.
A short term rental license costs $75. One of the rules in the ordinance is no more than 6 people are allowed in a rental property at a time.
Council also capped each neighborhood at no more than 3% of available homes being able to offer short term rentals.
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