Two per bedroom plus four is the root of most short-term rental problems. 

There’s been a lot of great personal opinion pieces submitted to the Summit Daily News regarding short-term rental licenses in Breckenridge. Personally, I believe we should be as busy as possible during the busy seasons with a managed approach to the issues. I also believe we need our offseason’s with no tourists as a time to recover, close or get away. 

I am on the fence as to being for or against the short-term rental cap. I’m not happy about having rented my in town unit to local workforce for the last 15 years for financial stability reasons. Now, I have no option to cash in on the huge short-term rental market due to the cap. Council, where’s my kickback for providing in town workforce housing all those years? Alternatively, I’m not happy when there are six college students staying in a one bedroom, one bath, 565 square foot unit with only one parking spot. 

One regulation causing the most problems is the capacity limits the town council has set. A three-bedroom unit is allowed to have 10 occupants, regardless of how many bathrooms, total square footage or parking spots. Many of our complexes were built in the 1970s and are small and lack adequate infrastructure to handle those numbers. You can easily see how this will lead to excessive burden placed on that neighborhood and throughout town. Parking, garbage, noise, water, sewage and other resources to name a few. Council, please adjust these capacity limits and limit the number of occupants based on those important additional factors.