The Aspen City Council has recommended maintaining existing caps for short-term rental permits that were established when the city adopted sprawling STR regulations in 2022.
Council members agreed to maintain current caps for STR-Classic permits, or STR-C, in the residential/multifamily zone district, which encapsulates much of the east end of town and portions of the neighborhood near the S-curves, during a work session on Monday. The caps on STR-C permits were set in 2022 to be 75% of the number of STRs that existed at that time in each zone; 190 STR-C permits are allowed in the residential/multifamily zone district, the most of any district with a cap on permits.
Community development staff presented three options to council: increase the cap and issue an additional 54 permits to people on a waitlist for STRs in the residential/multifamily zone district; “spot zone” in those districts to address the long waitlist at certain properties; or remove caps in that zone district altogether. City staff administering the STR program recommended against making changes to the zone district’s permit cap, but presented the options in response to a request from city council during a February work session about the program.
Councilman Bill Guth was in favor of potential updates to the zone districts to address what he said were inequities between residences often made for short-term renting, like condominiums, but which may be subject to different STR permit caps based on their zone districts. Condominiums in the commercial core are not subject to caps, while condominiums in the residential/multifamily zone district are.
Other council members did not signify support for exploring what those changes to the city’s zone districts would look like.
“The fact that (those condominiums) are already somewhat mixed use between long-term rental residents and some short-term, it’s already kind of a lot in those buildings, and so I just don’t see really trying to change the boundary of the code,” said Mayor Rachel Richards. “I had thought a lot about that — should it just be simpler to just pull this one building into the lodging district or something like that — but I think you then start a domino effect of … why don’t you change the code for (other) areas too?”
The cap on STR-C permits in the residential/multifamily zone district is 190. When city council passed the STR regulations in October 2022, that zone had 254 active permits, and city staff anticipated it would reach 190 permits through attrition as the program continued.
Since 2022, 62 permits in the residential/multifamily zone district have not been renewed or relinquished through the sale of a property (STR permits cannot be transferred). Aspen Lodging and Commercial Core Program Manager Emmy Oliver anticipates that after the permit renewal process at the end of the year, the number of permits in the residential/multifamily zone district will fall below 190, giving those on the waitlist a chance to obtain a permit for the first time since the program was implemented.
Some zones with STR-C permit caps are below their caps and don’t have waitlists. Councilman Sam Rose suggested adjusting caps by zone district to allow more STR-C permits in more popular zones and lower caps in zones that aren’t using every allotted permit.
About 31% of the 3,600 free market residential units in the city are being used as short-term rentals — 1,413 of those units are in the residential/multifamily zone district, or about 13.5%, Oliver said. A majority of those units are STR-C permits.
“[The residential/multifamily zone district] is intended first, for long-term rentals, and second, for short-term rentals,” she said. “What makes it stand out among the other zones is that it encourages high density and has quite a few multi-family buildings that have been used as short-term rentals for many years.”
Proposed changes to permit caps were part of a larger conversation at the council table during two work sessions this year to update the STR program.
In June, council members agreed to a slew of recommendations to update the program and streamline some administrative processes that hadn’t been updated since the regulations were first approved in 2022. Council members agreed to allow exemptions from tax-filing requirements for properties that are under construction, eliminate annual homeowner association affidavits for existing permits, update the permit transferability regulations and more.
The STR program was developed in 2022 to address an influx of STRs in the community. Council enacted an STR moratorium in fall 2021 to halt the growth of STRs and allow city staff to develop a program to regulate them.
“It was difficult going through that (moratorium) actually, but I’m glad we did,” said Councilman John Doyle, who was part of the council that enacted the moratorium. “It seems like that work is functioning just as we intended with the outcomes we desire.”
