Merriam is the latest Johnson County city to discuss short-term rentals like AirBnBs or Vrbos and how to potentially regulate them.
With city staff over the past year receiving questions and listening to concerns about short-term rentals from councilmembers, planning commissioners and residents alike, the city council decided to discuss the issue for the first time on Monday night.
Short-term rentals have become a hot topic in Johnson County, including in neighboring Shawnee, where the city council recently moved to ban short-term rentals in residential areas.
Other cities, including Overland Park and Prairie Village, have also talked about or prioritized short-term rentals as recent areas of focus.
The Merriam City Council on Monday took no formal action but plans to continue to monitor the topic.
There are a dozen known short-term rentals in Merriam
Merriam defines short-term rentals as an entire single-family home rented out to tenants on a short-term basis, during which the property owner is absent. This definition excludes short-term rentals that are a single room within a home.
Bryan Dyer, the city’s community development director, told the city council on Monday that there are currently 13 licensed short-term rentals that the city knows of in Merriam city limits.
While it is difficult to track short-term rentals, Dyer said, he knows there are a couple more short-term rentals that are coming on the market soon.
There are more than 3,000 single-family homes in Merriam and about 200 of those are rentals, Dyer said. Short-term rentals, then, account for less than 0.5% of all single-family homes in Merriam.
The highest concentration of short-term rentals — five of the known 13 addresses — are clustered in the area just north of Johnson Drive and east of Antioch Road, near the Merriam Town Center shopping center.
Dyer said other cities in the Kansas City metro are imposing buffer zones prohibiting new short-term rentals within 1,000 feet of an existing one.
No such limitations are on the books in Merriam, and the city council gave city staff no direction to move forward on such an ordinance.
Merriam already regulates short-term rentals to a degree
- Short-term rental owners are currently required to get a landlord license from the city of Merriam.
- The city also conducts an interior inspection every two years on short-term rentals, consistent with existing residential rental regulations.
- Dyer said city staff is knowledgeable enough to spot the difference between short-term rentals and more traditional rentals, which is how the city has tracked the 13 it knows of.
- In the past three years, there have been 15 total police calls associated with those 13 short-term rentals. Six were about loud music or parking, Dyer said.
- The main code offense associated with the short-term rentals is trash bins being left out, Dyer said.
The city council will keep monitoring short-term rentals
Councilmembers Chris Evans Hands and Staci Chivetta cautioned against over-regulating short-term rentals on Monday night.
Hands said she has family members who have been displaced due to mold for months, and she’s witnessed a need for short-term rentals that is “beyond looking for a party house.”
Chivetta, who lives in the neighborhood with the highest concentration of short-term rentals in Merriam, said she sees their value, too.
For residents with smaller homes, short-term rentals offer out-of-town guests a nearby place to stay, she said.
Councilmember Whitney Yadrich said it would behoove the city to stay ahead of the short-term rentals conversation given the 2026 World Cup is headed to Kansas City. Yadrich said formalizing a way to track short-term rentals seems like “a no-brainer.”
Ultimately, the city council agreed to continue to monitor the city’s short-term rental situation without taking any immediate action.
Next steps:
- Dyer said city staff can bring short-term rental reports to the city council more frequently.
- Additionally, Dyer said city staff can work with the city attorney to see if adding a “short-term rental” box to the current landlord license application is within the city’s rights.
Go deeper: Shawnee remains undecided on possible ban on AirBnBs
