Overland Park is unlikely to make any further changes to city codes for short-term rentals like Airbnbs and VRBOs at this time.
Leslie Karr, the city’s planning manager, told the Overland Park City Council Community Development Committee on Wednesday that the current situation with short-term rentals in the city is “manageable.”
With that in mind, city staff is recommending Overland Park maintain the status quo for now but plan to continue monitoring the situation around short-term rentals for the foreseeable future.
Councilmembers on the committee seemed content to leave things as they for the time being, provided there be more discussion down the line, particularly as the greater Kansas City area prepares to host the 2026 World Cup.
A deadly shooting spurred past short-term rental discussions
- Following a fatal shooting at a short-term rental in southern Overland Park in early 2022, the city began to discuss placing new limits on properties used as temporary vacation residences and eventually sent out a community survey.
- Then, in fall 2022, Overland Park adopted a nuisance party ordinance.
- The new ordinance identifies specific party-related behaviors that are punishable in city code.
- It also provides more enforcement mechanisms to punish individuals who are found in violation as well as homeowners who own the property where the conduct occurs, specifically targeting repeat offenders.
- Deputy Police Chief Eric Houston said the ordinance isn’t just for short-term rentals, but any party at any private residence.
- Karr said there have been five calls related to the party ordinance, none of which have resulted in “enforcement activity.”
Overland Park has roughly 200 short-term rentals
Overland Park has 204 single-family homes that have been used as short-term rentals between February 2022 and February 2024, according to data gathered by the contractor Granicus.
The majority of those short-term rental properties were already registered as a rental property, Karr said, meaning they were in compliance with the city’s existing rules for rentals. An additional 33 have since registered, and 13 are no longer used as short-term rentals. Karr said city staff is “still working with the others to get them registered.”
Plus, staff found that while short-term rentals generate a higher proportion of calls for service to the Overland Park Police Department, they still amount to less than .5% of all calls for service, according to the staff report.
Similarly, though the city receives a higher proportion of code-related complaints about short-term rentals, it amounts to roughly 2% of all complaints.
“It is our analysis that short-term rentals are not significantly impacting city services,” Karr said. “We have been successful in monitoring and getting compliance when those issues pop up.”
Additionally, Karr said city staff determined that more than half of the short-term rentals in Overland Park are owner-occupied, which means the primary property owner is residing on the premises some or all of the time.
Councilmember said data changed his mind about short-term rentals
- During the discussion Wednesday, Councilmember Drew Mitrisin said he “came into this conversation very, very against short-term rentals.”
- Before, he said he assumed the bulk of these properties listed on sites like AirBnB and VRBO weren’t owned by people who lived in them, but outside entities and owners. The city’s data suggests that isn’t the case.
- So, he said the data presented to the committee “clarified a lot of information for me and corrected some misnomers I had.”
- Still, Mitrisin and the other members of the committee are keen to keep an eye on short-term rentals in case they start to become a more widespread problem — for instance causing more nuisances or taking up a larger proportion of the city’s more attainable housing stock.
Keep reading: Shawnee sets new limits on short-term rentals like AirBnbs
