Rental regs vs reality

The question about to be posed to specific neighborhoods in Ocean Pines is whether their property owners are willing to include OPA short-term rental regulations in their declarations of restrictions.

This follows the vote last week by the board of directors to give the association the authority to act on complaints about noise, litter and parking problems that sometimes occur at housing units used as weekly vacation rentals.

How neighborhoods react to this proposition ought to be interesting, since the board’s plan to reduce unruly behavior at these locations still lacks a detailed explanation of how it intends to get the job done.

So far, all the board has agreed to do is to add the county government’s short-term rental rules to the association’s governing documents, so it can enforce these restrictions if the county does not.

In other words, the unknowns far outweigh the facts that neighborhoods will be asked to consider. Chief among these uncertainties is the matter of enforcement. That continues to be problem in the county and Ocean City, both of which have yet to come up with a truly effective and constitutionally acceptable way to deal with disruptive, but not illegal, behavior by disrespectful vacationers.

The rapid increase in the number of property owners working through online brokers such as VRBO and Airbnb has outstripped the ability of communities to monitor the situation.

Further, any action by the authorities depends on complaints filed by neighboring property owners, whose reports of violations often come in after the fact.

Neither the county nor Ocean City want to end up in court by penalizing a property owner on the basis of a citizen complaint that’s not been verified by someone in authority. Instead, these entities do the best they can with what they have.

Although short-term rental regulations attempt to address a real problem, they can’t, for constitutional reasons, exercise substantial control. There’s nothing wrong with what the directors are trying to do, but it remains to be seen if their approach will accomplish what the county and Ocean City have not been able to do so far.