Home Sweet B&B: With rise in vacay rentals, some fear loss of neighborhoods

For Wayne Mills, a retired operations manager for a Dallas-based aviation company, East Bridge Street near the Granbury Square doesn’t feel the same as it did when he moved here from Fort Worth 10 years ago.

A lot of his neighbors are gone, he said, because half the homes are now being used as short-term rentals for tourists. From one day to the next, Mills, who used to recognize his neighbors and knew their vehicles, has no idea who he will see or encounter.

“That was one of the things that really attracted me to Granbury, was knowing the people on my street, knowing who lived around me,” he said. “When I lived in Fort Worth, I didn’t have that same sense of community and neighborhood that I found when I moved here to Granbury.”

Mills’ stretch of East Bridge Street, within easy walking distance of the square, has proven to be a prime location for homes being used for business purposes.

“Where’s the balance?” he posed about residential versus commercial zoning. “At what point do we stop being a residential neighborhood?”

What’s happening to Mills is happening to others who live within the city’s historic district as Granbury’s tourism industry continues to blossom and the square becomes a draw for nighttime entertainment.

With the growth of Airbnb, Vrbo and other online marketplace rental sites, an increasing number of property owners are cashing in on tourism by renting out rooms.

Property owners aren’t the only ones who benefit from short-term rentals, or STRs. The city does, too, and so do local businesses where visitors spend money.

Those who rent out rooms are required to pay Hotel Occupancy Taxes, and the city reinvests those dollars in promoting tourism. Under the law, the city can use the money to fund special events or to finance such amenities as City Beach Park and the Moments in Time Hike and Bike Trail, both of which are also popular with locals.

For three consecutive years, Granbury was named Best Historic Small Town in America in a contest sponsored by USA Today. Despite COVID-19, in Fiscal Year 2020-2021 the city collected $920,366 in Hotel Occupancy Taxes — an all-time high, according to City Manager Chris Coffman.

Granbury boasts a collective total of 655 hotel and bed and breakfast rooms, and another 183 rooms are currently available through STRs, according to Visit Granbury Director Tammy Dooley.

She said that STRs are increasing at a rate of between two to eight per month.

Since 2016, the Granbury City Council has considered 53 Specific Use Permit requests or SUP renewal requests for bed and breakfast operations, most of them un-hosted, at single family residences. There might have been more such requests in 2020 and 2021, had the pandemic not been an issue.

Although the applications are considered on a case-by-case basis, the council approves them if they are in line with the city’s ordinance, which sets forth stipulations on such things as off-street parking.

SUPs are issued for a limited time, but they can be extended upon request. The council has the power to rescind them or to deny renewals if problems arise.

At the Jan. 4 regular City Council meeting, two such requests were on the agenda, one for a house on East Bridge and the other for a house on South Hannaford Street. Mills and four other Granbury residents showed up to ask the council to stop allowing so many STRs.

Some of them had also attended a council meeting a month earlier, on Dec. 7, and were among a cluster of homeowners who made the same request. At that meeting, an SUP was being requested for yet another un-hosted B&B on East Bridge Street.

At the December meeting, Pamela Brewster, who lives on Counts Alley near East Bridge, told the council that there seems to be “a new batch of strangers every few days” coming into her neighborhood.

“We are increasingly alarmed at the fast rate that our homes are being commercialized by un-hosted B&Bs for vacation rental properties,” she said.

Joyce Dorsey, 69, a resident of Turner Circle, spoke at the Jan. 4 meeting.

“As more and more bed-and-breakfasts are approved in our little area, we’re not going to be a neighborhood anymore,” she said.

Peter Garland, who, like Mills, lives on East Bridge Street, spoke at both meetings. A member of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, Garland indicated that approving one STR after another is “kind of how you boil a frog.”

In other words, by the time city officials realize that Granbury’s neighborhoods have been sacrificed for tourism, it might be too late.

For Granbury’s elected decision makers, there is no easy fix. That’s why the council, except for Mayor Jim Jarratt, voted to approve the SUP requests brought before them at the December and January meetings, just as they had collectively approved dozens and dozens of others.

Council members, and the city attorney who advises them, know that infringing on property rights poses its own dangers.

DRAPER V. CITY OF ARLINGTON

A case currently pending before the Texas Supreme Court will largely dictate how, or whether, the Granbury City Council changes course on short-term rentals.

The case involves a lawsuit filed against the city of Arlington by five property owners who say their rights were violated when the City Council voted in April 2019 to ban most short-term rentals throughout the city except for a one-mile radius around the Entertainment District.

Arlington is home to the Dallas Cowboys and the Texas Rangers. Its Entertainment District includes AT&T Stadium, Globe Life Field, two Six Flags theme parks and Arlington Backyard, a premier outdoor concert and festival venue.

Some in Arlington who opposed the restrictions on STRs formed a group called START — Short-Term Accommodations for Residents and Tourism.

But those who favored limitations formed groups, too, including Moms Against Short-Term Rentals and the Neighborhoods Are For Neighbors Coalition.

Last summer, the Second District Court of Appeals in Fort Worth upheld the city of Arlington’s regulations for STRs, but in September the case was sent to the Texas Supreme Court.

With the explosion of short-term rentals having turned into, as Dooley put it, a “national phenomenon,” it is probably safe to say that many people besides those who live in Arlington are anxiously waiting to hear what the Supreme Court has to say.

CASE STUDIES

Deborah Jeffrey’s parents built their waterfront house at 635 E. Bridge St. near Hewlett Park in 1978. She and her family live in Plano, but they visited Deborah’s parents many times before the couple passed away in 2015.

“Granbury in a sense has become a second home for us,” said Deborah’s husband, John. “We know the city well.”

Deborah and John now own the property on East Bridge. They want to someday give it to their son, John said, but in the meantime, they need to rent it out to cover taxes and insurance.

Over the past five years or so, the couple leased the home to tenants but now believe that short-term vacation rentals might be the best way to maintain the property.

“Renting it (long-term), people don’t take care of it as well,” John told the City Council at the Jan. 4 meeting where the agenda included his and Deborah’s request for an SUP.

Their situation isn’t much different from that of DeDe Litke, whose SUP request was on the Dec. 7 agenda.

Litke and her husband Rod live in Lipan, but want to operate the house they own on East Bridge Street as an un-hosted B&B. Their daughter Hannah Holmes addressed the City Council to assure city officials that the vacation rental will be watched over closely.

Holmes, a health care worker, said that she and her husband, Ben, assistant band director at Granbury Middle School, will serve as the B&B’s property managers. She said they have lived in their home on Turner Circle, just three houses east of the B&B, for six years.

Holmes said that she and her husband are “immersed in the community” and are involved with Preserve Granbury.

“We want to see the future thrive, and we also want to preserve the past,” she stated.

Like the Holmeses, Shelbie Miller-Gaddy’s own dedication to preserving Granbury’s history is part of what inspired her to open her un-hosted Heavenhill Guesthouse on East Bridge Street in 2012.

She said she feels that the STR industry might save some of Granbury’s historic homes from demolition. In her view, owners of STRs are likely to keep their properties well maintained because they don’t want negative online reviews.

“That means (owners) are going to be sticking around,” she said of the investment. “There’s going to be money put back into (the homes).”

She continued, “It takes a lot of money just to maintain an old house. Heavenhill was built in the 1890s, and I’m constantly maintaining it. If it were not for renting it out and receiving income from tourists, it would just be the biggest money pit. I love it so much and I’m just so grateful that I have the opportunity to lease it out to be able to maintain it.”

Miller-Gaddy’s mother bought the house when Miller-Gaddy was a teenager. The two worked together to restore it.

From that point on, Miller-Gaddy loved all things vintage. Her passion for Heavenhill, which she said she will never sell, led to her earning a bachelor’s degree in interior design with a minor in architecture. Like the Holmeses, she has served on the board of Preserve Granbury.

Miller-Gaddy said she has no concerns about competition from the growing number of STRs. She knows that while some visitors prefer to stay in more modern digs, there are plenty of others who love the charm of Heavenhill, with its farmhouse sink and its 1940’s-era gas stove.

“Every property,” Miller-Gaddy said of Granbury’s historic district, “is unique.”

WILLING TO ACT

City Council members have expressed empathy for those concerned about their neighborhoods and have indicated a willingness to consider changes to how STRs are handled. A lot will depend on what happens with the Arlington case.

At the Jan. 4 council meeting, Councilman Greg Corrigan asked that city staff begin reviewing SUP processes.

City Attorney Jeremy SoRelle said that residential-versus-commercial disagreements regarding vacation rentals aren’t just affecting Granbury and that “there is a lot of litigation” around the issue.

“This is truly a tough one,” Councilwoman Trish Reiner said. “Where do we balance property rights with the tourism industry?”

While city officials await direction from the Texas Supreme Court, they might take comfort in the fact that, so far at least, visitors staying at STRs have not been causing trouble, either through violations of the city’s noise ordinance or any other infractions that might raise concerns.

Police Chief Mitch Galvan said that his department doesn’t even know which houses are private residences and which have been approved as un-hosted B&Bs.

“We haven’t been inundated with calls (involving STRs) in any way, shape or form,” he said.