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Saturday, August 23, 2014

Public Hearing On Resort Rentals Brings Crowd To City Hall; Most Advise More Enforcement Needed

OCEAN CITY – A public hearing concerning issues coming with rentals in single-family and mobile home districts resulted in standing room only this week at City Hall with the majority of speakers asking the Planning and Zoning Commission to focus on enhancing the enforcement of existing rental regulations.

On Tuesday evening, the Planning and Zoning Commission held a public hearing to consider amending Ocean City’s Code in regards to R-1 Single Family Residential District and MH Mobile Home Residential District for the purpose of regulating short-term and long-term rentals to protect the character and compatibility of the districts as single-family neighborhoods.

The public hearing came on the heels of growing complaints over rental properties. According to the city, there are 3,845 parcels included in the R-1 and MH districts with 276 of those obtaining rental licenses. Between 2013 and now, there have been 67 complaints logged in those areas over 19 months. Only 13 properties received complaints, which is 4 percent of the total number of 276. The complaints received are primarily from residents of the Mallard Island subdivision.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

They better be careful what they wish for. I've heard several stories where the home owner then rents to year round tenants-on some kind of government rental assistance program and another where the house was rented by a private company contracted out by the government that used it for "transitional housing" for drug addicts. From what I remember the rent in the transitional housing case was phenomenal.

Anonymous said...


Cuz the world revolves around the Mallard Island owners.

That said, proper enforcement of existing regs about noise, behavior, parties, etc is still available.

New neighbor could move in and live there f/t and still act that way. What would be the options then?

And for the TV to follow this story? Must know the TV station owner.

Anonymous said...

Jarvis tried to get us to buy this house 30 years ago when he owned it. Our fear was that it was so close to the street and situated such that if the neighborhood ever did become vacation rentals cars would be going by it all night long.
We also thought the houses were way too close together, another potential renter-home owner occupied nightmare.

Anonymous said...

People are lucky to rent for a week. No one can truly afford to rent for a month or longer. Ocean city is gonna loose a lot of tourist.

Anonymous said...

The demise of OC is at hand if rentals are no longer.