Short-Term Rental Owners Suing Clark County Say Their Property Rights Are Being Violated
LAS VEGAS, NV – An injunction hearing scheduled for this past Thursday regarding a lawsuit filed by a group of short-term rental owners that alleges that Clark County is violating their property rights has been delayed for December 19, further drawing out the legal process that had originally begun when the case was filed this past August.
The lawsuit, brought by the Greater Las Vegas Short-Term Rental Association (GLVSTRA), is seeking to temporarily block a law set into place in the form of a Nevada legislature bill known as AB 363, which added new ordinances in June regulating short term rentals in the state. In turn, unincorporated Clark County was subsequently tasked with handling oversight of the industry within its borders, and were mandated to create their own set of regulations.
GLVSTRA founder Jackie Flores said that the new ordinances – both on a local and state level – clearly infringe upon the rights of property owners who wish to rent out their residences via services such as Airbnb and Vrbo.
“Our position is that both the state law and the Clark County ordinance just goes too far where it’s actually violating people’s constitutional rights and freedoms,” Flores said. “AB 363 makes it hard for people to get a license and once you get a license, it makes it easy for people to get in trouble for minimal things.”
Some of the contested regulations created by Clark County officials include no more than 10 people in a property, minimum two-night stay reservations, rentals being no closer than 1,000 feet one another, and no-warning, on-the-spot county inspections, among others, Flores said.
“They have a provision in the ordinance that says any Count Official can come to your private home at any time whenever they feel like it and for whatever they want and you have to let them in your property,” she said. “You have to let them in your house and we felt like that was like you’re going way too far.”
Flores added that the cities of Henderson, Las Vegas, and North Las Vegas offered compliance periods right after their respective ordinances were passed, but that Clark County did not follow suit.
In addition, the application process being offered to get licensed – including an upcoming permit lottery – is overly convoluted and cumbersome, Flores claimed, and will likely result in as many as 80 percent of the over 12,000 illegal short-term rentals in Clark County not being able to legitimize themselves.
“Right now they have a pre-application period of six months,” she said. “That period is just really you pre-applying but nothing really happening, and then after those six months then they’ll have at some point in time they still don’t know when a lottery then you move onto the next step which is application to the license.”
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