Cleveland City Council members say they are tired of disruptive parties at homes booked through short-term rental websites. So they are reviving a dormant piece of legislation that would apply new rules to rentals offered through such platforms as Airbnb and Vrbo.
Council is expected to make changes to the legislation, which was introduced in 2024. Under the proposal as originally written, short-term rental owners or operators would need to obtain licenses from City Hall and pay the city’s 3% bed tax. They would have to follow city law against excessive noise, keep fire extinguishers on site, maintain liability insurance and obey other rules.
The city could fine or revoke the licenses of owners or operators who break the rules. The legislation also limits the number of rentals allowed in a single city block or apartment building.
“I’m no hypocrite. I’ve stayed in Airbnbs in my life,” one proponent, Ward 7 Council Member Austin Davis, told Signal Cleveland. “I’ve had a good time in these, but when there’s no regulation, bad actors ruin the party for all of us.”
The measure received a hearing in May 2025. Amendments are coming, Majority Leader Jasmin Santana said. Some council members met with attorneys from the city’s Law Department on Monday to talk about the legislation.
Santana said the legislation wasn’t meant to quash tourism, but instead to create standards for safety inspections and occupancy. License applications would be reviewed by city police, fire, building and health officials.
One of Santana’s major concerns was whether Cleveland has the wherewithal to add short-term rental enforcement to its already large list of regulatory duties.
“I hate to put legislation out there without being 100% sure that we have the capacity to enforce it,” she said in an interview.
Santana said that some of her colleagues want to ban short-term rentals. But that could lead to Cleveland facing lawsuits, she said. The chair of the Development, Planning and Sustainability Committee, Santana said a hearing on the measure is planned later this month.
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In February, a man was wounded in a shooting at what police said was an Airbnb rental party on Franklin Boulevard. (Airbnb said that it removed the account of the person who booked the rental.)
The shooting happened in Davis’ Near West Side ward. He said he would like problematic owners to face consequences from City Hall that apply to all the short-term rentals they own.
“If there’s a shooting at one property, that owner needs to feel something across the board,” Davis said. “If they’re an irresponsible owner, they have no business doing business in the city.”
A Signal Ohio review of news reports, police records and interviews identified at least two dozen parties in short-term rentals in the state that ended in shootings since 2017.
A spokesperson for Airbnb told Signal Cleveland that the company bans disruptive parties — which he called rare — conducts criminal background checks on U.S. guests and maintains a support line for neighbors.
“We take community safety seriously and have measures in place to help support responsible travel,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “Our hosts rely on short-term rental income to stay in their homes and afford the rising cost of living as Cuyahoga County property taxes are among the highest in the state, and by using Airbnb, hosts keep most of what a guest pays. We will continue to support everyday Ohioans’ right to share their homes and ability to earn supplemental income.”
For now, Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration isn’t staking out a yes-or-no position on the measure. Spokesperson Tyler Sinclair wrote to Signal Cleveland that the mayor’s office looked forward to “continuing discussions with council.”
Sinclair wrote that short-term rentals have helped residents pay their own bills and assisted in drawing large-scale events to town. He also acknowledged that the rentals have been used as party houses “and criminal activity has followed.”
“It’s therefore critical for us to find an appropriate balance that ensures those who own these properties are operating them responsibly and can be held accountable if they don’t,” he wrote.
