The maps spread on the table at the plan commission meeting told a story, or at least part of one.
About 200 tourist homes, each surrounded by a quarter-mile buffer on all sides, dot the parts of the county not already claimed by the state or federal government or church camps.
Many of them are concentrated in and around Nashville, Helmsburg or Gatesville; they’re more sparse in more remote areas like Van Buren Township and, strangely, the Cordry-Sweetwater lakes community.
The Brown County Area Plan Commission had asked for the maps in the midst of a July discussion about possibly limiting tourist homes. Some members were concerned that their popularity was crowding Brown Countians out of the home buying or long-term rental markets.
At the Aug. 28 plan commission meeting, people associated with those tourist homes shared concerns, too. The tourist home industry provides jobs and additional tax money, they said. They weren’t sure if limiting the number of future tourist homes would fix the affordable housing problem.
After studying the maps at their August meeting and hearing from audience members, the plan commission didn’t make any decisions yet. They plan to gather more data and comments at their Sept. 25 meeting.
The maps
One way the plan commission could limit the number of new tourist homes coming off the full-time housing market and into the overnight market would be to increase the buffer zone around them. The buffer is the area around the home in which no other tourist homes can be established.
Plan commission member Jane Gore had suggested the process be given another look. She’s also on the Brown County Board of Zoning Appeals, which controls who gets tourist home permits. Nearly every month, at least one application goes before the zoning board, and usually, they are approved.
The maps at the Aug. 28 meeting showed four different scenarios: Keeping the current quarter-mile buffer around each tourist home, or expanding that buffer to three-eighths of a mile, a half-mile or three-quarters of a mile.
The number of active tourist homes in Brown County is actually 184, not around 280 as was reported during the July plan commission meeting and a subsequent story about it. About 20 to 25 others have permits, but are not currently active tourist homes, said Planning Director Chris Ritzmann. All of those were on the maps the plan commission was studying, along with bed-and-breakfasts.
The idea behind having a buffer was probably to shield full-time resident neighbors from the activity at a tourist home, said members of zoning board. They ended up reviewing and denying an application for a new tourist home on Aug. 29, the day after this plan commission discussion. Its buffer was to be less than an eighth of a mile from the nearest home, which was another tourist home.
Home stays, where a home is permitted to have paying overnight guests if the owners also are staying there, were not plotted on the maps. Ritzmann estimated there are six to eight of those.
Also not showing on the maps the plan commission was studying was all the nontaxable land in Brown County that’s owned by government or nonprofit groups. It takes up more than half the county; only 48 percent of the total land here is taxable, said Brown County Surveyor and plan commission member Dave Harden.
Because of that limited land, and the amount of tourist homes already on the map, rule changes might not be needed, said audience member Clint Studabaker. Brown County might already be reaching its maximum density of tourist homes with the current quarter-mile buffer — if the zoning board adheres strictly to it, he said.
The fact that less than half of land in Brown County is taxable also means that there’s limited land to build on, period, said plan commission member Paul Navarro. He wanted to see where all the nontaxable land was on the map as well so that it was more clear where developments besides tourist homes could go, like affordable housing.
Harden planned to bring the updated maps to the September plan commission meeting. Ritzmann also planned to gather data about how many tourist homes are owned by out-of-county residents.
The problem?
Various board members and audience members had shared anecdotes at the July plan commission meeting about the county’s declining population and declining stock of long-term, affordable housing, starting around the time tourist homes became legal in the late ‘90s.
At the August meeting, plan commission member Deborah Bartes challenged the notion that one could contribute to the other. Declining population is “a fact of the Midwest and the Rust Belt,” she said.
Limiting new tourist homes is “not going to help affordable housing in any way, and in fact it would take income away from residents,” she later added.
Hills O’ Brown Vacation Rentals manages 120 Brown County tourist homes and employs about 50 people full-time, said longtime General Manager Patty Frensemeier. Their average wage is about $15 per hour, she said.
Andy Szakaly, an attorney who has represented people seeking new tourist homes and used to own several motels himself, handed out a fact sheet about affordable housing in Brown County. It showed the average earnings per job ($28,285 in 2016), the median rent ($650 per month plus utilities), the median value of homes sold last year ($171,600), and mortgage on a home at the median value ($820 per month), as well as other details.
“Is this saying that the majority of the workers in this county couldn’t afford to buy a home at median price?” Gore asked.
“They can’t,” Szakaly answered.
He also calculated the average sales price of tourist homes in the past year, which was $285,000. “I don’t think you’re going to get those tourist homes converted to affordable houses. … That’s not going to be an affordable house.”
Gore, a former real estate agent, had suggested at the July meeting that the price of tourist homes drive up prices for other homes on the market as well. At the August meeting, Frensemeier said that generally, the fact that a home is a permitted tourist home adds 10 percent onto the sales price.
In the past three to four years, about 10 tourist homes have been taken off the Hills O’Brown vacation rental market because the owners decided to convert them to a full-time residence, Frensemeier said.
Szakaly suggested that the county do something else to increase the affordable housing stock, such as supporting Habitat for Humanity. “We need to have affordable housing, and I think that’s going to mean concentrated duplexes,” he said.
Even if buying a home isn’t feasible for some residents, Davie Kean said tourist homes still have an effect on the market. It can be more profitable to rent a house out for a weekend than to a long-term tenant.
“I think it’s very difficult to find year-round rentals in this county,” Kean said.
Szakaly agreed that rentals are in short supply, whether they’re affordable or not.
According to his research, only 14 percent of housing units in Brown County are renter-occupied. One hundred eight families receive a rent subsidy, such as Section 8, with 39 more on the waiting list, his data said.
“I seriously think that that is an issue that needs to be addressed, like we said, like working closely with economic development to see about getting apartment housing built,” Bartes said. “But looking at this (limiting tourist homes), it is not going to change the picture for affordable housing. And trying to limit it would take away jobs from people, and I don’t think that is what we want to do.”
Resident Tim Clark brought up the increased property taxes that Brown County tourist homes pay, because they are not eligible for homestead deductions like primary residences are. Each pays an average of $4,000 in property taxes, adding up to about $736,000, according to Szakaly’s numbers.
Tourist homes also pay the 5-percent innkeepers tax, amounting to about $200,472 per year, Szakaly reported.
“I see them as a source of revenue,” Clark said. He suggested the planning commission revise its problem statement to “not enough affordable housing” instead of “too many tourist homes.”
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The Brown County Area Plan Commission plans to continue its discussion about tourist homes at the next APC meeting, set for 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 25 at the County Office Building.
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