After a shooting left 1 dead and 3 hurt in Columbia, calls are growing to rethink how short-term rentals affect neighborhood safety and oversight.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Neighbors are calling for a pause on issuing any short-term rental permits after a deadly shooting at a Columbia Airbnb left one dead and three injured Friday morning.
Police are still searching for the person who opened fire at a short-term rental in Columbia’s Elmwood Park neighborhood, killing one person and injuring three others.
The shooting happened at an Airbnb on the 2400 block of Lincoln Street, where Columbia Police say eight to ten young adults occupied the rental. Now, some neighbors are calling for a pause on short-term rental properties in residential areas.
John Wilkinson, president of the Elmwood Park Neighborhood Association, says short-term rentals make quiet neighborhoods unsafe.
“When you’ve got travelers coming through stable, steady communities, you have no idea who these people are, none,” Wilkinson said.
Under Columbia’s short-term rental ordinance, hosts must obtain a business license and a permit. But in response to growing concerns, the Columbia City Council is now considering a temporary moratorium on issuing new short-term rental permits, according to at-large City Councilwoman Aditi Bussells.
“Many of us are in support of a temporary moratorium on short-term rentals as we kind of discuss the changes that we already were looking at based on the ordinance that was passed a little over a year ago,” said Councilmember Aditi Bussells.
Bussells said council members want to evaluate how well the current ordinance is enforced and whether short-term rentals negatively affect neighborhoods.
“I’m not at the point yet where I can necessarily say that I have this concrete decision around these decisions in terms of, you know, restricting short-term rentals outright from every single residential area,” she said. “I do think that there’s a way potentially for them to coexist alongside, you know, some of our neighborhoods.”
Wilkinson disagrees. He believes the city should ban short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods altogether.
“Now there’s a new urgency to it. People are fearful, right? We still have no idea who’s going to be staying in the home next door to you tomorrow, right? So we share that frustration,” Wilkinson said.
City Council is expected to take up the moratorium proposal during its meeting on Tuesday.
Columbia Police say the gunman has not been identified but is considered armed and dangerous.
