Everton Bailey Jr.
The Dallas Morning News (TNS)
A state appeals court says Dallas can’t enforce a ban limiting where short-term rentals listed on platforms like Airbnb can operate in the city.
The ruling Friday means Dallas is 0-for-2 on legal challenges to regulations approved by the City Council in June 2023, which include banning short-term rentals in neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes. The higher court decision upholds a Dallas District Court judge’s December 2023 approval of a temporary injunction requested by a group of local short-term rental operators who sued the city over the ban.
They argued the regulations were unconstitutional because they infringed on property owners’ rights and illegally discriminated against them.
Senior Justice Yvonne Rodriguez from the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas wrote the city couldn’t prove the lower court was wrong in its decision and there was enough evidence to find “that without injunctive relief, appellees would suffer probable, imminent, and irreparable injury to their vested property rights.”
The city can challenge the appeals court ruling to the Texas Supreme Court.
Nick Starling, a city spokesman, declined comment on behalf of the city attorney’s office Monday on the next steps, citing the ongoing litigation.
Lisa Sievers, a short-term rental operator and board member of the nonprofit group suing the city, said the group is happy to continue operating under the injunction. She added that the operators the group represents would support stricter rules on registration, noise, parking, occupancy and other mandates as long as they don’t include zoning restrictions.
“Our goal has always been to sit down with the city of Dallas and get a fair and reasonable ordinance passed,” Sievers said. “We worked for several years on three different city of Dallas STR task forces to craft a good registration ordinance.”
The Dallas City Council approved changing zoning rules in June 2023 to ban short-term rentals from operating in single-family neighborhoods, allow only one rental in a single unit and require off-street parking. The council also approved changing the city code to make it mandatory for properties to register annually, pay related fees and taxes, adhere to occupancy and noise limits and have someone on file who can respond to the property within one hour to address any emergency concerns.
The city previously had no rules in place to penalize bad operators. Property owners were supposed to register, but there were no consequences for not doing so. The owners were required to collect taxes from their guests, report monthly and pay the tax to the city. Dallas officials also don’t know exactly how many short-term rentals operate in the city.
The stricter rules followed debates since at least 2020 on how the city should regulate short-term rentals. Residents complained for years about the lack of city intervention to address the spread of rentals in neighborhoods mostly made up of single-family homes. Some of the properties have been linked to gun violence, trash, noise and other quality of life concerns.
Many Dallas short-term rental property owners and hosts said they favored more city regulations but rejected being banned from residential areas. They said they were concerned the new rules would be too heavy-handed and would mostly impact operators who have no complaints and use the platforms as a main source of income.
Dallas code compliance officials told council members in November the city was aware of 3,495 active short-term rental properties, but there could be many more they weren’t aware of. They said the city budgeted more than $1.3 million to establish a new enforcement team that has been put on pause because of the legal injunction. City leaders estimate spending more than $931,000 annually.
City officials said workers who were supposed to be dedicated to enforcement have been reassigned to other areas, such as inspecting single- and multi-family rental properties.
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©2025 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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Tags: airbnb, Dallas, rentals, short term rental, Small Business
