Jennifer Batchelder Polcyn, a vacation rental host and property manager in Montcalm County in Central Michigan, knows the power of showing up before the firestorm.
Soon after she established her vacation rental management firm, New Journey Properties, she made a strategic decision to attend township board meetings and meet the local elected officials around the county.
“I tried to go and at least make my presence known and to meet the different ones on the board,” Jennifer said. “I even handed them a business card and said, ‘Hey, if you ever have anything that comes up, or if you have questions about anything, give me a call.”
At the time, none of the townships were crafting regulations on short-term rentals, but Jennifer knew that fostering a relationship with decision-makers in her area of operation was important to her business.
Vacation rental regulations proposed
Several months later, the Sidney Township Board decided to draft a short-term rental ordinance at the request of neighbors who were complaining about problems at one vacation rental located on Derby Lake.
Initially, the homeowners had too many guests for the size of the property, so some guests would meander over neighbors’ property lines along the waterfront.
Later, the homeowners reduced the maximum occupancy to try to control the problems, but by then, their neighbors had already lodged complaints against them with the township. The township board decided to start crafting short-term rental regulations in January 2022.
Interestingly, the problems at the vacation rental were problems that existing ordinances could have solved such as noise and trespassing.
“But they wanted to get an ordinance in place, so that if someone broke those rules, they would have something in place to ban them from doing it,” Jennifer said.
Vacation rental advocacy in Central Michigan
By the time the township board began the process of drafting an ordinance, Jennifer had already started a Facebook group for other short-term rental operators in Central Michigan, the Mid Michigan Short-Term Rental Hosts.
“We started attending the meetings so that we would have a voice in the shaping of the regulations,” Jennifer said.
She and the other STR advocates wanted an ordinance that addressed the problems associated with irresponsible renting practices but that also was fair to everyone.
“I already knew a member of the township board who let me know about the plan to craft an ordinance,” Jennifer said. “By establishing a relationship before there was a problem, I was able to get involved more easily.”
She gave input on different proposals for the ordinance and made suggestions.
“The Planning Commission was looking up tons of ordinances from all over the country, and it could have been really bad, but they came up with a decent one,” Jennifer said.
She and other short-term rental advocates were able to convince the board to scale back elements of the draft ordinance that were too restrictive.
For instance, the board scrapped a provision in the ordinance that would have capped occupancy at 10 per home.
“One of my concerns was, I have a large bedroom that can sleep four comfortably,” Jennifer said. “And there’s an ordinance in a neighboring township that has a rule of two persons per bedroom no matter what size. So I was advocating to limit occupancy by square footage, and they ended up doing that.”
It took about a year for the final version of the ordinance to receive approval from the township board.
Short-term rental ordinance input
Afterward, Sidney’s building inspector contacted Jennifer to ask for her help in developing a safety inspection checklist for short-term rentals as required by the ordinance. Jennifer used some of the knowledge she had gained from the Breezeway safety inspector course to offer suggestions to the inspector.
“I think having somebody they trust that already operates vacation rentals is comforting to local officials,” Jennifer said. “They can at least have that side of it if they’re interested in being fair and representing everyone in the community.”
Turning a new leaf for the problem property
The owners of the vacation rental that had prompted neighbors to ask the township board to pass a short-term rental ordinance decided to hire a property manager to address some of the problems at their rental.
“The owners are great people. They didn’t do these things to hurt people; they just didn’t know,” Jennifer said.
The owners hired Jennifer to manage the property based on a neighbor’s referral.
Using her safety checklists, Jennifer was able to correct some safety issues at the property, including installing the correct number of smoke detectors and replacing an expired fire extinguisher.
“There were safety things all over the place that were not right,” she said. “To me, that’s why ordinances are important because people can rent out their homes and not have any kind of accountability.”
“We never know whether an owner is doing things responsibly or not until something bad happens, and then we find out, oh, no, they didn’t know what they were doing. Then, it’s a big problem for them and sometimes for the guests. That just continues to give a bad name to our industry.”
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Statewide advocacy
In addition to her local advocacy in Central Michigan townships, she is a member of the steering committee of Michigan’s statewide Short-Term Rental Association.
The statewide association started in the beginning of 2020, and Jennifer joined shortly afterward.
Since then, STRA’s Facebook page has garnered about 1,000 members, and its monthly Meetup page has nearly 900 members.
Jennifer has a healthy addiction to advocacy. The more she learns, the more she wants to be involved.
She listens to short-term rental podcasts, presentations by short-term rental experts, and attends conferences.
“I’m just working to try to build that community, give direction, and share things that I have learned,” Jennifer said. “l bring it back and see how we can use it to benefit our association.”
Continuing education for Michigan short-term rental hosts
In October, she met Noah Stewart, head of advocacy at Expedia Group, during a breakout session on grassroots advocacy at the VRMA International Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Expedia Group owns Vrbo, which has an advocacy support program for short-term rental operators.
In 2020, the STRA held a couple of sessions on short-term renting at the Michigan Landlord & Real Estate Investor Conference & Expo in Grand Rapids.
The conference was suspended during the Covid pandemic and resumed in 2022. During the 2022 conference, STRA held several sessions on short-term renting. The sessions were so popular that this year, STRA had its own separate day at the conference just for short-term rental operators on Feb. 22.
The opening session focused on grassroots advocacy – a topic that is dear to Jennifer’s heart.
The following Wednesday Jennifer invited Noah to present at STRA’s monthly meetup. He spoke about advocacy, how to build relationships in the local community, and get involved in local jurisdictions. Many of the things he spoke about were things that Jennifer has been doing in her own community.
“Jennifer is a model advocate for the Michigan short-term rental community,” Noah said. “Vrbo is proud to support model leaders like Jennifer in their efforts to enact fair and effective short-term rental regulations in their respective communities.”
Her goal for this year is to expand STRA’s online resources on local ordinances. She has started a file of local ordinances that she wants to eventually add to the STRA’s website to help people get involved in their local community.
“We’ve got a lot of pockets of different vacation areas in Michigan, along lakeshores, and obviously, one person can’t be everywhere,” she said. “As an association, we are trying to equip people to advocate for themselves in their local communities in Michigan.”
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