EDEN ISLES (WGNO)— In July, the Parish Council voted to crack down on short-term rentals in St. Tammany Parish. In late February, they started giving notices and notifying owners that they could be fined $500 per day if they were not following the rules.
“You know this is the first place that I’ve lived, so it is nostalgic out here to me,” Joshua Maronge said.
Maronge doesn’t want the neighborhood he grew up in—Eden Isles turning into a bunch of short-term rentals.
“It is a nice place to have a family and raise kids and it is quiet and everything. That’s the way I think it needs to continue to be,” he said.
Recently Eden Isles has become home to far too many short-term rentals, so the St. Tammany Parish government is now saying “no” to them in residential areas.
“Trying to keep them in areas that are allowed in the Parish. The way the rules are written is that short-term rentals cannot operate in strictly residential areas. It is a business, and they are making money off of it, act as if it is a hotel or other lodging area. So it needs to be in an area that is similar. You wouldn’t see a hotel in a regular neighborhood or subdivision,” Michael Vinsanau, Public Information Officer for St. Tammany Parish Government said.
Most of the complaints have been coming from concerned neighbors.
“We are trying to make sure there aren’t large weddings or large parties, or nuisances that are in strictly residential areas,” Vinsanau said.
And keeping business out of this neighborhood is how Joshua wants it to be.
“I wouldn’t imagine it to be that type of area that people are renting out their houses and doing that. I think that’s not how it was in the past and it shouldn’t end up being a party area. It doesn’t seem like the right area to be doing it I don’t think,” Maronge said.
St. Tammany Parish leaders say that about 95 percent of the short-term rental issues they are seeing are within the Eden Isles area. Violators who continue to not pay attention could have to deal with the St. Tammany District Attorney’s Office as the next step.