Sister Bay water tower. PC: Fox 11 Online
SISTER BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Four Door County property owners are suing the village of Sister Bay, claiming limits the village has put on short-term rental properties are illegal.
The limits were approved by the village board last year and enacted this summer.
Like many communities, Sister Bay has rules and regulations on short-term rentals and properties that can be booked on websites like AirBnB and VRBO.
The village altered some of its short-term rental rules last year after months of meetings. According to the ordinance, the changes came following claims of incomplete applications, violations, concerns and complaints from residents.
“The village of Sister Bay, in the summer of 2023, passed a law limiting short-term rentals to four bedrooms,” said Luke Berg. He’s an attorney with WILL, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
Berg is representing the four Sister Bay property owners, with homes on several different streets, who are now suing the village because of that change.
The properties in question, according to the lawsuit, were either existing short-term rentals before the zoning changes, or they were in the process of being built when the new ordinance was enacted.
“Well-established rule of property law is that zoning code changes can’t be applied retroactively. Existing properties are grandfathered and the changes can’t apply to them,” argued Berg.
As he points out, the lawsuit isn’t asking for permission to exceed the 12-person occupancy limit the village has established. Instead, the property owners just want their renters to be able to use all of the rooms and areas available in the homes they’re renting.
Berg added, “We don’t want to have more people, we just want to allow the people who rent our home to use the whole home and to sleep wherever they want in the home. That shouldn’t affect anyone. The village has no interest of where people can sleep at night.”
According to Berg, the property owners tried to work with the village to ensure they wouldn’t get in trouble if renters used more than the four bedrooms the ordinance allows. The lawsuit claims they were told they’d need to lock or block renters’ access to additional sleeping spaces.
“To your questions of, will anyone know or find out?” he said. “Maybe not, but our clients want to follow the law and they don’t want to risk an enforcement action against them, and the village’s penalties are very steep. All they wanted was confirmation from the village that this wasn’t going to be enforced against them, and the village refused to provide that.”
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