Matt BarrentineThe life blood of Gulf Shores is tourism and city officials want to keep it that way by strengthening zoning laws for short-term rentals. But residents say that change could create more problems.
“Who do I call? When I'm up at midnight because there's people out there ‘yahooin'. They just go off their night shift," said one resident.
More speeches like that were made at a packed city council meeting Tuesday afternoon. And it was just one project that brought all this attention.
The concern started with a home on West Fourth Street. It's a home that has 18 bedrooms. Residents say it's going to be used not for tourists but as a boarding house for seasonal workers. Packed two to a room 36 people may live there. And under the proposed zoning law, meant for tourists renting vacation homes, it would be legal.
“We’re going to create a ghetto in our own neighborhoods and it's not going to happen overnight, it's going to happen gradually over time," said Jim Rayfield, a resident who is leading the opposition to any zoning law that wouldn't curb these developments.
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