Right to party

Most renters are fine folks. But as any landlord can tell you, the shorter the time an occupant plans to be around, the less incentive he has to keep up the place and cultivate the good will of the neighbors.

In an era when many an “investment” home now sits vacant, Las Vegas City Council members Lois Tarkanian and Steve Wolfson say they’ve been regaled with complaints of “party houses” rented out by the weekend to organizers who bring in tour buses full of guests to their residential revels, setting up spotlights, live bands in the back yard — quantum leaps beyond Rob and Laura Petrie inviting the Helpers over for a back-yard barbecue.

In one case, neighbors reported a sign visible from the street that advised, “If you want a whore, honk your horn.”

Naturally, the elected officials don’t want to appear to be ignoring the problem. They want to appear to be “doing something.”

So Tuesday, a subcommittee of the City Council reviewed a proposal to follow the lead of Henderson and Clark County, enacting a ban on “short-term vacation rentals.”

Unfortunately, there’s little evidence this will solve the problem.

When neighbors in Southwest Las Vegas called police about a massive recent party, they were told police could do nothing — the party’s organizers had applied for and received the proper permits.

Henderson and Clark County have found attempts to prosecute violators of their own “short-term” edicts to be frustrating. Landlords who find the arrangement lucrative can always sign a perfectly legal multi-month lease, while including an easy termination clause. Overlapping “multi-month” leases end up naming different tenants for the same house.

For that matter, it turns out short-term rentals are already banned under the Las Vegas city code — along with excessive noise, disturbing the peace, prostitution and public drunkenness.

If the problem is that police and local code enforcement officers lack the manpower, the willingness or the know-how to enforce all these existing ordinances, what good will really come from adding another “feel-good” edict to their already massive code books?

It may not sound as brave and bold, but the Council members would do better to simply instruct police and their other agents to more aggressively enforce the laws already on the books — without regard to who’s renting, or for how long.