Efforts to regulate short-term rentals in Pittsburgh are scheduled to come to a head in September, after council and the Planning Commission last week punted the issue to the other side of their August recesses.
Paired together, the bills would limit current short-term rental operators from increasing the number of units they own and operate, said City Councilor Deb Gross. At the same time, the legislative package, if passed, would encourage homeowners to rent out accessory dwelling units or rooms in their primary homes.
“People operating as scattered-site hotels — this bill makes this much harder to do, and rightfully so,” she said in an interview.
Owners and operators of short-term rentals say they welcome regulation, particularly licensing requirements. But they say efforts to curb short-term rentals through zoning will not benefit the region’s overall housing stock.
“We’re not against regulation, but you’re trying to regulate something you don’t even understand,” said Chad Wise, the founder of the short-term rental property management company HostWise Co.
Curbing new short-term rentals amid houses
The zoning bill, if passed, would distinguish between two types of short-term rentals:
- Unoccupied, single-dwelling rental units with off-site owners
- And owner-occupied rentals, which could include properties where owners rent out a room in their home or an accessory dwelling unit on their property.
The zoning bill would restrict the former from taking root in residential areas zoned for single-family homes, duplexes or triplexes in the future. Owners of short-term rentals already operating in one of these zones could be grandfathered in by applying for a new certificate of occupancy showing that the property was already used that way.
A valid certificate of occupancy would be required to get a license, according to the second bill. The license would also require owners to name a local operator and agree to only rent to guests who are at least 18 years old.
Pittsburgh’s City Planning Commission will hold a hearing on the zoning bill on Sept. 8 and City Council expects to hold a tentative committee vote on the licensing bill on Oct. 21.
Short-term rentals concentrated in hotspot neighborhoods
Allegheny County’s short-term rental market included roughly 3,800 available properties as of June 2026, according to AirDNA, a data and analytics firm that focuses on the short-term rental industry. About 80% of those listings were for entire homes, said Bram Gallagher, AirDNA’s director of economics and forecasting.
The county boasts roughly 614,000 housing units, which means short-term rentals represent less than 1% of the region’s total housing stock. But one of Pittsburgh’s submarkets, which includes Bloomfield, Garfield, East Liberty and Larimer, accounts for 14% of the county’s total short-term rentals.
Another submarket that stretches from Pittsburgh’s North Side to Sewickley accounts for roughly 18% of the county’s total short-term-rental market.
Where have all my neighbors gone? How short-term rentals are shrinking my community.
While briefing the Planning Commission on the zoning aspect of the legislative package, Gross of Highland Park said some streets in her district are peppered with keypad-accessible homes — signaling their use as short-term rentals.
“We are just seeing more and more housing owned by short-term-rental operators and being removed as housing” for residents, she said.
Violence at short-term rentals has also rattled the city in recent years. Since 2022, two fatal shootings have occurred at Airbnbs in East Allegheny. Large gatherings have turned fatal at rentals in Philadelphia and the Poconos.
City Council’s zoning bill would restrict all kinds of short-term rentals from being used for “public assembly, recreational entertainment or hospitality activities,” according to city Zoning Administrator Carolyn Ristau.
In Harrisburg, a bill co-sponsored by state Rep. Lindsay Powell, D-Troy Hill, introduced earlier this year after the New Year’s Eve shooting in East Allegheny, would create statewide safety standards short-term rental operators.
The upsides: jobs, tourism
In 2017, Ellie Harward bought two side-by-side townhomes on Pittsburgh’s North Side — a decision driven primarily by her 15-member family’s need for space. But mortgage payments started to pile up, which led her to rent one of the properties on Airbnb.
Harward has been working with two people since who help with cleaning and landscaping the rental property.
There are also companies that manage properties for owners. Wise’s HostWise Co is one of them.
There’s also Megaclean PGH, which manages roughly 100 short-term rentals in the Pittsburgh region, according to its co-owner Corey Diethorn. The company pays roughly $80,000 in wages each month, he said, which is split across 10 employees and several subcontractors.
Housing advocates, hosts split on bill to regulate short-term rentals in Pittsburgh
About 26% of short-term rentals in the county are professionally managed, according to Gallagher of AirDNA. That includes properties managed by companies, such as Megaclean PGH, which are responsible for managing at least 21 properties.
“It’s not just like short-term rentals are owned by these companies who are making all this money — it’s not that. There’s a whole ecosystem of cleaners, maintenance, landscapers, everything,” Diethorn said.
Wise said Pittsburgh is “a long way from being a tourist mecca,” but that there are also “a lot of properties that can pay for themselves as short-term rentals, but not long-term rentals.”
Unlike places such as Colorado, where month-to-month rentals are more common than shorter stays, Pittsburgh’s short-term rental market mostly relies on visitors looking to stay only three or four nights. During the 2026 NFL Draft, for instance, roughly 75% of all available rentals were booked for the first night of the three-day event. Those rates remained above 50% through Saturday.
At any given point during the year, roughly half of all short-term rentals in the region sit vacant.
Harward recently got married and moved well outside of the city with her husband. Now she rents both of her townhomes on the North Side.
She said she recognizes the short-term rental market has “gotten much more corporate.” But for her relatively small operation, one of the licensing bill’s requirements that owners must live within 25 miles of the city would put her livelihood in jeopardy.
“It’s a scary possibility,” she said.
Mia Hollie is the economic development and housing reporter for Pittsburgh’s Public Source. She can be reached at mia@publicsource.org.
MOST READ STORIES
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
