How STR Investors Are Turning Neighborhoods into Cash Cows & Stealing the American Dream of Home Ownership
As the editor and publisher of the Pinewood News, I’ve become something of a reluctant warrior in the ongoing saga of short-term rentals (STRs). My battle cry has been for rules that respect the ledger of communal life, not just the profit and loss statements of STR proprietors. Through the trenches of Munds Park, armed with heartbreaking stories of our readers and research, I worked to shine a light on the dark underbelly of the STR impact.
In 2022, my involvement reached a turning point. I took the issue straight to the Pinewood Property Owners Association (PPOA), hoping for leadership, for action. Instead, they sidestepped the controversy, favoring projects that were easier, safer. They have donors. They didn’t want to rock the boat. That’s politics. I understand.
But the reality was unavoidable. Munds Park is unincorporated—no mayor, no central authority, no strong unified voice. There was no cavalry coming. Just a small town, drifting, while outside forces reshaped it into something almost unrecognizable to those who have called the Park home for decades, some for generations.
Conceding to this reality, I dropped my pen on the subject. The silence from Munds Park was its own kind of statement—loud in its quiet, firm in its indifference. No outcry, no real effort to change course. There were voices of opposition, but not enough, and not loud enough. In the absence of real resistance, the fight for STR caps and regulations with teeth had little hope of gaining ground, not from Munds Park anyway.
Then came a call from Mayor Scott Jablow of Sedona, asking me to cover a Mayor’s Forum on the statewide impact of STRs, urging me to bring our community into the conversation. I had stepped back from the issue, but the issue hadn’t stepped back from Arizona. It had only grown—spreading into every corner of the state, stretching resources thin, forcing impossible choices. What was once a mounting concern had become a crisis, not just in the charming small towns that dot the map, but in Phoenix and Scottsdale, where even big-city resilience couldn’t hold back the tide.
This piece explores the pivotal dialogues from the Mayors Forum and argues for repealing the infamous Senate Bill 1350—dubbed ‘The Airbnb Bill.’ It is, in essence, a heartfelt appeal from our mayors to return regulatory authority to local hands so they can safeguard and shape the future and character of their communities.
A Brief History of the Airbnb Bill
Back in 2016, Arizona legislators, enchanted by the promise of booming tourism and the sharing economy, ushered in Senate Bill 1350. Platforms like Airbnb and VRBO were booming, and homeowners found the allure of easy money renting out their abodes irresistible. The legislature, eager to hitch a ride on this economic bandwagon, passed the bill with promises of prosperity. But with dollar signs dancing in their eyes, they ignored the question every legislator should ask: What will the unintended consequences be?
The law was a triple threat:
It centralized control at the state level, stripping cities and towns of the power to tailor STR regulations to their local culture.
It prohibited local bans on STRs, no matter the level of disruption they caused.
It confined local regulatory powers to the narrow lanes of health and safety—leaving communities to grapple helplessly with the fallout from noise, overcrowding, and the transformation of homes into commercial ventures.
SB1350 threw open the gates, and the flood came fast. Investors saw opportunity, turning neighborhoods into commodities and homes into profit centers. The character of communities began to shift, and the fallout was immediate.
A Series of Neutered Fixes
As STRs began to overrun neighborhoods, public outcry surged. Residents decried the invasion of noise, overflowing trash, and traffic and longed for the days when they had actual neighbors. As local pleas for control reached a crescendo, lawmakers scrambled to respond, cobbling together a patchwork of benign solutions—bills that merely nibbled at the edges of the problem.
Enforcing noise and nuisance ordinances—Sure, when the police aren’t otherwise occupied with trivialities like, you know, saving lives. Because in the grand hierarchy of civic emergencies, it seems a raucous Airbnb ranks just below a five-alarm fire.
Requiring STR operators to register for accountability.
Mandating contact details for lodging complaints.
Slapping fines on violators in hopes of deterring the worst offenders.
Despite some legislative tweaks, the core issue remains untouched. The state’s attempts at compromise have been just that—compromises, not solutions. Arizona’s mayors have had enough. They are not asking for favors. They are demanding the authority to govern their own communities.
Mayors Speak Out: The Damage Runs Deep
Local leaders from Williams to Bisbee did not mince words at the Mayor’s Forum on the Impact of Short-Term Rentals. The damage is real. The state’s one-size-fits-all approach has failed. It is time for the state to step aside and let communities govern themselves. But even if local control were restored today, every mayor agreed: the scars left by STRs will not fade quickly. Recovery will take years—maybe decades.
Each mayor took the mic to advocate for their residents, pressing the Arizona Legislature to give cities back the power to protect their own. They acknowledged the usual complaints—noise, trash, parking. But those were surface issues. Their real concern was deeper: the long-term erosion of their communities, the slow unraveling of what once made their towns feel like home.
Here, we’ll unpack their most pressing concerns, one by one.
STRs Cash In, Families & Essential Workers Get Pushed Out
Every mayor at the forum agreed: STRs aren’t just a nuisance—they’re a crisis. Investors are hoarding homes, artificially inflating prices, and leaving critical workers with nowhere to live. The hardest-hit towns—Bisbee, Jerome, Sedona, and Williams—aren’t just fighting to preserve their charm. They’re fighting to keep their teachers, firefighters, and nurses from becoming casualties of a rigged housing market. They’re fighting for their seniors, their disabled, their disadvantaged. They’re fighting for their people.
With Sedona’s median home price teetering on $1 million—pushed ever higher by investors treating neighborhoods like stock portfolios—it’s no surprise that critical workers—those who care for our children, our health, and our safety—can’t find a place to live. One teacher, eager to join Sedona’s school district, ended up sleeping in her car in the forest while trying to find something affordable. She searched, she waited, and in the end, she left.
Sedona’s lawmakers attempted a stopgap measure—allowing displaced workers to sleep in a designated parking lot overnight. The locals shot it down. Meanwhile, Sedona’s mayor is searching for answers, grasping for anything that might keep businesses, schools, and emergency services from crumbling under the weight of a workforce that simply has nowhere to live.
Bisbee Mayor Ken Budge wasn’t at the meeting, but Sedona Mayor Scott Jablow delivered his message plainly: “The working class has collapsed under the pressure of STRs.” In Bisbee, schools struggle to hire, hospitals struggle to staff, and first responders are stretched thin. The workers are gone, because the housing is gone.
Jablow laid it out: “Residents expect hospitals to be staffed, doctors to be there when they’re sick, teachers to show up for their kids, and first responders to answer in a crisis—and yet we don’t have them. We need property rights for all.”
Jerome Mayor Alex Barber told a similar story. Jerome is a town built on volunteerism. Firefighters, EMTs, local board members—people who step up, not for money, but because they love their community. But as housing disappears, so do the people who keep the town running.
Jerome’s numbers tell the story:
The town has 126 residences, but 26 are now STRs—20% of the total housing stock. That’s a big hit for a small town.
52% are owned by those living outside of Jerome, and 20% of those are owners who live outside of the state of Arizona.
A typical home has 2.3 residents. An STR? Seven. Seven guests cycling in and out, overwhelming water, sewer, and systems never built for a town of revolving doors.
“The impact is devastating,” says Mayor Alex Barber. “STRs have crushed the town of Jerome—a national historic landmark.”
And the problem keeps growing. Almost weekly, a new STR pops up.
Every single mayor reported the same struggle. The jobs are there, but the people who fill them are disappearing. Teachers, firefighters, nurses—the foundation of any community—are being priced out, replaced by short-term visitors who leave nothing behind but their footprints. When a home does go up for sale, investors move in, inflating prices and locking out the very people towns and cities need to survive.
Lake Havasu City Mayor Cal Sheehy echoed the same frustrations:
“We have people who accept positions in Lake Havasu and then have to rescind them because they can’t find housing. We have teachers who can’t find homes. We’re facing the same crisis as Sedona.”
Cities and towns are stuck: either they pay an impossible premium to keep workers local or watch them burn hours on brutal commutes. The rest are left scrambling for whatever housing they can find—overpriced, subpar, or nonexistent.
Our legislators aren’t listening—to their mayors or the people they were elected to serve. Hard not to wonder if lobbyists have their ear and their wallets. What else explains their refusal to act while families, their children and critical workers are shut out of the housing market? Instead, they’ve left mayors scrambling, pitching last-ditch ideas like parking lots and tiny homes made of ticky-tack. That’s not a plan. It’s an admission of failure.
I get it. Mayors are desperate. They need a fix, and they need it now. But let’s be honest—Americans deserve more than a glorified parking spot. They deserve real homes, real neighborhoods, a real stake in their communities. They deserve a shot at the American Dream. And while lawmakers stall, investors—corporate and otherwise—are snatching it away, one overpriced STR at a time.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t about a family renting out their cabin for a few weekends a year or someone with a guest home. That was the spirit of the Airbnb bill. What’s happening now is a land grab—by corporations and small investors alike.
Residential neighborhoods are being gutted, homes turned into cash machines, and real communities are disappearing in real time.
STRs Are Gutting Our Schools & Our Kids Are Paying the Price
The damage caused by STRs isn’t just about party houses and parking battles. It’s about schools. Fewer families, fewer kids, less funding. Investors are swallowing up homes that could have housed local families, and Arizona’s classrooms are feeling the fallout.
Try recruiting teachers when they can’t afford to live in the towns they serve. Sedona Mayor Scott Jablow put it bluntly:
“We have plenty of teachers who want to educate our children, but they simply can’t afford to live here. We can’t pay them enough to keep up with housing prices artificially inflated by over-investment in STRs. Now, as families leave, our school budgets suffer.”
In Oak Creek’s school district, kindergarten enrollment has dropped 12% in just five years. The numbers don’t lie: fewer students mean less funding—about $5,000 per child, gone. Schools consolidate, teachers are stretched thin, and students get less attention.
And it’s not just Sedona.
“When I was growing up in Jerome, and when my daughter was growing up in Jerome, we had over 100 kids living in town. Now? Maybe 15 kids are lucky enough to grow up in Jerome,” says Jerome Mayor Alex Barber.
The ripple effect is brutal. The Clarkdale-Jerome School District is losing students, losing money, and forced to make impossible choices.
This isn’t a fluke—it’s happening across Arizona.
Cave Creek Unified is on the verge of shutting down two more schools.
In July 2024, Paradise Valley Unified voted to close three by year’s end.
STRs aren’t just driving up housing prices. They’re gutting communities.
No affordable housing - families leave - school enrollment drops - school budgets shrink - schools shut down.
Arizona lawmakers may not see the connection, but local leaders do. They’re watching their communities, their teachers, and their schools disappear.
Editor’s Note: While charter schools have played a role in declining public school enrollment, STRs are a major factor. In the hardest-hit areas, even charter schools are seeing drops in attendance.
The STR Crisis Is Pushing People Onto the Streets
When Sedona Mayor Scott Jablow shared the data linking the rise in homelessness to Arizona’s Airbnb law, it was a jaw-dropper.
Sure, correlation doesn’t always mean causation, but you don’t need to be a statistician to see the logic. If people can’t afford housing, where do they go?
For young people entering the workforce, the struggle to find affordable housing isn’t just a minor inconvenience—it’s a full-blown crisis. For low-income residents, it’s not just about struggling anymore—it’s about survival. And for those who aren’t already on the streets, they’re holding on by a thread.
While homelessness has many contributing factors, what’s happening in Williams is impossible to ignore.
Williams Mayor Don Dent is watching it all unfold. With a population of about 1,500 homes, 225 are now STRs, a staggering 15% of the housing stock. 80% of those homes? Not owned by locals. These aren’t families renting out a vacation home—they’re outsiders looking to cash in.
Williams used to have a strong Section 8 housing program that helped low-income families, seniors, and disabled residents afford homes. But when leases expired, things changed. Landlords didn’t renew—they sold to investors or converted their properties into STRs.
Now? There are only 17 HUD vouchers in use. That’s a 66% drop in low-income housing.
The irony? Williams has been designated a failing city by HUD because it’s using less than half the funding it qualifies for. Yet, the town is still required to subsidize those unused vouchers, even though there’s no place left for people to live. They can’t even afford a housing director to manage this crisis.
Mayor Dent is now trying to transfer unused vouchers to Flagstaff, hoping they can use them.
“If we don’t cap STRs, we’re done,” says Dent. “Every month, more and more pop up. There’s no end in sight, and it’s just going to get worse.”
Williams is losing affordable housing faster than it can replace it, and those who need it most are getting pushed out.
Now, STR Investors Are Coming for Mobile Home Parks
If you thought STRs were just pushing out middle class families, think again. They’re now targeting mobile home parks—the last affordable housing option left.
“Mobile home parks are the next thing the Goldwater Institute is coming after,” said Mayor Scott Jablow.
Sedona used to have two private mobile home parks. Not anymore. The owners, backed by the Goldwater Institute, are suing Sedona to turn those parks into STR clusters.
And it’s not just Sedona. Prescott is seeing the same thing.
Mobile home parks have been the last hope for many low-income residents—the only place they could afford to own a home. Now, those residents are being told to pack up and leave.
STRs May be Costing Arizona Seats in Congress
At the mayor’s forum, Senator Mark Finchem dropped a bombshell: Arizona’s rapid home-building—55,000 new units a year—isn’t solving the housing crisis. Why? He suggests it’s because investors are buying up these homes for short-term rentals instead of giving local families a place to live. The result? Arizona’s population isn’t growing the way it appears, and that’s possibly costing the state seats in Congress.
Here’s how it works: more homes mean more people. More people mean a bigger population count for the census. And a bigger population should lead to more seats in Congress. But if a large chunk of those homes are sitting empty as short-term rentals—when the census counts most—then Arizona’s true population growth isn’t what it seems.
Finchem warns this could cost Arizona one or two seats in Congress. STRs aren’t just changing neighborhoods—they could be changing Arizona’s political power.
So, while the construction cranes keep rising, the real question isn’t how many homes we’re building—it’s who’s actually living in them.
Mayors Agree—STRs Need Local Control
Every mayor at the forum voiced the same concerns—just to varying degrees. None of them oppose STRs outright. What they oppose is not having the power to cap or regulate them in a way that makes sense for their communities.
They’re not against homeowners renting out their places when they’re away. What they do oppose are large-scale investment companies and even small-scale operators who own multiple properties, effectively turning residential neighborhoods into commercial enterprises.
The needs of each town are different. Lake Havasu depends on tourism and accepts STRs as part of its economy—but even they are overwhelmed by the sheer volume. Jerome, the third most visited town in Arizona, doesn’t need STRs at all. They’re so popular they don’t even advertise for tourism. Sedona wants caps, striving to balance its natural beauty with sustainable tourism while still ensuring its residents can live there peacefully.
Property Rights? Whatever.
Let’s be clear about one thing: this is not about property rights. It’s about common sense and the fundamental responsibility we have to each other. Your property rights don’t give you the right to trample on your neighbors’ lives or turn your community into a transient zone for profit. Our communities are built on stability—the ability for people to live where they work, raise their children in neighborhoods with people who care, and maintain the integrity of their homes. What’s happening now is a disruption—one that no one should tolerate.
Property rights have limits. I can’t just set up a mobile home on my property, no matter how badly my kids need a place to live. In Phoenix, I couldn’t build a mother-in-law suite for my elderly father, despite the clear need. I can’t buy property and set up a liquor store wherever I see fit. There are restrictions, and there are reasons for them.
I can’t build a fence taller than six feet, and I can’t add a second story to my house without jumping through bureaucratic hoops. And yet somehow, my neighbor can turn their home into a 24/7 mini-hotel, sacrificing community stability for financial gain. This is not a property rights issue—this is about using the system to disrupt everything we hold dear in our neighborhoods.
Every citizen contributes—through taxes—to support the schools, healthcare, and first responders who are the backbone of our society. Our legislators have a duty to ensure these services remain strong. They shouldn’t be undermined by greed.
Let’s stop pretending. This isn’t about property rights. It’s about responsibility. The right to own property doesn’t give you the right to disrupt your neighbors’ lives or the community fabric for personal gain. Property rights should never come at the cost of other people’s security, peace, and stability. We all know this to be true. If you’re an STR owner pushing the limits, deep down, you know this is wrong. How could you not?
Munds Park: A Town Caught Between Two Worlds
So, where does Munds Park fit into the conversation on short-term rentals? The numbers tell part of the story. About 275 cabins are now being used as STRs, making up about 8.7% of the town’s housing. Official records list 234 STRs, but according to the county, 10% are flying under the radar. It’s true: Munds Park has become a target for investors looking to cash in. We have corporations here, right now, buying up property.
To be honest, if any town was made for STRs, it’s Munds Park. No schools, no hospitals—just a peaceful retreat for those looking to escape the hustle. It’s always been a place for second home owners for quiet getaways—city dwellers seeking respite and retirees savoring the dream they worked hard to achieve. It was built around that sense of calm, the kind you can’t find in the busyness of life beyond the forest walls. But slowly, that balance is beginning to shift.
The streets that used to echo with the gentle hum of golf carts are now busy with the roar of OHVs speeding through the streets. The forest that once felt like home to locals is now being worn thin by strangers who don’t always care for it like those who live here do. The quiet is being drowned out. And for the people who’ve called this place home, it feels like something irreplaceable is slipping away.
Munds Park has always been more than a spot on a map. It’s a place for connection, for quiet moments, for community. And that’s what’s at stake. For now, it’s still a great place—but if the trends continue, the peace that defined it could fade, replaced by a different rhythm.
The future of Munds Park rests with its people. The question is simple: Do you want it to remain a peaceful escape, or is it time for something new?
Editor’s Note: While this article presents the editor’s perspective, the reporting on the mayors’ stances and the accompanying research are based on factual reporting. The views expressed by the mayors represent their firsthand accounts and positions on the impact of STRs in their communities.
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