My name is Jonathan Tremblay, and I am a veteran and successful business owner, husband, and father of 3 beautiful boys from ages 5 to 9.

Cobb County has passed a code change to local ordinances that will effectively kill the ability of homeowners to use short term rental platforms such as Airbnb to supplement their income during these difficult times.

In our case, this code change will force us to either sell our home or file bankruptcy and force us to relocate our children and family, and with the difficulties of the housing market, we fear that it may even lead to homelessness for ourselves.

We bought our home in Cobb County on January of 2022, and shortly after purchasing it, our business got hit with major losses due to Covid and Inflation having a negative impact on my clients.

We have a large basement, so we decided to use it to supplement our income, and we chose to rent rooms in the basement, to help traveling workers and people in the county who are also being relocated due to rents doubling on month to month leases, or evictions due to increasing house prices.

Shortly after doing so, our neighbor who are an older couple went up in arms due to the short term rentals, without any issues from our guests.

We live in the home, work from home, and our kids live here as well. We go out of our way to ensure that our guests are NOT a nuisances to the neighborhood, and advertise our listings as a quiet place in a quiet neighborhood.

Despite the fact that there have been no material issues, they have gone through the county to edit the code changes in the last 2 weeks, to specifically kill the ability to rent out multiple bedrooms in your home. 

The code limits only 1 listing per property, meaning that the only thing we can do is now rent out a single room, as we cannot rent out the entire property.

From what we understand, our neighbors have history of working for the county, and obviously have a lot of influence with the city officials.

A "study group" was made for the code changes in the last 2 weeks, where short term rental owners such as myself were not included.

I have called every city official and department, including my district commissioner, Jerica Richardson to try to figure out how the process of local ordinance changes happens, and how we can help, and have been ignored entirely.

We have attempted to find common ground with, Fire Marshal Nick Dawe, and Chief Building Official Kevin Gobble, who apparently have also had a hand in influencing the code changes after having to deal with my property.

We have reports from Community Development that they had a fair code change built that I saw on August 31st, which was fair to all neighbors of short term rentals, short term rental owners, AND guests of short term rental owners, and the person who wrote the code, was contacted by the Commissioners personally, and told to implement the code changes the way they are today, coincidentally right around the time that our neighbors starting getting involved.

We feel that this is a violation of local government control, and is an infringement on our constitutional rights to the pursuit of happiness. We are being told what we can and can't do in our own personal home, to please our neighbors who are ultimately not impacted in any material way, while us and our guests, will have to find other solutions for housing, and potentially will lead to financial ruin for us and many other home owners in Cobb County who are struggling.

We want the county to amend the code and make it fair for home owners to rent out rooms. We DO want short term rentals regulated, and we DO want to make sure our neighbors and guests to have proper solutions to protect them from short term rental owners who do not treat their guests or neighbors the way we do. The code changes already include code for that, and we do not need many changes there.

We want a proper process and forum for code changes, that forces the county to make sure they are getting the voices of the county heard.

Frankly, given the issues surrounding this, I am considering running for County Commissioner to stop the gross misuse of their authority and power to overreach into unconstitutional regulations.

Thank you.