photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

The Lawrence City Commission meets on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026, at City Hall.

When students are gone this summer in Lawrence, landlords will have more latitude to lease out vacant units to an influx of FIFA World Cup guests, thanks to a set of temporary changes that the Lawrence City Commission approved on Tuesday night.

At its meeting Tuesday, the Lawrence City Commission unanimously approved several code changes to relax the restrictions on Airbnbs and other short-term rental properties during the World Cup. They approved a measure that will amend the city’s short-term residential property code starting on May 25, another that will amend the Land Development Code, and a third to direct city staff to draft an amendment that would put the rules back on July 26.

All the commissioners voiced support for the changes and said they would help the community be better prepared to capitalize on the global sporting event. As the Journal-World has reported, the World Cup is expected to bring more than 600,000 visitors to the Kansas City metro area this summer, and Lawrence is being eyed by multiple national teams as a potential base camp site.

“The safer bet is to know that we need this additional housing,” Mayor Brad Finkeldei said Tuesday. He said he’d spoken with landlords and with people from other cities that had passed similar provisions, and his opinion was that “this is something that will be useful to the city as long as it’s short-term.”

As the Journal-World reported, the rule changes will affect several aspects of Lawrence’s short-term rental regulations, which were created in 2018. The current rules state that property owners can have no more than three short-term rental units within the city limits at a time; that they must go through certain inspection requirements; and that non-owner-occupied short-term rentals can’t be in certain residential areas of the city, which fall under zoning categories called R-1 and R-2.

Those things will change when the new rules go into effect on May 25.

The cap of three rentals per owner will be lifted, allowing owners to have more within the city limits if they wish. The restriction on short-term rentals in R-1 and R-2 zoning will also be removed, and properties that have been inspected under the city’s separate long-term rental code will be able to use those inspections to satisfy the short-term rental inspection requirements, too, if they wish to rent their properties on a short-term basis.

Staff and city leaders said multiple types of property owners could benefit from the changes. Jeff Crick, director of the city’s Planning and Development Services, said the owner of an apartment complex with 20 or 30 units, for instance, could get its vacant units licensed for short-term use and rent them out during the World Cup. So could someone who owned multiple houses.

Even people who own just one home could benefit from the change, Finkeldei suggested. He said that through the National League of Cities, he’d learned that it’s common for people in places where major sporting events take place to go on vacation during that time and rent their properties out. He mentioned Augusta, Georgia, where the Masters golf tournament is held, and Omaha, Nebraska, home of the College World Series, as places where this happens.

“Both Omaha and Augusta have been doing this for years,” he said.

Finkeldei noted that many cities around Lawrence were also changing their rules ahead of this summer: “Kansas City, Missouri; Lenexa; Shawnee; they’ve all passed similar ordinances to this.”

But some members of the public had concerns about the new rules’ impact on neighborhoods, long-term rentals and more. One who said he was an Airbnb operator characterized raising the cap as “a cash grab for corporate-owned apartment complexes.” Another had concerns that for longer stays, the city wouldn’t be capturing the transient guest tax that is collected from overnight guests.

And more than one had concerns about when or whether the new rules would sunset. One commenter said she understood the need for the rules but didn’t understand why there was no sunset date built into what the commission was voting on on Tuesday.

“It comes down, unfortunately, to trust,” the commenter said.

Crick said the idea was that a separate amendment would be initiated by the commission and voted on later to put things back. A lot of the commission’s discussion focused on the details of that measure.

Finkeldei said that Lawrence had an advantage that would prevent long-term rentals from being impacted too much – namely, that many leases in Lawrence turn over at the end of July and beginning of August. The World Cup period will overlap with the time when students at the University of Kansas and Haskell are off for summer break, and Finkeldei said he was aware of some landlords that had done 10-month leases with students and others that were offering to let students out of their leases in May to free up space for World Cup guests.

But he also suggested that the sunset date should be a few days earlier than July 31, and the other commissioners agreed.

Part of his reasoning had to do with the guest tax, which doesn’t apply to stays over a certain length. For example, Finkeldei said, if you lease your house to someone for 32 days, that wouldn’t be subject to transient guest tax anymore. An earlier sunset date would increase the likelihood of collecting transient guest tax from shorter stays, he said.

Some commissioners also wanted to add new penalties for violators of the rental rules when the changes sunset, as well. Commissioner Amber Sellers wanted to toughen fines and prevent violators from applying for new short-term rentals for a while after a violation.

“What do you put in place to give it teeth?” she asked.

In its resolution asking staff to prepare the sunset provision for July 26, the commission did ask for new penalties to be brought back. The sunset measure will come before the commission for a vote at a future meeting.

One thing the commissioners agreed on was that it was best to be ready to take full advantage of the World Cup – an event that Crick said was comparable to “holding the Super Bowl seven times consecutively.”

“I really want Lawrence to be prepared for this impressive event,” said Commissioner Kristine Polian. “… I prefer being prepared a lot more than not being prepared.”