There’s No Place Like Home:
the case against Short-Term Rentals
Home is a place of safety and rest. Home is a place to plan the future and raise a family. AirBnB, and any other corporate STR (Short-Term Rental), is a business. Highland Park is zoned Single Family residential.
Short-Term rentals can turn any home into a bunkhouse, a party house, a no-tell motel, a drug den, or worse. A family buying a house in a residential zone expects not to be neighbored by any of those businesses. Short-Term Rentals abuse that expectation, and, as experience and academic studies have shown, deteriorates neighborhoods.
We live in Highland Park. Highland Park sits in the middle of three schools: Highland Elementary, Wilson, and Hamilton High. We have many families. Their kids walk to school, set up lemonade and slushie stands in the summer, and they play outside riding bikes and playing ball. Those kids deserve the same safe neighbors from one day to the next. Those kids deserve all the residential protections their parents bought into when they bought a home in Highland Park.
Help keep your home safe. Tell Hamilton City Council to ban Short-Term Rentals in Highland Park.
Get Ready for Halloween!
Leaves are turning. Acorns are dropping. Spooky breezes are skittering down our streets. It’s autumn in Highland Park! Trick or Treat is from 6:00 PM until 8:00 PM on Halloween Night, October 31st. Enjoy this album of fall colors and scary delights as Hamilton’s most venerable neighborhood snuggles into fall.
Home to Grow
Whether you’re looking for a new home, or you’ve lived in Highland Park your entire life, it pays to pause and to look at this beloved neighborhood. The houses here age companionably. Daffodils and tulips bloom in spring. Lawns grow lush and green in summer. Autumn maple, oak and sweet gum leaves turn brilliant shades of red and gold. In winter, snow frosts Christmas wreaths hanging on doors and windows. All the while, our families go about the business of walking their dogs, raising children, and watching out for each other. See hundreds of Dave Duricy’s neighborhood photos in HomeBeautiful’s Highland Park Photo Galleries. If you already live in Highland Park, you’ll appreciate what you have here. If you’re looking to relocated to Hamilton, Ohio, you’ll appreciated what you could have.
“Welcome Home!” to the next 100 years.
A century ago, the developers of Highland Park platted our neighborhood above the smoke and soot of the city. They set aside green space, and saved the oldest trees. The first property owners in Highland Park built “castles of [their] dreams”, and those castles entwined with the good fortune of Hamilton as only gracious homes do. In 2019, Highland Park neighbors commemorated Highland Park’s 100 successful years. We remembered to take pride in our past, to encourage the appreciation and preservation of our historic houses, and to carry the ideals of Highland Park into the next 100 years.
–Dave Duricy
Feature Articles
A Crime in Highland Park: Who Attacked Miss Sullivan?
Mrs. Merrill Sells a Refrigerator