Hawaii residents Sam and Lisa Hankins return to their three-bedroom, single-family home in Paradise roughly four times a year to upgrade it or use it as a gathering place for family members from across the county. They plan to split their time between there and Oahu after they retire. 

To supplement their income in the interim, the couple initially planned to operate it as a short-term rental via the popular hosting platform Airbnb. But the route toward securing a license from Clark County has proven far more difficult than expected. 

“We went through all of the steps to go through the application process, and it was quite arduous and complicated,” Lisa Hankins says. “But we were ultimately denied because of our proximity to somebody who already had one in our neighborhood.”

Her frustration is one result of a three-year legal battle that has left hundreds of prospective Airbnb owners without the means to secure a license to legally operate their short-term rentals, which the county defines as a “unit or room within a residential unit that is made available for rent for thirty consecutive days or less.” The Hankins’ mission to combat the “absurd” county rule that establishes a 1,000-foot minimum between licensed short-term rentals led them to join forces with Airbnb and the 1,200-member Greater Las Vegas Short-Term Rental Association (GLVSTRA) this summer to file a federal lawsuit against Clark County.

The pending litigation alleges that many of the county’s policies—including “excessive” regulations and fines, a cap on the total number of licenses and lottery selection system for awarding them—violate constitutional rights guaranteed under the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth and 14th Amendments. In an August 20 email, a Clark County spokesperson declined to comment on pending litigation.

Southern Nevada’s foray into the debate began when Clark County started accepting applicants for the first batch of licenses in 2022. Officials proceeded to spend the next two years wading through more than 1,300 entries before issuing an initial trio of licenses in August 2024. Clark County says that number has risen to 194 in the last year—including just six new licenses awarded since early May—while 323 more are still being processed.

Advocates like the Hankinses and GLVSTRA founder Jackie Flores tell the Weekly the slow rollout amounts to what they see as a concentrated effort by the county to minimize Las Vegas’ short-term rental market and infringe on local property rights in favor of the influential resort industry.

“Clark County officials were supposed to make this legal years ago,” Flores says, referring to a2021 state law requiring Clark County to implement a short-term rental licensing system for its unincorporated zones by 2022. 

“On the surface, it looked like they were doing it, but once you got into the details of the ordinance, they made the requirements so cumbersome that it’s nearly impossible for anyone to qualify,” Flores adds. 

The new regulations prevent would-be operators like the Hankinses from obtaining a license if their property lies too close to an existing licensed property, with a similar prohibition also in place for any within 2,500 feet of a resort. They also cap the number of licenses to no more than 1% of unincorporated residences. (That cap was 2,940 in 2024.) Fines for unlicensed rentals range from $1,000 to a maximum of $10,000, according to county code. 

Flores estimates that more than 10,000 illegal short-term rentals are now scattered throughout the region as a result. And while she notes that GLVSTRA is specifically seeking a legal route to relief, she also sympathizes with the many local operators who are still “operating in the shadows.” According to Clark County, enforcement agents have handed down more than 1,900 administrative citations in the last year. 

These ongoing legal tensions have yielded victories and setbacks for both sides. Most recently, on August 6, a District Court judge ruled in favor of 84-year-old Leslie Doyle and the GLVSTRA after Doyle was denied a license on a provision that required her home to be connected to the municipal sewer system, rather than the septic tank system she has in place. 

“The judge ruled that it is an arbitrary requirement and also a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. We were very happy with that,” Flores says.

As the GLVSTRA keeps an eye out for updates on that case and the federal lawsuit that’s still awaiting an initial action, members have also worked with Airbnb on a joint emergency injunction request that asked the U.S. District Court of Nevada to block the county’s “unconstitutional enforcement” practices before the county could move forward with requiring hosting platforms to remove unlicensed listings by September 1. Following a hearing on August 22, the plaintiffs received a written ruling in their favor on August 28. 

“While today’s decision is a win, the fight against Clark County’s short-term rental restriction is far from over. In Nevada and across the country, we will continue to stand up for hosts and their constitutional property rights,” an Airbnb representative wrote in an emailfollowing the decision.

For the Hankins family, the federal filing remains paramount. To this day, they say, the neighbor who “knocked” them out of the licensure process isn’t even operating a short-term rental. 

“If you strategically find people who have a license but aren’t operating—not to say that [Clark County] is doing that—you effectively eliminate anybody else within a 1,000-foot radius of their home,” Lisa Hankins says. “If you think about it, that is an effective way to take out a whole group of people.”

For now, they’ll maintain their pivot to long-term rentals to stay above the law, even though Sam Hankins says that means they’re “losing money every month,” and because they rent for long periods of time, they can’t as easily access the home to attend to a growing list of renovations. 

“Before the county had its ordinance, we had no complaints, warnings or fines. We employ local workers to help fix it up, and we also get along wonderfully with all of our neighbors,” Sam Hankins says. “Ideally, I’d just like [Clark County] to start over with the rules, because they were flawed from the very beginning.”

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