SAN ANTONIO – The city of San Antonio is reining in short-term rentals like those found on Airbnb with density limits and registration requirements.

The City Council passed the new regulations 8-2 on Thursday. They're meant to protect neighborhoods whose residents are concerned with an influx of homes being used full-time for short-term rentals, or STRs.

"I'm real encouraged about the balance we were able to strike," said Michael Shannon, the director of the Development Services Department, who presented the ordinance.

With the rise of Airbnb and similar apps, visitors to San Antonio have the option of staying in furnished homes, apartments and condos, rather than at hotels. By the city’s estimate, there are anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 STRs operating at any one time in San Antonio.

The new regulations differentiate between two kinds of STRs, hosted and unhosted.

A hosted STR, which the city calls a Type I STR, is one where the owner or lessee lives on the site and is renting out a room or guest house. Unhosted rentals, known as Type II STRs, are ones that are not occupied by the owner or lessee.

Charlotte Kerr Jorgensen hosts an Airbnb rental in a remodeled building at the back of her Olmos Park Terrace home. Her STR would be considered a Type I STR, she said, but in areas close to downtown, such as King William and Lavaca, there are more Type II STRs.

"People who have come in and bought investment properties, they can fill them up all the time at a higher rate, probably $75 to $150 a night, depending on how many rooms they have," Kerr Jorgensen said.

Residents like Margaret Leeds, who lives in King William, are worried about the influx of those Type II STRs changing the very nature of their neighborhoods.

"It costs me a neighbor, and it costs me an environment in which I like to live," Leeds said.

Leeds spoke in favor of the ordinance at Thursday's council meeting, telling KSAT that she sees the new regulations as a compromise with at least some protection with limits on the density.

Type II STRs will still be allowed in most zoning districts but will be limited in residential areas to only one house out of every eight per block face.

Currently operating Type II STRs would be exempt from the density requirement, but only if their operators had been paying the required hotel occupancy tax, or HOT, by Thursday, which it seems many likely were not.

Of the estimated 1,500 to 2,000 STRs operating at any given time, Shannon said only about 400 are registered to pay HOT.

The STR operators have three months to register with the city and get a permit. If they don’t, they could be issued a citation.