Leaders in Lincoln Township are hoping to prevent problems that could be caused by houseboats being rented out as vacation homes. Trustee Marc Florian tells us the Lincoln Township Planning Commission is looking to change the zoning ordinance to remove boats from the definition of “dwellings” so boats can’t be rented out as short-term rentals. He says other communities have dealt with this issue and he sees potential for trouble locally.
“We’ve got some water around here, like North Grand Mere Lake, we’ve got some creeks that some of these boats could go on, we’ve got some ponds that some of these boats could go on,” Florian said. “I don’t think our residents want to come down to North Lake Park, for example, and look out and see a raft of six different houseboats moored out there over the state bottom lands, which legally they could do. We wanted to get ahead of the curve.”
Theoretically, someone could drop a boat in a lake and rent it to partiers. Florian says the Planning Commission wants to nip that in the bud before it happens. A subcommittee has been working on the issue for a few months and will come back to the full township board with a recommendation.
