My wife and I just picked up our first rental in Council Bluffs and are looking to expand a lot this year.

A big factor in that will be the outcome of the November elections for Mayor, city council members, and school board members.

These abandoned "Blight" homes have been in the news paper, in front of city council and even had laws trying to force owners or lien holders to do something with the property.

While most Net Zero buildings are energy efficient, perhaps even highly so in comparison to minimum building code requirements, there is nothing requiring them to anywhere new the efficiency level of a Passivhaus   .... this is why you will see odd things like warehouses with large rooftop solar installations being able to claim Net Zero.On the other hand, Passivhaus sets three metrics which a building must meet to be certified as Passivhaus compliant:  The building must have a heating and cooling demand of not more than 15 kWh/m2 (4,755 BTU/sq ft; 5.017 MJ/sq ft) per year  and a peak heat load of 10 W/m2.Total primary energy consumption (energy for heating, hot water and electricity) must not be more than 120 kWh/m2 (38,040 BTU/sq ft; 40.13 MJ/sq ft) per yearThe building must not leak more air than 0.6 times the house volume per hour (n50 ≤ 0.6 / hour) at 50 Pa (0.0073 psi) as tested by a blower door.Ironically, the research and pilot projects which fuelled what eventually became the Passivhaus standard was carried out in Saskatchewan as a National Research Council (NRC) project in the 1970s (the house is still in use today) and a similar project (Minnesota?)

This will likely be discussed at the next City Council meeting on 6 September 2016. 

Click to downloadthe "Rental Ready" presentation made to the Independence MO City Council on 11 July 2016; the author of this document is unknown.

I've been involved with the lead issue since the beginning attending and speaking out at all the city council meetings and town hall meetings.

Members of American Quarter Horse Association, Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, National Beef Council, Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, and the Texas Land and Mineral Owners Association.

I tried to get the Mayor and Council to approve a slight increase, which was voted down 3:2 (being that the November election is coming up). 

So, while my research did not find any rental restrictions for STRs I did not discover that they couldn't give me a business license (before we bought the house.)After talking with the City Planner about the situation he told me I could go through the same process that a hotel or B&B does (approval process for Certificate of Conditional Use) but it basically comes down to a City Council meeting which is a public hearing.We discussed the fact that there already were people operating STRs in the city (and obviously not paying taxes to the city since they would not have a business license).