Here in the land of 10,000 lakes, where we’re known for our love of water, the state’s health department is making it harder to take a dip in a rented swimming pool or hot tub.
In 2021, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) published rules that described hot tubs at vacation-home rentals as “public pools.“ Same for residential swimming pools being rented through sharing-economy apps or other platforms. These rules outlined public pools’ numerous licensing standards along with their potential health and safety risks. And in the years since, government agencies have been cracking down on non-compliant spas and pools in an inconsistent manner.
Take Gull Lake, near Brainerd. Its western shore sits in Cass County, which enforces MDH regulations within its borders and has been sending cease-and-desist letters to vacation-rental owners with unlicensed tubs, explained state Rep. Isaac Schultz, a Republican from Elmdale Township in central Minnesota. Meanwhile, on the lake’s east side, in Crow Wing County, where MDH regulators enforce their own rules, owners “weren’t hearing boo,” he said.
So Schultz brought what he calls the “free the hot tub bill” to the Legislature, where he expects it to be included in a sweeping health budget bill in a special session.
He describes hot tubs as “entirely different” from public pools and says the bill would exempt them, in a short-term rental context, from rigorous maintenance standards that make it “nearly impossible” for vacation-home owners to provide tubs for guests.
Hundreds of Minnesota hot tubs and pools have been available to rental-home guests through Airbnb, VRBO and other brokers for decades. But the MDH’s recent push to enforce its rules arrived after the launch of pool-rental app Swimply, which took off during the pandemic.
After the MDH sent letters to some homeowners who listed their pools for hourly booking on Swimply, the company sued the agency, arguing that state statute does not give it authority to regulate residential pools in the same manner as commercial, multifamily or municipal ones. Swimply attorney Douglas Seaton describes the MDH’s actions as an “unprecedented example of regulatory overreach” that doesn’t have a basis in the law.
In March, an administrative law judge dismissed Swimply’s petition, writing that the MDH’s guidelines were consistent with the relevant statutes’ plain meaning and describing the petitioners’ interpretation of the statutes’ definition as “absurd.” (MDH declined to comment further.)