Brent Little has a home he would like to rent out to visitors who come to his town for a vacation.

Little’s residence has a Traverse City address but is located in East Bay Township, to which he pays property taxes. Both municipalities have taken steps to regulate how property owners can rent out their homes via Airbnb and similar services.

Traverse City has been considering changes to its current ordinance on short-term rentals, and East Bay Township implemented a policy last year.

Little says the added regulations would cost him hundreds of dollars and infringe on his privacy.

“I lived in China for three years and they have Airbnb and there is no regulation at all,” Little said. “The government doesn’t regulate you because it is your personal house. We are more strict than a Communist government. I have a wife and two kids; I’m just trying to make ends meet.”

Across Michigan, more and more municipalities are restricting short-term home rentals. Some officials have gone further.

St. Clair Shores does not have an ordinance that prohibits short-term rentals, but its city attorney says the local zoning ordinance does not permit the practice. Last year, the city attorney showed up on a Saturday night — with a police escort — at a residence he suspected of being used as a short-term rental.

St. Clair Shores City Attorney Bob Ihrie said that the owner of the house had violated the law, and he brought the police for his own protection.

The homeowner was not present, but the police interviewed the visitors staying at the home about their relationship with the owner. The visitors had license plates from Ohio.

“The bottom line, St. Clair Shores has a zoning ordinance," Ihrie said in September. “The zoning ordinance details what is permitted.”

Ihrie said violation of the ordinance is a misdemeanor. “It is a crime. It is a low-level crime.”

In Mackinaw City, the village council enacted an outright ban on rentals of less than 30 days in part of the residential section of the village. The city of Holland has also banned short-term rentals.

East Bay Township has imposed a $450 short-term rental licensing fee. In addition to the notarized neighbor-notification letter homeowners must give to officials, the township also requests a photo of the home’s exterior and a drawing of the floor plan. The drawing should show each room intended for short-term rental occupancy and state the square footage of those rooms. The township also requests a hand-drawn plan for off-street parking.

“The short-term rental licensing ordinance was adopted by the Township Board on June 11, 2018, after nearly two years of discussion and multiple public hearings,” said East Bay Township Planner Rick Brown in an email.

In Traverse City, there is an annual short-term rental application fee that is $200 for years in which an inspection is required and $150 for a year when no inspection is called for. An inspection is required every three years.

More than seven in 10 students in the Detroit Public Schools Community District were chronically absent in 2017-2018, meaning they missed 10 percent or more of the year’s class days, according to state data.

Of 54,575 students enrolled in Detroit Public Schools for at least 10 school days, 38,383, or 70.3 percent, were chronically absent. The state average for chronically absent students was 19.9 percent in 2017-18. Flint Community Schools had 52.0 percent of its students categorized that way, while Benton Harbor Area Schools was at 63.3 percent.

There are typically 180 days in a school year, so a chronically absent student enrolled for the full year is missing 18 days or more.

“There are many, many reasons for a student’s absence at school: illness, medical appointments, family emergencies, lack of parent support in making school a priority, a perceived lack of relevance in what the student is learning, bullying, other family issues, just to name a few,” Chris Wigent, executive director of the Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators, said in an email.

“Every student’s situation is unique and so is their reason for missing school,” he said.

Tom McMillin, a Republican who serves on the State Board of Education, echoed that sentiment. In a phone interview, McMillin called the numbers alarming. But, he said, there is not a one-size-fits-all solution, which is why he has called for a decentralized approach that allows individual schools to address their unique problems.

In some schools in Detroit, McMillin said, the chronic absence rate can surpass 90 percent, and some of this can be caused by poverty, a destabilized family or lack of access to transportation to school. He also said that Common Core educational standards, which have been implemented in the state, have made it hard for teachers to connect directly with students.

Detroit schools also see relatively high turnover in teachers, he said, because many of them move to suburban districts, which can offer better money and safer conditions.

McMillin and Wigent said the issue is difficult to resolve legislatively because each case is unique to an individual student.

“Treating each case individually is of extreme importance,” Wigent said. “However, with the average counselor-to-student ratio currently being approximately 750-1, it is extremely difficult (if not close to impossible) to find out why each individual student who has chronic absenteeism is not attending.”

Staffers within each school should do whatever they can to identify those students and determine why the student is missing and what can be done to mitigate the problem, Wigent said. He added that staffers should proceed with the full understanding that some things are out of the school’s control.

“For this and many other reasons, schools need to continue to work with health and human service agencies and other agencies that provide wraparound services for students and their families,” he said.