Rapid City, SD Short-Term Rentals: Short-Term Rental Parking Rules (2026)

Rapid City folds short-term rental parking into its main off-street parking code rather than writing a separate standard. Section 17.50.270 lists Vacation home among the Residential uses in its minimum parking table and sets the requirement at 2.00 spaces per vacation home, the same numeric floor the table sets for a single-family, duplex, or townhouse dwelling. Section 17.50.270(B)(1)(c) treats converting an existing dwelling into a vacation home as the initiation of a use, which triggers the duty in section 17.50.270(A) to provide and permanently maintain the required spaces even though no new building permit is being sought for construction.

Section 17.50.410(D), the vacation home registration criteria, cross-references that table directly at subsection 5: parking must be provided under section 17.50.270. It sits alongside the other registration criteria in the same subsection, including that the home be a permitted use in its zoning district, that no part of it sit in the floodway, that a conditional use permit under section 17.54.030 be obtained once a vacation home has more than 5 bedrooms, and that occupancy stay under 2 persons per bedroom plus 2. The Department of Community Development reviews every criterion, including the parking requirement, before it will register or renew a vacation home under section 17.50.410(E); an application that fails any one of the criteria is denied outright.

Because the general residential parking standard in section 17.50.270(I) also calls for a paved driveway or garage sized for at least 2 spaces of 9 feet by 18 feet, a vacation home operator converting a single-family house typically already has the required parking in place, but the registration file must still document it.