Chatham To Consider Short-term Rental Bylaw At Town Meeting

CHATHAM – A bylaw aimed at getting a better handle on short-term rentals will go before voters at the May annual town meeting.

 The select board on Oct. 21 voted to direct town staff to develop a general bylaw that could, among other things, limit the total number of short-term rentals in town and prohibit corporate ownership of rentals.

 Currently the board of health regulates short-term rentals (STR), maintaining a registry and ensuring that health, safety and sanitation laws are followed. The select board recently voted to increase the annual STR registration fee to $325.

 The proliferation of STRs through services such as Airbnb has become a controversial issue in town, with residents complaining of parties and overcrowded houses disrupting residential neighborhoods.

 A bylaw, allowed under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 64G, provides the town with more regulatory latitude than the health regulation. Along with restricting certain types of ownership, a bylaw can require other safety inspections, increase penalties for violations and allow publication of a public registry so residents can track where STRs are located.

 A draft bylaw, based on Nantucket’s STR bylaw, would prohibit use of dwellings owned by corporations, partnerships or real estate investment trusts but would allow ownership by limited liability companies and S corporations only if its members were “natural persons” and not part of a corporation, partnership or investment trust. The draft also prohibits STRs in affordable dwelling units. It does not cap the total number of STRs; that’s something that can be considered once additional data is gathered under a bylaw, officials said.

 Currently approximately 900 homes in town are registered with the town as STRs, said Natural Resources Director Greg Berman. A separate state registry includes a higher number, but some of those may be STRs that are no longer active. “There probably are a few sneaking through, but we definitely have the lion’s share of them,” he said. A bylaw would help provide enforcement mechanisms to ensure that all STRs are registered with the town, he said, and thus receive appropriate fire, health and safety inspections.

 A bylaw would work in conjunction with the health regulations, said Select Board member Randi Potash.

 “The enforcement would have more teeth because it would include other departments besides just the board of health” she said.

 A public-facing registry would allow residents to know “what’s happening in our neighborhoods” and provide police and fire with information about where STRs are located, she said.

 A bylaw could prohibit or more closely regulate use of STRs for events such as weddings, added board member Dean Nicastro. “Which it seems to be trending toward if we don’t stop it,” he said.

 Summer residents advisory committee member Ron Manderscheid, who helped developed the draft bylaw, said he’s seen the community change from “one where people came and spent the whole summer” to “now where people come and spend only two or three days, and that’s a very different culture and social system than used to exist.”

 After one STR owner said he felt discriminated against, Nicastro noted that the town must walk a fine line between preventing corporate ownership of rentals and preserving the rights of families who are trying to hold on to family homes by renting them in the summer. “We need to be equitable and we don’t want to overburden people,” he said.

 That goes hand-in-hand with determining when tourism tips from being beneficial to detrimental, he added.

 “Chatham can’t just be this giant pinata that everybody wants to stick a pin in and derive benefit from,” he said. “There are people who live here, have lived here for generations, and we need to preserve the character of the town.” He asked that a future agenda item address the costs and benefits of tourism and include business owners and the chamber of commerce and merchants association.

 An STR bylaw is not an attempt to “take a bat” to traditional short-term rentals, but to protect time-honored traditions such as weekly summer rentals, Potash said.

 But getting more control over short-term rentals should be a top priority, said resident Ann Ryan, “before it gets even more out of control.”

 “I honestly feel that this may be the largest existential crisis this town has ever faced,” she said.