“We are at a crisis level on the supply of rental housing.”


Spring House Hunt

The debate over short-term rentals is not new to Nantucket, or to many popular New England vacation spots.

The debate over short-term rentals is not new to Nantucket, or to many popular New England vacation spots. Adobe action

In June, more than 900 people gathered in Nantucket High School’s auditorium for the island’s annual town hall meeting and had a chance to vote on the community’s most pressing issues. Among them: three provisions concerning short-term rentals.

The debate over short-term rentals is not new to Nantucket, or to many popular New England vacation spots. Communities across the region have been trying to regulate short-term rentals since sites like Airbnb took off in the 2010s. Now with record property prices and a historically low inventory, there is heightened urgency in such regulation, especially among those who fear developers are coming in and buying up swathes of homes to make a fortune in the short-term rental market.

In New Hampshire, where the rental vacancy rate has fallen below 1%, housing advocates fear unchecked short-term rentals will put additional pressure on an already tight market. The state legislature recently voted against a bill that would have made it illegal for cities to create legislation restricting short-term rentals.

“We are at a crisis level on rental housing supply, so every time you remove the tool from the community toolkit to address this, you are potentially removing supply from the market which is already incredibly stressed,” said Nick Taylor, executive director of the Coalition for the housing of the workforce of the great littoral. Without enough affordable housing in southern New Hampshire towns, “employers struggle to attract employees and workers struggle to find housing,” Taylor said.

However, short-term rentals also provide housing for tourists, a crucial part of the economy in places like Nantucket, Cape Cod or the towns that make up New Hampshire’s Coast and Lakes region, Ryan Castle pointed out. , CEO of the Cape Cod & Islands Association of Realtors.

“A lot of workers serve the tourism industry, and the tourism industry is served by these people who come in short-term,” Castle said, “and so it’s a cyclical effect.”

Cape Cod has been a short-term vacation rental hub for decades, long before sites like Airbnb and VRBO revolutionized the industry. It seems unlikely that the peninsula recent struggles for housing are linked to an onslaught of new seasonal owners – especially in light of the fact that places like Chatham, Provincetown and Martha’s Vineyard have seen a drop in the number of Airbnb listings since 2019, down 13%, 22% and 14 % per year. year respectively, according to data from the analysis site AirDNA.

Short-term rentals themselves are not the core of the problem, said Horn of Kerenan expert in affordable housing policy at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

“I think individuals can rent out their second home, it’s a good thing. If it’s their vacation home anyway, and it’s just empty, why can’t you make money from it? Said Horn. Problems arise, however, when developers try to create large-scale short-term rental facilities – de facto hotels – to circumvent taxes and regulations.

“I think the question is, should a developer who actually builds a hotel, but disguises it as a hotel, not be treated, taxed and regulated like a hotel?” Horn said.

In late 2018, Governor Charlie Baker signed a bill to curb these potential investors-buyers. “The bill requires every rental host to register with the state, requires them to carry insurance, and opens up the possibility of local taxes in addition to a new state levy,” the Globe reported. Boston took things even further, limit who is allowed to rent their accommodationand requiring tenants to register with the city’s Department of Inspection Services.

At the Nantucket town meeting, attendees voted to send two of the papers to a study group created by the finance committee, select council, and planning board. The third, which requires landlords to register their short-term rentals with the Board of Health, was approved after 50 minutes of debate, according to the Interrogator and mirror.

Horn said similar registration requirements could benefit other struggling towns and cities. The only way to solve the problem, however, is to create more housing.

“If we want to make a change in the housing market, the main thing is that we have to build a lot more.”

Kelly Garrity can be reached at [email protected]. Subscribe to our newsletter at pages.email.bostonglobe.com/AddressSignUp. Follow us on twitter @globehomes.

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