The Warren Select Board discussed a proposed Short Term Rental ordinance this week and will continue to review it through September before taking action.
At its Tuesday, August 13, meeting, the Warren Select Board met with town planning commissioners who have been working on the ordinance for about a year. The select board will continue discussing the ordinance through September before bringing it to a vote.
The ordinance requires owners of STRs – properties rented out to guests for less than 30 consecutive days and more than 14 days annually – to register their properties with the town and pay an annual registration fee, which is to be determined.
Owners would be fined for advertising a rental property without first obtaining a permit. Planning commission chair Dan Raddock said the town could expect an 85 to 90% compliance rate over time.
Registration fees would, in theory, reimburse the cost of a software platform that houses the registry, created by the company Granicus. The town budgeted $27,500 for the subscription this year. The planning commission is interested in using the software to gather data about the role that STRs may have on local unmet housing needs, among other questions around STR ownership. The data would allow the town to understand whether STRs should be regulated, and how.
The ordinance would allow require STR owners to comply with several requirements that select board member Devin Klein Corrigan said “are asking for common sense and safety.”
SEVERAL BENEFITS
Raddock gave a short presentation on the draft ordinance during Tuesday night’s meeting. He said that while STRs provide several benefits to towns like Warren – including supplemental income for residents and making the town accessible to visitors – there are also downsides. One of those, he said, is “character changes” in neighborhoods.
Klein Corrigan said she heard from a Warren resident who decided to move away due to her frustration with the constant turnaround of vacation renters in her neighborhood – that essentially, “she has no community,” Klein Corrigan said.
The select board deliberated in Tuesday’s meeting about the timeline needed to collect and study data. While the draft ordinance reads that the town would spend two years doing so, select board members wondered if three years would be more feasible – with two years of data collection and a year for review.
Raddock told the select board that the two-year timeline suggested by the planning commission was “a self-disciplining measure” that would push the town to work on a critical housing issue” – but that he supported extending the timeline.
Some discussion around gaps in the research methodology also arose. Select board member Camilla Behn said that while the ordinance targets STRs for data collection, there are many second homes that sit empty in Warren, which could be contributing to the lack of long-term housing. Behn said it’s unclear whether the two home-types are having the same impact on the town’s housing stock, or whether data collected by Grancius would speak to this.
MORE AND MORE
The Vermont Housing Finance Agency, drawing on data it purchases from AirDNA, reported last fall that September 2023 had the most active STRs (11,747 homes) and reservations (51,290 reservations) out of any month in Vermont on record. The agency also found that 55% of Vermont STR hosts were in-state residents, while the remaining hosts lived in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey.
Vermont cities and towns are grappling more and more with the impact of STRs on the availability of stable housing for local residents – and deliberating on strategies for tracking and regulating them.
This July, residents in Woodstock voted to amend the town’s STR regulations, which were created three years ago, by limiting the number of STRs allowed in the town’s village area to 5% of the housing stock. They also voted to limit the number of rentals each owner can to one per person.
Woodstock requires a $500 fee for owner-occupied rentals and $1,000 annually for non-owner-occupied units, with additional fees depending on how many bedrooms are rented out. Currently, the town and village have separate STR ordinances.
This summer also marked the start of Winooski requiring STR owners of non-owner-occupied rentals to pay the city $1,400 annually. The city also capped the number of non-owner-occupied STR licenses.
Raddock said that the planning commission, in drafting Warren’s ordinance, was trying not to place a burden on STR owners. He pointed out that the town is not seeking to limit the number of STRs or how often owners can rent out their properties, as other Vermont towns have done.
NEXT STEPS
The select board will continue examining the draft ordinance throughout September. On September 10, board vice chair Andy Cunningham said the board’s meeting will be “free form” – gathering input from the public. On September 24, they will drill down on formalities of the ordinance.
Raddock said that upcoming discussions should involve stakeholders like the Warren Fire Department, the Mad River Valley Chamber of Commerce, local innkeepers and STR owners.
STR owners have offered a good deal of input in recent planning commission meetings – with most arguing for less regulation. Zoning administrator Ruth Robbins recalled a recent meeting in which STR owners expressed fear about the town eventually banning STRs, which commissioners stated repeatedly was not the goal.
Very few local renters have attended these meetings to offer input from a non-owner perspective.
