The P&Z has announced a min 30 day stay, along with some requirements such as ‘no weddings’.
Is there an airbnb number or person etc to contact to help us out? I have single rooms in my home, usual 2-3 day stays; hosting since 2011 fyi
Thanks
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Have you seen the details of the ruling? We have strict restrictions in our area, but for rooms within our principal residence the rules are different
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Same in MA - It’s considered a boarding house when there is limited cooking facilities and breakfast is provided. There may be something like that you your area.
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Airbnb is not going to be able to help overrule your government legislation. @Rolf
Have you actually checked whether rooms in shared homes is covered by this legislation before panicking.
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Not sure what regulations a “boring” house falls under 
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This was a ‘news’ item in the local paper; I am waiting to see if they send me a ‘cease hosting’ order or I get up the courage to call them with a burner phone lol.
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When this has come up previously, no one has ever provided any info indicating Airbnb has any people dealing with this. I think the problem is that there are literally over 12,000 state, county and local governments in the US alone. Add that to the fact that Airbnb is worldwide and you can see how Airbnb would be limited.
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Also, what does “just announced” mean. Regulations don’t appear out of thin air. Either they are just at the beginning stages and you should get involved to oppose them being approved or you just didn’t hear about them in the development stage. Now you have to comply until they are modified or repealed.
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If it’s actually a new regulation, you should be able to find it online on your local govt. website.
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My area City Council started considering STR restrictions a couple years ago. I don’t think it made it to the local news. I found it by reading City Council minutes because I was looking for something else.
The proposed legislation was ready to go to vote 3/2020. The tiny city council found itself dealing with public safety issues & paused.
Most STR owners in the area are not local. I truly think the City Council’s sneaky goal was to quietly make changes in a way so there would be little opposition & it would be announced as a done deal.
They haven’t announced when it will go up for a vote & hasn’t been included on published agendas.
I can easily see how a change can be made & hosts in my area not know. Btw-people who don’t live in the area, can’t vote in the local elections so basically their opinions don’t matter.
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Oh, absolutely. People know almost nothing about government and how it works. And the govt has little reason to change that.
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boring = boarding …
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Yes, I realized it was a typo. I just couldn’t resist 
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I knew that because of your laughing emoji but just in case someone else didn’t know I figured I should fix it. FYI - I ended up registering as an Airbnb instead of a Boarding House even though I qualified.
This is so true! Which is why I attend every meeting of our local city council and I live stream it on Facebook to a page that exists mainly for that reason. One portion of our local city council meeting is a public forum where ordinary citizens can get up and speak on a topic. We are limited to three minutes. I’ll get up and speak on issues probably 6 to 10 times per year—just spoke again last night on an issue.
I get the meeting agenda and background materials emailed to me by the city clerk. These meetings and materials are public—but the public essentially ignores them.
Most people don’t know how government works and pay little to no attention until something directly affects them. Usually by then it’s too late.
Folks, I’m gonna get on my soapbox here. You have no one to blame but yourself when regulations are passed you don’t like. You need to pay attention. You need to educate yourself on how this stuff works. You need to show up and speak up!
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@Rolf I forget where you are located, so I don’t know exactly where to point you for advice, but Google might actually be your friend.
You need to search for the agency’s online site, because if there are new regs they will probably be a link on their home page.
Airbnb only deals with local regs in big cities. If you know any other hosts, you should connect with them, to see if they know what’s going on. Some may have connections or skills to find more info.
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You might investigate how they plan to enforce the new regulation. Many times these regulations get passed with no plan for monitoring or the monitoring kicks in long after the regulation. The exception is when taxes are involved because they want to start collecting ASAP. I live across the street from my town hall so I don’t ignore requirements often.
Airbnb usually only gets involved at the state or province level, if that. For example Airbnb reached an arrangement with my state to collect state occupancy tax for reservations, but some cities or regions instituted special taxes and that caused a lot more confusion.
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Airbnb spent millions lobbying against regulations (via voter referendum) in a NJ city adjacent to NYC and lost. That’s not going to encourage them to do it again. LOL.
The good news is that regulations on rooms in a home are much less common. Mostly regs try to protect local housing stock and prevent neigborhoods from becoming transient housing.
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@Rolf , I do know where you and searched for this yesterday, but haven’t looked today. All I could find was the schedule for the meeting for it as well a few different versions from past meetings last year but none of the ones I found matched what the newspaper article said, in the details. The former version of it in Nov was not as restrictive. Not sure if the paper got it wrong or if the details changed dramatically. I’ll look again.
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It’s hard to be 100% positive, because there could be something that happened that is not updated on your town’s website since Jan 14, but I think you may have misinterpreted the regulations. It does not appear that they are sanctions.
I am looking at the new code and all I am seeing is that they added a definition of STRs (which is “The temporary rental of part or all of a residential dwelling for fewer than thirty
consecutive nights at a time”), requirements for them to be in a legal dwelling (i.e. with a certificate of occupancy), emergency egress for sleeping areas as well as adding them to the parking requirements code. Which I’m sure you have covered.
It also says that you can’t have a STR and a rooming house or boarding house on the property at the same time and that you can’t use an accessory unit and that the STR must only be used for lodging purposes (no weddings, photo shoots, etc).
The article title says that your town “Limits Days for Short Term Housing Rentals” and that is that they are going to “limit the number of days a renter can occupy a residence to 30 consecutive days at a time”. This sounds odd to me because a STR is typically defined as less than 30 consecutive days, but I think what they’re doing is separating STRs from rooming houses and boarding houses, because those things have their own regulations. But it’s an odd way to describe it because, I think that generally we would think of a stay of more than 30 days would really just be a tenant.
I really hope I’m correct or I will feel like a real jerk. I’m going to send you the P&Z Text Amendment from Jan 14 regarding STR as well as page for that dept with contact info. If you have any questions it seems most efficient to ask those people in that dept.
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