Short-Term Rentals and Hudson

The 2020 budget for the City of Hudson anticipates a 21.4 percent increase in revenue from the City's lodging tax. Some of that anticipated revenue is no doubt coming from short-term rentals marketed on Airbnb. The 2020 budget was unanimously approved by the Common Council on November 19. At the regular meeting of the Council, which followed immediately after the special meeting, the aldermen voted unanimously to enact a nine-month moratorium on the "registration and operation of any new short-term lodging facility in the City of Hudson." The moratorium, which has rather hastily brought before the Council in September, is meant to "take the pressure off acting quickly and legislating poorly" in the matter of regulating short-term rentals. The Legal Committee of the Common Council, chaired by John Rosenthal, started discussing the issue of regulating short-term rentals in January 2019.

This past Tuesday, Mayor Rick Rector held a public hearing on the law that would impose the moratorium. It was, by all accounts, one of the most well attended public hearings in recent history, with both opponents and proponents of the moratorium present. The hearing went on for close to an hour.

Late Friday afternoon, Rector vetoed the law that would impose the moratorium. His veto message explained the following reasons for his action:

1. The term of nine months is exceptionally long. There have been lengthy discussions, conversations and meetings throughout the general community, business community, government and specifically the legal committee for well over a year regarding short-term lodging.
2. Due to these lengthy discussions, reviews and meetings that have taken place there could have been commonsense legislation such as "owner occupied" regulation put into place that would negate the supposed need for a nine month moratorium.
3. The nine month moratorium does not address or resolve the important aspect of various forms of affordable housing needs within the city. This conversation is worldwide and especially critical in places where people want to live, invest, raise a family, etc. It is an incredibly important discussion to have, but it should not be conflated with short term lodging.
4. This nine month moratorium sends a message to residents, business owners and outsiders that Hudson is not fully open for business, is clamping down on development and important economic development in addition to potentially discouraging visitors from visiting our community and bringing in much needed and important revenues for the various businesses throughout the city.

Alderman Rich Volo (Fourth Ward) reacted in support of the veto on his blog Fourth Ward Hudson. His post concludes:

The moratorium is a knee-jerk reaction to a housing issue. The City formed a Housing Task Force in 2017 which produced a Strategic Housing Plan--passed by the Common Council last year. Please read it. This document outlines strategies and goals--a game plan--for affordable housing in Hudson. At the very end, the last appendix, it mentions Short Term Rentals; it does not suggest a moratorium.

On her Facebook page, Fourth Ward supervisor Linda Mussmann made this claim about the mayor's action: "Mayor Rector today vetos [sic] the hope to regulate AirBNB's here in Hudson--Rector has a deaf ear when it comes to listening to the community that struggles to stay here in Hudson."

Of some relevance to the discussion of regulating short-term rentals in Hudson is this article which appeared on Thursday in Realtor Magazine, a publication of the National Association of Realtors: "Airbnb Removes Thousands of Listings Under New Boston Law." The article reports:

In Boston, new regulations [which took effect on December 1] require hosts to register their listings with the city. The law is designed to ban investor units—properties that are meant to be residential but then are primarily used for short-term housing. To use Airbnb, hosts must own their properties and live in them for at least nine months of the year. Boston lawmakers have also limited listings to one per host. Hosts are required to register their units with the city every year and pay an annual licensing fee.

As of a month ago, the city had about 4,000 total listings in Boston. City officials have received 1,778 applications to register listings; only 737 have been approved so far, as reported on Tuesday by CNBC. Airbnb says it has removed all listings from its platform that did not display a license number from the city of Boston.  

The new regulations in Boston, which were first passed in July 2018, faced legal challenges from Airbnb. This report of Airbnb's zealous compliance with local law seems to suggest a change from what was purported in an article that appeared in Wired in March 2019, which reported that "Airbnb is engaged in 'a city-by-city, block-by-block guerilla war' against local governments."
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