At the Common Council Legal Committee meeting last Wednesday, an amendment to the law regulating short-term rentals (§325-28.3) was discussed. The proposed amendment is to §325-28.3 A (2), which currently reads:
Any person who owns dwelling unit in the City of Hudson, and resides in it at least 50 days a year, may operate it as a short-term rental unit for up to a maximum of 60 days per calendar year. . . .
The amendment would increase the maximum number of days a dwelling can be operated as a short-term rental from 60 days to 120 days. The initiative for the amendment came from the Finance Committee to response to declining revenues from lodging tax.
Of the four members of the Legal Committee--Margaret Morris, Jennifer Belton, Mohammed Rony, and Dominic Merante--only Rony expressed opposition to the idea. He maintained that amending the law in this way ignored the intent of the law, which was to incentivize people to live here full time. According to Rony, the law was meant to "force people to decide if it's worth their while to own a property in Hudson it it's not full-time."
Morris and Belton argued that people's circumstances may change. Belton spoke of people wanting to keep a house in Hudson as their "forever home," despite having to spend time living elsewhere. She warned, if people were forced to sell their homes, "a lot of LLCs are buying houses here and renting them at a premium." Morris pointed out that people who intended to do more remote work may now find they have to be in an office four or five days a week.
Merante did not see the proposed change as problematic, saying that short-term rental was "a means to help people pay their taxes if they are in Florida half the year." He also pointed out that he didn't think very many properties would be affected by the change.
Belton cited another reason for the amendment. Reporting what she has heard from business owners, Belton said would-be visitors to Hudson cannot find a room for less than $400 a night with a two-night minimum stay, and that makes visiting Hudson impossible for a lot of people and negatively impacts other businesses--"the bars, the restaurants, and all the little shops on Warren." Increasing the number of days people can offer their homes as short-term rentals would help the owners of the homes financially, provide more options for visitors, and bring in more lodging tax. She noted that, as a consequence of the law adopted in 2020, there are so few short-term rentals available that people who want to visit Hudson cannot find a place to stay. She asserted, "The law has not done anything to up the number of long-term rentals available."
Belton went on to say she thought the law was intended to make people sell their homes. "If you're not going to live here, sell it." Rony confirmed that was the intent of the law.
Addressing the concern about declining revenues from lodging tax, Rony declared, "It's a folly to rely so much on tourism. . . . Hudson is the 'it' place to visit right now, but two years from now things may be different."
In the end, it was agreed that the proposed amendment would be forwarded to the full Council for consideration without a recommendation from the Legal Committee.
COPYRIGHT 2025 CAROLE OSTERINK
The intent of the law was not to force people to sell their homes, it was so that out of town investors can’t purchase multiple properties and turn them into de facto hotels. The residency requirement alone does that and that’s a far as the law should have gone. But what is obvious, now and when the law was passed, is that its true intent was to be a “spite law.” Spite from its sponsor and supporters against their neighbors for having additional income sources, and spite against tourism. The sponsor of the law, was inspired by her distain for her neighbor’s STR. So she ran for the council, also campaigning on hoping that tourism would end and that many storefronts on Warren would shutter (said on a WGXC interview). Then, with the help of Tom “Rush Job” DP, pushed the law through without the vacancy study intended from the earlier STR moratorium. Which, by the way, is the modus operandi of this group of legislators: “no studies, no data, no time—tangible information gets in the way of our vibes-based governance.” We warned then that this law was ham fisted, spiteful and draconian. Then soon after the law passed, the sponsor of the bill herself, famously, set up a STR in her primary residence—albeit lawful under her own legislation—but obviously hypocritical to the spirit of her platform and self serving after eliminating much of her “competition.”
ReplyDeleteThe results after these several years: lodging tax gutted, and there’s nowhere to stay for visitors of modest means. Hotels are $400-$700 a night, many taken up by large wedding parties, leaving much of Warren a ghost town on Saturdays after 2pm. Many of the new businesses are luxury focused to match the well heeled hotel guests. An ironic outcome for the law’s sponsors, who once said on social media that she wanted to put up a sign for tourists walking past her house from the Amtrak station, reading “Luxury is for losers.”
Did this law lower the average rent? Did it free up more long term rental stock? No, these houses and buildings were sold off to richer people who could be weekenders and afford to leave it empty much of the week. Multi family homes were also sold and converted to single family, ending leases for the long term tenants in the non-STR units.
Here’s an anecdote from yours truly: while on a morning constitutional I happen to find myself within an earshot of the wife of one of the law’s supporting council members. She was recalling to a friend, gleefully, about how when the law was being passed, some acquaintances of theirs pleaded to them about how they would no longer be able to afford their intended retirement home anymore if they couldn’t rent it out while not there. That’s what I mean when I call it a spite law. I cannot wait for most of these bozos to get voted out in November. We need leadership that governs with integrity and data, not vibes and spitefulness.
And when some say it’s a folly to rely on tourism alone. That’s a fair point. We should look to expand and diversify our economy. But it’s not a zero sum game. Why be antagonistic to the businesses and entrepreneurs (most of them small and “mom and pop”) who have brought a renaissance to Hudson and kept the tax base afloat? If you want to see what Hudson would be like without tourism, just drive over the Rip Van Winkle bridge and keep going west. Look at the empty shells of towns in western Greene, Delaware and Schoharie Counties. Plenty of cheap places to live, beautiful scenery, but little hope and barely an economy. And nothing happens without state and federal aid. So if you want to lure new industry to Hudson, then start an ad hoc committee to find ways to encourage new business. Fix the damn schools so those businesses can attract young families. Work with the HDC, instead of just showing up to meetings just to air your grievances with your next door neighbor. You don’t build up Hudson by having the attitude of “I don’t participate in that economy, I don’t patronize those businesses, I don’t like new people in my town, so they should just go away.”
Well said Union Jack.
ReplyDeleteIf you want possessions, experiences, and a lifestyle you cannot afford?
Either earn more or want less.
(Wise people do both)
The answer is not to lobby your town municipality to seize your neighbor’s wallet so you can climb Maslow’s hierarchy on the backs of coercing your neighbours.
America’s system was built on “negative rights,” freedom from interference, not “positive rights,” entitlements to benefits.
If you want socialism, move to a socialist country with built in entitlement rights.
Here in America, personal responsibility is the deal, liberty (aka "negative rights") is the defining feature, not a bug.
That is why progressives keep running aground on the Constitution and why they remain perpetually discontent.
Rony, if you want to "incentivize" people to live here full-time, why don't you work on:
- lowering taxes
- improving the school to be in the top quartile, not bottom quartile of NYS rankings
- cutting red tape and decreasing anti-business rhetoric so that entrepreneurs and employers want to set up shop here and create more economic opportunity.
Wouldn't those remedies be better than coercing your fellow citizens in how they use their private property?
See:
Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, 1958.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
-https://www.constitutionalstudies.ca/2019/07/positive-and-negative-rights/
As almost always in Hudson, City Hall is part of the problem.
ReplyDelete