This story by Liberty Darr was first published in The Citizen on Oct. 12.
Some Charlotte residents have expressed concern over short-term rentals — like those found on Airbnb and VRBO — and are urging the selectboard to regulate them.
After learning that a nearby house was operating as an Airbnb rental with no permanent owner living there, several neighbors brought their concerns to both the selectboard and planning commission.
They say issues arose at the location one weekend when over a dozen cars were parked at the house, which spilled over to the property next door, as well as complaints over “disruptive” traffic on the private road.
“In effect, it has become a purely commercial enterprise in a residential neighborhood. We don’t know how extensive a practice this has become in our town, but it is very disconcerting to those of us who are permanent residents,” resident and former Charlotte House representative, Mike Yantachka wrote in a letter to the selectboard signed by four of his neighbors. “Short-term rental properties are characterized by continuously changing occupants who are unfamiliar with the neighborhood and the understandings we neighbors have concerning behavior, road maintenance and protocol, and property boundaries.”
According to AirDNA data, as of August there were 53 active short-term rental listings available in Charlotte, a 7 percent decrease from that same month last year. In total, over 904 nights were booked across all properties for that same month.
For reference, data also shows that the neighboring city of South Burlington had 75 active short-term rentals in March.
“We have two points of entry into town which are very tourist-intensive,” Charlie Pughe, chair of the planning commission, said at a selectboard meeting last week. “We have the ferry that comes in multiple times a day. We also have Mount Philo, which is the single most used state park in Vermont. I think we need to figure out what that does and how we capitalize that as we move forward as a community.”
Pughe said short-term rentals are one of those things Charlotte needs to look at when talking about its future.
Currently, Charlotte has no mechanism to regulate short-term rentals.
According to town planner Larry Lewack, short-term rentals are regulated through an ordinance that starts at the selectboard level, not through land use regulations.
In towns that regulate them, the process starts with an ordinance “adopted by the legislative body of the town or municipality that sets forth the terms under which short-term rentals can operate and usually involves a registration fee and having some enforcement by the town,” he said.
Yantachka said that in addition to property concerns, neighbors fear that short-term rentals also negatively impact housing availability when properties are bought solely for commercial use.
“There are people that would like to move to Charlotte because they’re offered a job, but they just can’t find a place to buy,” he said. “These are really commercial properties, and they need to be in a special category. They’re not the same as somebody renting out a couple of rooms in their house during ski season.”
Selectboard member Kelly Devine suggested that the planning commission and selectboard work together to set up a rental registration that would allow the selectboard to gather data before considering future regulations.
“We’d have data on a variety of things, including how often they rent to someone, and we could also capture some of the short-term rentals, hopefully, that we know are not going through the state tax system now because they’re not operating through one of the online services that remits to the state,” Devine said.
No formal decisions were taken, but selectboard chair Jim Faulkner did suggest that the board revisit the issue.
“Certainly, enough interest has surfaced on short-term rental rentals that I think that we should put it on the agenda again, and come up with some kind of plan,” he said. “I think we’re at a point now that there’s enough interest to move forward.”