Planning Commission recommends short-term rental regulations

The commission presented its plans to the Stowe Selectboard Wednesday after this paper went to print.

In 2022, the Stowe Reporter published a comprehensive report looking at the growth and effects of short-term rentals and found that at least a quarter of residences in Stowe were in the short-term rental game, a number that’s likely grown since.

The town has focused on short-term rental regulations in the past year, which would most likely take the form of an ordinance, alongside implementing a wide range of other zoning bylaw changes to address Stowe’s housing issues.

The discussion of short-term rentals kicked off in March when the Stowe Selectboard hosted a general forum. In June, another forum touched on the formation of a rental registry.

With the input of other commission members, at an Oct. 30 meeting John Muldoon outlined 10 distinct areas of regulation around short-term rentals the commission should consider in its recommendation to the selectboard.

These ideas centered around establishment of a rental registry, accompanied by some kind of fee structure, safety requirements, parking and insurance requirements, zoning designations, managing the stock of the short-term rentals and potentially requiring state residency for short-term rentals in Stowe.

The response at the well-attended October meeting contained a mixture of positive feedback and general concern. Despite reassurances from board chair Mila Lonetto, some Stowe residents with on-property short-term rentals fear any form of regulation will make their homes unaffordable.

At the second work session held Monday, the meeting opened with, and was periodically interrupted by commission member Neil Percy, who objected to anything more than a registry and some perfunctory fees to cover the estimated cost of $80,000 it will cost to manage the registry.

Percy repeatedly asserted that the regulations being proposed by the commission were an overreach, an assertion rebuffed by Lonetto.

“Primary homeownership in Stowe has been declining for 40 years, but short-term rentals are not the problem,” said Percy, noting he’s the only member of the commission who’s spent his entire life in the town, and that short-term rental income was his only source of retirement.

Half of the eight-person commission acknowledged over the course of the two work sessions that they too owned some kind of rental property.

Barre attorney Brooke Dingledine, who has been a consistent video presence at many of the town’s discussions regarding short-term rentals, warned the commission against advocating for any legally indefensible regulations.

Dingledine has been attending these hearings in support of her clients, Amy and Weston Noyes. The couple are Vermonters but not Stowe residents, and she said the Westons bought a house in Stowe after it had been on the market for seven years, fixed it up and now regularly rent it out.

They’re not fans of the town’s attempt to regulate their business, especially if it means penalizing them for not being Stowe residents.

“This is not how Vermonters treat Vermonters,” Amy Noyes said at the meeting.

While Lonetto argued that many residents feel “there’s a real loss of something in the community” as a growing number of wealthy residents squeeze out the working class, Percy argued that an ordinance that goes beyond the establishment of a registry will “take away people’s property rights.”

In the end, the commission will recommend to the selectboard to use fees to regulate the short-term rental stock in Stowe to include a tiered system that differentiates between people who live in Stowe and those who do not, and by the frequency with which properties are rented.

The commission also recommended the town institute a moratorium on any new short-term rentals while the regulatory system for the current set is implemented.