Threat of Short-term Rentals to mountain towns

I almost put that on the landlord then.  Jerk.  

ScottyJack wrote

Nope

You know any Ewoks who need an STR?

Are you an Ewok?

ScottyBot wrote

Are you an Ewok?

Ofcourse not, but you brought it up. Do you know any Ewoks? Enquiring minds want to know.

Looks like LP is going to do something to rein in ST rentals

https://www.facebook.com/events/1783376738437953/permalink/1783376741771286/

http://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/news/local-news/2018/12/dozens-show-for-vacation-rental-meeting/

From that article:

Here are few of the more notable points and explanations from the draft law:

• A short-term rental is a property that rents to a tenant for less than 30 days.

• Short-term property owners will require a permit that lasts for two years from the date of issue.

• You can’t get a permit unless you’re registered with the Essex County occupancy tax.

• The code enforcement officer can suspend and revoke permits.

• The price of a permit is $100 per bedroom in the property per year.

• The number of people allowed in one property will be based on a combination of sleeping rooms and bathrooms.

• No property shall exceed 16 occupants.

• Owners renting their properties for less than 14 days a year would require a no-cost permit.

• Property inspections would be at the discretion of the code enforcement officer.

• If a property owner receives complaints, he or she can be fined or put in jail for up to 15 days.

• A short-term rental has to be a minimum of three days..

• A contact person such as the owner or a caretaker must be within 30 minutes of the property by car in case of emergencies. The Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department would keep records of all contact people.

• No parking on lawns.

• Owners would submit a “good neighbor” policy to their renters.

• Events such as parties and weddings at vacation rentals can’t go past 10 p.m.

I can't imagine that the 3 day minimum will be in the final law. I'd imagine that people would want to rent their places out for one or two nights (like, a typical weekend?).

Yea the 3 day thing seemed suspiciously odd to me.

Could be the start of a solution though.  What do you guys think?

My take living with ST rentals nearby my house is that the min stay should be one week.  In you want to stay for a weekend go to a hotel or campgrounds there are plenty to choose from.  I agree from experience that the shorter the rental the more issues.

I like the requirement of having the owner or a caretaker within 30 mins.  Good for safety and problems plus blue collar locals will make money off this.  I’ve had dozens of time where a renter shows up at my door asking for help.  The driveways are close at the road so I think they assume I’m the owner.  I’ve also had to call the owner when thier idiot renters are causing trouble or having issues and the owner is 4 hours away.

They also should set the max occupancy at 2 adults per bedroom to prevent parties.  16 is way too many.  Also set a max number of cars allowed by the renter 2 or 3 max.  You can’t park on my road in the winter or the plow can’t can’t thru.  Technically the road is no parking but the state troopers are not going to ever drive down my dirt road much less write a ticket.

Hopefully Wilmington and Jay will quickly follow this lead.

The other thing to address is how many big events the area can support and which have become too big or problematic.  Lax tourney needs to go or be scaled back as that is the one event that is totally out of control.  Do we really need to have a full and half Ironman plus full and half marathons plus that stupid team running thing Ragnar { ?} blocking up the roads?  The other towns like Jay have zero say over this even though our roads are impacted and there is zero chance the LP board would touch this issue except maybe for the Lax issue as that is generally become a nuisance.

Z has been complaining about tourists in the tourist area that he willingly moved to since the beginning of this thread.

Z wrote

I’ve had dozens of time where a renter shows up at my door asking for help.  The driveways are close at the road so I think they assume I’m the owner.  I’ve also had to call the owner when thier idiot renters are causing trouble or having issues and the owner is 4 hours away.

I just had a great experience in an AirB in Spain. Not my favorite of four different rentals I've done in Europe. Somebody woke us up at 6am by pounding on our door and ringing our bell. He was really drunk, and the Spaniards tend to stay up late. Really late. He had the wrong apartment. No, I didnt open the door, no way.

Matt these rentals are fundamentally changing the Daks.  It’s putting high densities of tourists into residential neighborhoods where there is no regulation and no town cops.  Clearly a lot of people agree this is a problem if over 60 show up at a LP town meeting on the issue.  

It also prices regular familes out of the local housing market.  Pretty much every house built or sold in Wilmington in the past yr is a ST rental.

I have nothing against tourists or the money they bring to the area but they should stay in the proper infrastructre built to house them safely and not impacting residents.  STR also don’t support local businesses the same way hotel stays do as they don’t eat out as much and take business away from local lodging businesses while many also avoid paying county taxes.

Z wrote

.
I have nothing against tourists or the money they bring to the area but they should stay in the proper infrastructre built to house them safely and not impacting residents.  STR also don’t support local businesses the same way hotel stays do as they don’t eat out as much and take business away from local lodging businesses while many also avoid paying county taxes.

This is a typical argument from you.

"I have nothing against X, but here are the things I hate about X"

All you have to do is look back in this thread to see all the bitching you do.

You don't like Ironman athletes or Lacrosse players or whoever is coming to your community to spread their money around, there's a real easy solution: Move.

There's actually an easier solution, though it seems impossible for you: stop whining.

MC2 5678F589 wrote

From that article:

Here are few of the more notable points and explanations from the draft law:

• A short-term rental is a property that rents to a tenant for less than 30 days.

• Short-term property owners will require a permit that lasts for two years from the date of issue.

• You can’t get a permit unless you’re registered with the Essex County occupancy tax.

• The code enforcement officer can suspend and revoke permits.

• The price of a permit is $100 per bedroom in the property per year.

• The number of people allowed in one property will be based on a combination of sleeping rooms and bathrooms.

• No property shall exceed 16 occupants.

• Owners renting their properties for less than 14 days a year would require a no-cost permit.

• Property inspections would be at the discretion of the code enforcement officer.

• If a property owner receives complaints, he or she can be fined or put in jail for up to 15 days.

• A short-term rental has to be a minimum of three days..

• A contact person such as the owner or a caretaker must be within 30 minutes of the property by car in case of emergencies. The Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department would keep records of all contact people.

• No parking on lawns.

• Owners would submit a “good neighbor” policy to their renters.

• Events such as parties and weddings at vacation rentals can’t go past 10 p.m.

I can't imagine that the 3 day minimum will be in the final law. I'd imagine that people would want to rent their places out for one or two nights (like, a typical weekend?).

So more government regulation when there are probably ordinances on the books already to deal with these situations (illegal parking, noise, drunk and disorderly). I guess people in Lake Placid like to think that they are the first community to have to deal with these problems. This stuff has been going on at beach communities since the 1960s.

There is something in this mess for everybody except the property owners. The property owners get to pay out more money and risk fines and jail time because the town and the county won't enforce the current laws and regulations because they refuse to hire law enforcement. The property owners get more regulations, yet they still have to pay full  property taxes, despite never using the schools.

Even the lawyers get a taste with the jail time part.

The 3 day minimum is a joke.

MC
You don’t live inside the blue line so you don’t understand what is going on.  There are restrictions on growing towns boarders and how much land can be built on.  If you take the housing stock up for STRs then there are dramatically fewer homes for those that live here.  It’s not like the Saratoga area or Suburbs down south where urban sprawl can just keep growing in every direction.  There are already issues where there are not nearly enough workers to staff the tourists businesses.  My 15 yr Old was making almost 20bucks an hour in his first job as a case in point this summer.  Prices have to go up in all businesses - LPPB now has an 18 burger that doesn’t even come with fries.  LP is becoming like Aspen a place just for the super rich.  You should be against this as well.  

Neither one of us wants sprawl here in the Daks I’m sure.  You can’t have it both ways so these STRs need to reined in.

A lot of my family lives inside the blue line. None of them live in tourist area's. Lake Placid was started by the rich and it will be supported by the rich. As MC has said you may want to move if you don't like tourists. There are few tourist areas in the Dacks, and anything that can be done to continue their growth and spur their economy should be done. If not they will roll up and die.

Z - don't you live in a gated community in Jay?

That's not LP, although I can see why you might gravitate to it as your home town.  You could just as easily drive to SL or Plattsburgh for whatever you need.

LP has always been the way you speak of.  At least as long as I can remember.  Those mansions on Mirror lake and Lake Placid didn't pop up there overnight.  There were always overpriced shops and restaurants on Main St.  At least since the Olympics in 1980, which is as far back as I could possibly remember.

I really dislike the NIMBY attitude.  People always want the things like economic growth, recreation, land fills, airports, etc until it ends up affecting them negatively.  Then it's an issue and you try to legislate it out.

Dude, you love it.

You're happy there are building restrictions & you're happy there are high wages for your son.

You're going to get top dollar for your house when you sell it and move to Driggs (although you'll probably choose Alta, WY to avoid those pesky income taxes). And the people that buy it from you might pay that high price because they think they'll be able to rent it out sometimes to defray some costs.

There wouldn't be NIMBYism without whining NIMBYs. You just want to have your cake (open spaces, proximity to skiing, small town feel, public lands, public ski area, nice MTB trails, good job opportunities for your kid, etc.) and eat it too (without any intrusion of high prices, new building developments, Ironman athletes, Lacrosse players, or pesky tourists).

It's fine to think that way, but you have to own it. You don't give a shit about poor or middle class people (if you do, this is a VERY recent development). Those wages your son was making are there for them, too. And the communities around you (Saranac Lake, ETown, Ausable Forks) are still relatively inexpensive. You aren't a hotel owner (who has a vested interest in ensuring a fair playing field with respect to STR), you're just upset that the riff raff is getting to close to you and you want to complain about some homeowning white person problems.

Just become the Wyoming Republican you're destined to be. A couple years there, then you can complain that area is getting too popular and overrun with tourists and you can move somewhere else.

Camp also makes a good point.  You can definitely move to another area within the blue line and not have to deal with any of those things you don't like, but you'll also lose all the things that I'm pretty sure drew you there.

And I do understand the housing issues, but if I'm not mistaken, most people who work in a place like LP don't live there.  It's not affordable to do so.

I've spent the last 5+ years meticulously checking real estate in that area because I plan to buy a house there in the next decade.  It's just the way it is.

Over Thanksgiving I was reading my parents subscription of Adirondack Life. I chuckled as I thought it has turned into a really nice real-estate advertising magazine with a few good articles. I like the articles as they have good content but it's hard to find a page in that mag that doesn't have some mansion, huge parcel of land, camp, whatever that's millions of dollars.

My sis, who lives in Northville, made the comment that she wonders how many people really view the Dacks like that. What really goes on up there is an extremely hard way of life, people living in trailers, rundown homes scrambling to fix leaky roofs and get wood in before winter sets in.