Chester board bans new, unhosted short-term rentals for six months

By Shawn Cunningham
©2023 Telegraph Publishing LLC

On Wednesday night, after much discussion and public comment, the Chester Select Board voted to impose a six-month moratorium on new unhosted short-term rentals beginning on Oct. 1.

The suggestion for the moratorium came from Zoning Administrator Preston Bristow, who pointed out that there are seven such rentals — or 1/4 of the 28 homes — in the Stone Village District. He added that several other houses in the village are currently for sale or are expected to be put on the market soon.

The Stone Village is one of two districts in Chester on the National Register of Historic Places.

Last December, the town enacted an ordinance requiring short-term rentals to be registered and hired the company Granicus to monitor compliance and construct a registration portal. The company missed its April deadline and seems unable to say when the work will be complete.

Bristow told the board that – rather than waiting – on Aug. 25, Lister Cathy Hasbrouck used some data from Granicus to send a letter and registration forms to the owners of 54 addresses that are advertising on rental platforms like Airbnb and VRBO.

During Wednesday’s meeting, board chair Arne Jonynas said that citizens have been vocal about the growth — especially of unhosted rentals — and that without the data they expected from registrations, it’s difficult to know how to handle the problem. He then suggested that Bristow’s moratorium be extended to the entire town “just to give us some breathing room” to figure out what to do.

Board member Arianna Knapp said that the six months — ending March 31, 2024 — should be used to actively pursue information and ideas toward a solution.

“I want to make it clear to the community that the six months should be six months of work to see where we’ll be at the end of six months,” said Knapp.

Hasbrouck presented a map of Chester festooned with push pins, each of which representing a short-term rental.

But several in the audience objected to the proposal. “I would urge you not to do that because you will make national news,” said Chester resident Joe Karl, who is also a real estate agent.

He noted that of the pins on the map, he would guarantee that one third don’t meet fire and safety standards. “I’d rather see you go after that than say welcome to Chester, buy a house but you can’t rent it for six months because we don’t know what we are doing.”

Karl said there are fire and safety violations, septic issues and zoning violations to be pursued rather than stopping new STRs for six months.

“When I hear comments like that,” responded Jonynas, “those are exactly the reasons we should have a moratorium.”

Hugh Quinn, speaking as a private citizen and not on behalf of the Planning Commission that he chairs, said that the idea of a waiting period that must be observed after a house is sold and before it can be a short-term rental is actually on the Vermont Short-Term Rental Alliance website. That group is a lobbying organization for members who own such rentals. Quinn noted that the waiting period is intended to discourage real estate investors from purchasing homes where they neither live nor participate in the community. The alliance suggests a waiting period of two to three years.

Board member Lee Gustafson expressed concern about current residents whose ability to sell their houses could be negatively impacted by regulation of short-term rentals.

Ian Montgomery, a Stone Village resident and owner of a hosted short-term rental, said that the board is afraid of a bogeyman – real estate investors buying up Chester – but most of the people he knows are second homeowners who are “occasionally renting out their properties.”

“The Airbnb business is not booming, we have not had hardly one rental this summer,” said Montgomery. “We have one rental in October … and it’s rented out for the ski season.” Montgomery said there’s an attitude of fear that’s unreasonable, that the Stone Village is not likely to become some sort of hotel and that a six-month moratorium will only result in “people spinning their wheels and nothing’s going to happen.”

Knapp asserted that if the market is not that hot, then half a year moratorium should not be a problem.

On the other hand, Stone Village resident Kathy Giurtino spoke of losing neighbors and living in an area of houses that are empty most of the time.

“Chester has tourist accommodations. We don’t need unhosted  rentals,” said Giurtino asserting that the greater cost to the town is in losing residents and neighbors.

Zoning regulations, Giurtino said, give neighbors a voice if someone comes in with a “pig farm or tire shop” but not when they open short-term rentals. “Let the people there have a voice.”

In answer to several comments, Gustafson said that there are a number of questions that the Select Board will have to work on and the decisions it makes probably won’t make everybody happy. But he asked people to be patient with the board taking six months to get a better understanding of the issues and work on solutions.

After an hour of discussion among the board and those attending in person and via Zoom, Jonynas made a motion, which was amended and fine-tuned into the following form:

“No short-term, unhosted rental registration be granted for six months after the date of Oct. 1, 2023 for any property in the Town of Chester not currently operating as an STR.” The motion passed and board members spoke about the need to keep working on these issues during the moratorium.

On Thursday, Bristow told The Telegraph that if someone begins advertising a short-term rental during the moratorium, he would inform them that they were in violation and if it continued he would issue violation tickets as prescribed in the Short Term Rental Ordinance. Bristow said the town will continue to get listing data from Granicus and also rely on word of mouth to monitor violations.