STOP THE TOWN OF WINDHAM SHORT-TERM RENTAL DRAFT LAW

I. Petition Recipients: 
Town Board of Windham, NY to include Thomas Hoyt, Town Supervisor, Wayne Vanvalin, Councilman, Ian Peters, Councilman, Kurt Goettsche, Councilman, Steven Walker, Councilman and Town Planning Board of Windham, NY to include Edward Shanley, Claudia Lane, Tom Poelker, Lisa Jaeger, David Weiman, Bonnie Poehmel, Town Clerk, Tor Tryland, Chief of Windham Police Department

II. Summary of Town of Windham Short-term Rental Draft Law:

Scope of Application: Jurisdictions directly affected would include Windham, Maplecrest and Hensonville.

Implementation Date: April 1, 2021

Occupancy Cap: 100 days of renting per calendar year

Short-Term Rental Permit Cap: Only 150 permits issued in TOTAL FOREVER for the jurisdictions of Windham, Hensonville and Maplecrest. There will be no additional permits issued, nor can you freely transfer or trade them.

Automobile Cap: Only 1 car per each bedroom in your house

Guest Cap: Total guests will be limited to 2.5x the number of bedrooms in your home. For example, if you have two bedrooms, only 5 people can stay in your home. This effectively bans allowing your guests to sleep on a pull out sofa in your living room.

Burdensome and Intrusive Reporting Requirements: Short-term rental owners would have to collect the name, residential address and phone number of each guest staying at a rental. This information would be made available to law enforcement freely without any restrictions. Do you believe the police should know where you vacation or spend your weekend?? Talk about an invasion of privacy.

Exorbitant Fees: Minimum base fee of $200 to $1,200 per year plus additional fees of $200, $500, $250 and $100 for other violations.

No More Outdoor Fires after 10:00pm: Would you like to make smores outside in your firepit at 10:01pm with your family? Sorry the nanny town council says no you can’t do that.

Unsatisfactory Appeal Process: If the Town decides to revoke your STR permit, they will immediately shut you down for a minimum of 30 days. The appeal process can only start after 30 days from receipt of the revocation and during that the appeal is in process the home may not be rented out. Furthermore, there is a problematic and open ended provision which allows the Town to drain your hard-earned $ with no limitations. The legislative proposal states that “any property owner found in willful violation of the provision of this Local Law shall be required to reimburse the Town for its reasonable costs of enforcement, including reimbursement for staff time and reasonable attorney’s fees."

III. Discussion and Rationale of why the proposed Town of Windham Short-term Rental Draft Law is flawed

The Town Board of Windham, NY is considering a legislative proposal to regulate and severely restrict short-term rentals within the jurisdictions of Windham, Hensonville and Maplecrest in Upstate New York. The proposal among many items seeks to implement unenforceable regulations around garbage pickup, guest limitations, a cap on the number of days in a calendar year that a property owner can rent out their home to 100 days, a maximum of 150 short-term rental permits among many items (see Section II above for a more comprehensive summary). Furthermore, the proposal also contemplates a permitting scheme which would require every owner to register and pay unnecessary taxes above and beyond the existing property taxes.

Why is the Town of Windham's legislative proposal a bad idea? There are so many reasons!

1) Airbnbs and local property owners collectively pay millions of dollars of local wages to local workers including plumbers, electricians, cleaning ladies, maintenance men, landscapers and other businesses to service their properties. The property owners are responsible and fair and pay good hourly rates and wages to their local employees. Many make an effort to hire locals and their businesses first and foremost. Placing a cap of 100 days would effectively slash the incomes of these hard working people by over 50% with one fall swoop. Rural communities already struggle with good paying employment opportunities and this proposal would only make things worse. Many of these businesses are tied to the number and volume of visitors that come up to the area, if that becomes restricted than the flow of business will come down.

2) The United States is littered with a trail of municipalities who have embarked down a similar path. Creating a cap and permitting scheme creates massive disincentives in property prices, wages and reduces the consumer/tourist's choice when it comes to lodging options. Ski towns that have enacted similar measures have experienced the following after adoption of similar proposals: 1) property market recalibrates between jurisdictions that enact and don't enact restrictions. For example, if Windham were to adopt this legislation and surrounding municipalities do not, one would observe a bifurcation in property prices. Property values in Windham would adjust downward and trade at a discount to property values in unrestricted jurisdictions. The reason is simple as in anything else in life if you offer two similar items for sale and one has a restriction and the other does not, the one with no restrictions will fetch a higher price. This can clearly be observed in many rural ski areas across the USA but just to name a few: communities in VT and NM have witnessed these premium/discount differentials in property prices. This is not solely a second home owner issue but a local issue as well. Many locals own their own homes and businesses on land/property that they own. In many cases, a significant portion of their wealth is tied to their business property's and their home's value. Enacting this legislative proposal would not only impact their incomes but their housing/property wealth as well.

3) It is often said that "a bad law is a law that cannot be enforced". Many of the provisions in the Town Board's proposal are simply unenforceable without a massive investment of resources that would be cost prohibitive. The provisions around garbage pickup and counting of cars in driveway are just a few examples. The Town of Windham simply does not have the resources to monitor and enforce these absurd restrictions. The Town does not have a full time 24/7 police department as it stands and many calls are rolled over to the Greene County Sheriff and then to the New York State Police. Response times for serious issues like reports of property tresspassing some times can take up to 45 mins for law enforcement to respond to. This all begs the question "Who will the town of Windham send to count cars and garbage cans and enforce these laws?" "How will tourists feel when they are harassed by inspectors and/or law enforcement to count cars and garbage cans?"

Furthermore, this proposal points out the Town Board's laziness. Proper public planning requires comprehensive studies based upon solid data which are shared with the public in advance of any potential legislative action. The Town Board has failed to make a study on the issue with the relevant stakeholders and share it with the community ahead of the proposed legislative action. The Town Board itself admits that "over 90% of Airbnb rentals present no problem". Where did they get this data from? What studies and surveys did they conduct beforehand? If the overwhelming amount of short-term rentals are not problematic why go with drag-net ensnare all approach?

The Town Board wants to create a new regulatory scheme solely to grab power and enrich special interests under the guise of "public safety" and "quality of life". There are existing methods and ordinances to deal with any short-term rental bad actors. Chief among them all is that Airbnb has an established reporting phone number and online form to report "bad Airbnb actors" which they will remove from the platform. Airbnb is highly incentivized to address any and all bad actors because it is in their self interest that municipalities do not restrict their activity. We do not need to create new and unnecessary laws to punish the "over 90%" of property owners when exiting methods and protocols exist.

4) America is a free country. What the Town Board is trying to do is despicable and completely unAmerican. In America, when you buy private property, pay your taxes and do not commit crimes you are entitled to have who you want on your property so long as you are not endangering others. The Town Board has 0 right to dictate what one can and cannot do on their own land in this egregious matter. The Town Board is trying to ram through a legislative proposal during an era of COVID travel restrictions knowing full well that it will be difficult for a core constituency of second home owners may be unable to attend/lobby the Town Board in person.

5) Second home owners contribute in a significant manner to the area via the payment of the majority of local property tax revenues. Ramming through such a proposal without actively seeking their input on this proposal is nothing short of shameful, arrogant and uncooperative.

6) The Town of Windham Board held a meeting on the night before Thanksgiving and released the draft text on Thanksgiving day. It could be a coincidence but more likely it seems a tactic to slip this under the radar. What does this tell you about their tactics and their real underlying intentions?

7) The majority of out of town tourists are residents from New York City and New Jersey with good disposable incomes. These are attractive tourists to have as they spend significantly when they visit Windham and the Catskill Mountains. They are seeking more than ever cabins and single family homes to stay in vs. outdated, crowded and aesthetically unappealing hotels/motels. Placing these restrictions in place will reduce consumer choice and inevitably send these tourists into surrounding unrestricted locales or other regions (e.g., Adirondacks and Southern VT).

Why is the Town Board considering such a flawed idea in the first place?

We can only speculate at the moment. However, we believe local hoteling and lodging interests have put their tentacles into some or all of the sitting Town Board members. These interests represent some of the lodges and hotels that have failed to adapt, innovate and renovate their facilities to provide the amenities that out of town visitors expect. Rather than take the constructive positive and American approach of innovating and reinventing themselves these interests have taken to undemocratic methods to beat their competition. They are utilizing the Windham Town Board to snuff out their competition via legislation rather than compete for and earn their customer's business. These interests have failed to innovate and it is not the responsibility of local property owners, businesses and local employees to shoulder their losses via a government dictate.