Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I guess I have the $64,000 question. What is the rationale for any cap on short-term rentals? And what is the rationale for limiting it to 90 days? Because I was, you know, we haven't seen anything that says there's a problem that needs to be addressed i mean one of the comments was that it was a solution in search of a problem and uh i i'd really like to know if there is some problem that this 90-day cap or any cap is trying to address so i guess it's for the law committee

Well, can I follow up? Has the city council or ordinance committee articulated any rationale for the cap or for the 90 days to the law department?

Well, unless I misunderstand it for the autonomous category does not have to be the owner's primary residence who happens to not be there. So, I mean, I don't understand if there's fear that they're just going to rent things out while not living there. I mean, it has to be their primary residence.

All right. I would still like to know what the problem is and why the 90 days was selected rather than 120 days, 180 or none whatsoever. And I'm not sure if.

THANK YOU, MR. CHAIR. MY QUESTIONS ARE VERY HIGH LEVEL. I THINK I BROUGHT THIS UP LAST TIME. Kind of 3 questions all similar, but the 1st, 1 is. I'm sure there's some history to this, but I still am having a hard time understanding why. A lot of the detailed, like, you know, the registration booking details. Process enforcement, why that's all in. The zoning were proposed to be in a zoning ordinance. Um. You know, so much of this is, I'm going to call it. runs with the applicant, whereas zoning really should be running with the land. And I get a little nervous. I don't want Airbnb to try to su

Yeah, but I'm still confused. Are there any other municipalities? All the ones I've looked at so far, the registration, what's the best word? All the condo requirements, all of that, that's not in zoning, right? Those aren't a separate general ordinance that doesn't have to you know for example if um if um peter or isd wants to change something in two months do they have to go through us again whereas if it's not if it's not in the zoning they can go to city council directly and make those changes and not have to go through this whole process and so i was just curious

Hi, I have two questions. The first one is. So I generally. I'm kind of not sure. About distinguishing between, like, owner adjacent short term rental and autonomous unit short term rental. I understand the definitions and why they're different. Um, as opposed to, like, why 1 of them will require 90 days as opposed to, or an arbitrary amount of days and 1 wouldn't. Um, I think is like a secondary thing that I'm thinking about, but the primary thing I think about when I think about these definitions is. at the end of the day, if this passes, we'll have a collection or a data set of these STRs t

Sitting the wrong thing. So of the 500 estimated unregistered STRs, are they listing things on Airbnb and VRBO? And so if that's the case, there's no way to have pulled them in now. And that's what the whole point of this registration and the booking agency is going to do. I mean, I guess that's two parts. But are they listed now on the big three, let's say?

And there's no way now of insisting that they get registered?

Thank you, and thank you to all my colleagues for such good, smart questions and discussion leading up to this. my feeling is maybe what folks are getting at it's it's the owner occupied in particular relative to the cap um that feels like that one doesn't seem necessary to me this is when someone is sharing a space in your home um owner jason is a little bit different and then autonomous i think that does start to stretch into we're in a an environment where housing is very tight And so my understanding or my guess is obviously the reason to do this is to, to, um, discourage uh um um home ren

Unless I missed something and you're saying it is written somewhere else. If this is kind of the first time it's codified in some way, it's just a point of thinking about what is it. Yeah.

Thank you. I think Mary Flynn has articulated all of my positions on this. I think giving ISD the power to enforce and to pick up the 500 unregistered SRTs is really the need and the purpose of this zoning ordinance. I don't see any reason for any cap without having heard any real rationale for it. Certainly for the owner occupied and owner adjacent, and given that the autonomous has to be the owner's primary resident, but they happen not to be there for some particular period of time, I don't really see a need for any cap there either. If there was going to be any cap, I guess, you know, the

Thank you. So Mary Latiker articulated kind of the two points that I wanted to make. One of which is thank you all for asking the questions that I was going to ask. I appreciate that. The second is, Yeah, that I also am compelled by all of the public feedback that we got regarding the cap. And I do think that for the autonomous units, there is reason to, I think we could catch some people who are fudging the definition of primary residence, and that may be a five-month cap. I think, Ted, my definition of primary residence is six months and a day, which I think is similar to that 183 days gap.

Thank you. I was just going to say, you know, I understand at some point maybe the thought was like having a cap would help us or help people who want to rent short-term not to and to rent long-term and open up the number of units that are available to people. And it sounds like if there's only 500, not only, but if there's 500 and not like, you know, 3000 units or more than that, that are unlisted, but out there, that property is a lesser concern than everyone expected to be. So I'm in agreement with that. PB, Lupita D Montoya, rest of the board that I you know 90 days or even if it's like a

Yeah, just agreeing again with all the colleagues. I think everyone said a lot of great points. I agree with no cap. If there is one for autonomous, I feel like it should be done after the fact, not in the first place. I think that it'd be interesting to see some data for that and see if that's being abused. And then I think I heard some stories about the, you know, living in one place in Cambridge and then buying in Cambridge. So your previous Cambridge place became your short-term rental. To me, that's like another level above autonomous where you're still a resident of Cambridge. So I don't

Mr. Chair, I have a question. Sure. For Swathi, probably, maybe Jeff. It was particularly noticeable in the comments we got today that a lot of the emails only had the sender's first name and no address. I was wondering if there was some way that when we get emails, that we can see who they are actually from and the address. Because, you know, when they speak here, they are supposed to be doing that.