It was a long journey to the successful adoption Tuesday of a municipal bylaw to regulate the kind of rentals offered through companies like Airbnb and VRBO in Berkshire County’s second largest community.
“As of last night, that would have been the 25th meeting in total in order to get this passed. It's gone to the city solicitor, it's gone through numerous committees, it keeps getting bounced back to General Government. I'm the chair of that one, so it keeps coming back to me. We found different reasons people didn't like it. We’ve had versions we've totally thrown out," said city councilor Wayne Wilkinson. “The problem was getting it to comply with state building code. That seemed to be the biggest hurdle. So, we had our building inspector Bill Meranti have a great deal of input in it. He found, finally found it met the specifications of building code.”
The true number of short-term rentals in North Adams is currently unknown.
“We know 125, we know that there's a whole lot more," said Wilkinson. "But until people register, we can't really tell. Some of the ones that have registered with the state, because they have to pay a tax to the state, we know that number, but we know that there's a whole lot of people that aren't registered with the state or registered with North Adams. It'll be interesting to find out how many we really have.”
Owner-occupied and owner-adjacent rentals are now allowed in most of North Adams. Owners must register with the city and keep properties up to residential building code.
“If you have a duplex side-by-side, this ordinance other than registration doesn't affect you at all," explained Wilkinson. "If you live in a four-family house, and one of the apartments is yours, this ordinance does not affect you at all. However, where it does start affecting people is when if you buy a house in North Adams, you don't live here, or you live in town and you're not living in the house, now there's inspections that need to be done. If you're going to do a business it should be treated like a business. So, they will need to go to a get a site plan permit from the planning board, and everybody in town that has a business or starts a business in North Adams has to go through a site plan, review with the planning board. They'll give you the requirements that they're looking for. They'll be all pretty standard. Get your permit and you start renting your property.”
The final version of the plan passed in a 7-2 vote with councilors Marie Harpin and Jennifer Barbeau in opposition. Harpin led a failed attempt during the meeting to amend the bylaw to remove a requirement for the city council to return to the planning board to make any future changes to it.
“In my understanding of this bill used to know what the definitions are, it's imperative that we have the planning board as part of that process, whether we want it to be faster or not," said Councilor Ashley Shade. "They certainly know those terms far better than we do. So, I think trying to pull them out of that process of making those changes doesn't work.”
Wilkinson says that with a short-term rental bylaw legally formalized, there are still a few steps before it can be fully realized in practice.
“We passed the ordinance last night, so I guess it's in effect," he told WAMC. "There is no grandfathering clause. I guess the only thing left to do is to figure out the fee for registration. And that's being handled by a different committee, and they are right now reviewing all the fees in North Adams. We're supposed to have final handle on that by the end of March. And then once the fee is determined, people have to start registry.”
