GUILDERLAND — Since the one-house state budget proposal includes a bill to regulate short-term rentals across New York, the town board here is taking a wait-and-see approach.

Guilderland’s supervisor, Peter Barber, a lawyer, drafted a bill to allow short-term rentals in town after Guilderland’s zoning board in November had sided with the town’s code-enforcement officer about an Airbnb on Becker Road, finding it in violation of town code.

Patricia Fahy is sponsoring the state bill in the Assembly while Michelle Hinchey is the sponsor in the Senate. Fahy represents part of Albany County while Hinchey represents Columbia and Greene counties and parts of Dutchess and Ulster counties. 

The state bill says its purpose is “to create a registration system for short term rentals in New York State and allow for the collection of sales tax & applicable occupancy tax generated from such rentals to the state and localities.”

“An exponential increase in the renting of short-term housing units is exacerbating New York’s housing crisis and severely straining what is an increasingly limited housing supply,” said Fahy and Hinchey in a statement released earlier this month, “removing units from the market, and ultimately, driving up the price of housing that is available for local residents in communities across the state.

The sponsors, both Democrats, said their bill would “level the playing field with existing hotels and motels by imposing both sales and occupancy taxes on short-term rentals, help drive transparency within the market, and expand housing supply for communities and residents, all while directing badly needed revenue into local governments’ coffers, enabling them to re-invest in their communities and long-term, local housing solutions.”

Guilderland hearing

Two people spoke to the town board on Tuesday during a public hearing on the Guilderland bill. The most substantive comments were made by Robert Randall, a Guilderland lawyer.

His biggest concern, Randall said, is preventing what happened in the Hudson Valley after the COVID virus and also in the Adirondacks, where he has a place.

“Prices went up,” Randall said of houses. “People bought them merely to rent them,” he said, stressing the current housing shortage.

“We need housing and you don’t, in my opinion, want people who aren’t going to live in a house to own a house and then just rent it out short-term a week at a time, a weekend at a time, a wedding at a time,” said Randall. “The people living next to them no longer have a neighbor; they have strangers living next to them.”

In addition to causing the neighborhood to deteriorate, he said, the short-term renters “don’t care about the schools, don’t really care about the town.”

He recommended bifurcating the law: People who are renting out a room in their home or who are renting an ancillary building on their property, like a carriage house, he said, should be distinguished from people renting an entire house.

“You should require that be their primary residence,” said Randall of people renting an entire house, noting that “primary residence” is not defined anywhere in the town’s zoning code.

The law as currently proposed puts a 240-day cap on the number of days a home can be rented short-term.

Renting out a house for eight months of the year, Randall said, means it is not a primary residence. Whole-house rentals shouldn’t be encouraged, he said, “because now that house isn’t on the market; it’s a hotel.”

He recommended, rather than capping the number of days for rentals, to limit the number of times, such as three or four times.

This would prevent having “absentee, non-occupying people buying property, taking it off the market and not wanting to sell it necessarily for a competitive price because it’s an extremely powerful source of income,” Randall said, citing a Lincoln Law Review article that said the typical national rate for short-term rentals is $166 a day.

“If you take away the profit motive,” Randall said, “that eliminates the industrial or commercial aspect of this.”

The five-page draft requires the owner of a short-term rental unit to fill out an application and pay an annual fee.

The bill also lays out a long list of safety regulations that must be followed such as smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors, fire extinguishers, operational doors, bedrooms — with no more than two occupants — having emergency exits, serviceable electrical and mechanical systems, vented fireplaces, off-street parking for one vehicle per bedroom, and weekly garbage disposal.

A property is not to be rented for more than 240 days per year unless “the short-term rental property or an immediately adjacent property is the principal residence of the short-term rental owner,” the draft says.

The owner is to supply renters with a list of the rules and to supply neighbors within 100 feet of the short-term rental with the name, address, and phone number of someone to contact who will address violations. That contact person is to document all complaints and responses and to submit them to the town’s chief building inspector within 24 hours.

The building inspector is allowed access to check for compliance, and tickets may be issued to owners for violations. A fine of not more than $950 per day may be levied.

Randall suggested rules like this could be applicable to people renting out a room or an ancillary building.

Robyn Gray, who chairs the Guilderland Coalition for Responsible Growth, told the board she found “some very disturbing things” in the draft.

She noted the standard for noise was different in the bill than in the town code to which board members replied the one-hour time difference in the morning would be aligned with the town code.

Gray also said requirements like having a “means of egress from each bedroom” or limiting bedroom occupancy to two people was “very unrealistic,” to which town board members replied those requirements were simply following fire code.

“What this document does is it regulates how a property owner can do business and I honestly don’t think you can do that,” said Gray.

Barber responded that the current town code doesn’t allow for short-term rentals.

“I think what we’re trying to do is make sure it’s done safely, complies with the safety and fire code, and also does not impact neighbors,”said Barber.

The Enterprise, on Dec. 13, had editorialized in favor of the town drafting a law for short-term rentals.

“How are you going to enforce this?” asked Gray. Referencing Jacqueline Coons, the town’s chief building and zoning inspector, she went on, “Jackie can’t enforce what she’s got.”

“They’ll have to register that they’re going to comply with all this,” responded Deputy Supervisor Christine Napierski.

Barber noted that Albany County’s planning board has to weigh in on the bill. He went on, “I want to see what the state does … [and] what our own planning board thinks about this and also consider some of the two pages of notes that I have here … Some good points were raised.”

While the state budget deadline is April 1, negotiations between the governor and legislators often run past that mark.

Barber suggested the public hearing be continued later and the board members agreed.

He concluded by reiterating, “The only reason why we’re doing it is because the zoning board said that short-term rentals were illegal in our town … so this was an attempt to try to allow it, allow it with reasonable regulations.”

Councilman Jacob Crawford added, “We know that there are properties that have done this and I don’t think there will be anything that will stop somebody from listing a property tomorrow to rent it out … but this will improve on what is there.”