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04/17/2018 03:15 PMFor your next vacation, want to skip the hotels and use someone else’s comfortable apartment as a home base, and maybe rent out your place to someone seeking to visit your home turf? There’s an app for that. Want to instead spend your summer enjoying your peaceful neighborhood, free from constant traffic and loud parties?
There’s no app for that, but in Chester, town officials are considering new regulations that would limit commercial use of residential properties abusing Airbnb-style rentals.
With the motivation for the new regs based on numerous complaints centered on a single property, however, the town is also considering whether new rules are a solution, or if it would be better to simply enforce the standards already on the books.
About 30 residents attended the April 12 Planning & Zoning Commission public hearing on a petition to amend zoning regulations for short-term, Airbnb-style rentals. The proposal would add short term rentals as a use that would require the property owner interested in short-term rentals to apply for a special exception and would define the short-term use and permit process. A full copy of the draft regulation is available on the town website chesterct.org.
From the statements of those who spoke at the meeting, it was clear that the house at 18 East Liberty Street, marketed online as Liberty Manor, is the source of most of the current concern. Common themes expressed centered on safety, preserving Chester’s small-town identity, and the reality of decreasing property values due to events taking place at the property.
Resident Karli Spinella presented a calendar highlighting the dates when Liberty Manor was rented out for commercial use such as weddings, filming of a movie, or large parties last year. She said it took up almost the entirety of the summer. Since there was no down-time between rentals of this property in the past, Spinella wants there to be regulations on how often and for what length of time the property can be rented out.
Resident Dave Fortin expressed concern with regulations that address the number vehicles allowed on a property, noting that he witnessed a party arriving with the proper number of vehicles to fit available parking, “except they’re all 16-passenger vans, so now you need to decide what constitutes a vehicle.”
Carol Reardon, an East Liberty Street resident who said she had fireworks from Liberty Manor hit her house, suggested following Hartford’s regulations for rental properties, which “requires that a property can only be used three times in a six-month period and...that a property cannot be rented for more than 21 cumulative days in six months.”
Reardon also believes the rental of Liberty Manor as a commercial property in a residential zone has destroyed the property value of her own home.
“It’s so discouraging to see what’s happening, my house is worth nothing.”
Resident Joel Severance, who serves as the town emergency management director, chairman of the Harbor Management Commission, and on the Board of Fire Commissioners, raised additional concerns about the use of the site.
He noted illegal fireworks, failure to maintain a fire lane, and increased traffic volume in the residential neighborhood, and also questioned the water quality impact from possible overuse of septic systems at the East Liberty property.
While this single property has created the uproar in Chester, the commission’s lawyer, Syliva Rutkowska, said the regulations would be crafted with the entire town in mind. She clarified that the regulations are “not specific to one particular property. They were generated by the commission in an attempt to resolve some ongoing concerns.”
Under the regulations, Rutkowska said the town’s zoning compliance officer for enforcing the rules, though she noted, “They have limited ability to enter the property.”
Speakers had some ideas on how to improve the regulation. Regarding the regulation’s proposal to allow for a local manager 30 minutes or 15 miles from the site, Spinella thought the owner should be “onsite or tangential to the property...because otherwise it is left up to us [neighbors] every time there is a problem there we have to call somebody and that’s not our job.”
Resident Conor McKevitt suggested that a special event application be applied for every time the unit is rented out instead of being applied for once for the entire year as it is presented.
In the final few minutes of the hearing, the commission clarified that instead of creating new regulations for renting residential properties, it is possible to not have any regulations for short-term at all.
With no short-term rental regulation, the Planning & Zoning Commission would instead cite the property owner with a zoning violation for renting out a residentially zoned property as a commercial, not residential, use.
The commission scheduled a special meeting on Monday, April 30 at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall to further discuss the amendments. Any comments or suggestions can be submitted in writing to the zoning compliance officer at zoningofficial@chesterct.org.