To the editor:
As a 25-year member of the Planning Board and as the initiator of Article 39 Citizens’ Petition, I take exception to Ms. Davis’ letter to the editor regarding proposed amendments to the Short-Term Rental (STR) bylaw. There are many misstatements of fact within it:
Article 39 is not seeking to “quash” the bylaw, only to amend it to make it fairer for all members of our community.
The bylaw, as written, does not “support year-round residents and seasonal workers who cannot find housing they can afford” when it deprives 1/3 of our residents of rights afforded to others including property owners that do not even live here.
Any logical person reading the amendment offered by Article 39 can see it has a legitimate purpose, not “killing the bylaw.”
Treating all members of our community equally, as is being proposed, is not “a nonsensical approach to addressing the town’s housing crisis.” It also does not turn “long-term rentals into short-term rentals” as a tenant in a long-term rental could only do STR if they actually live there. Helping to keep renters in place certainly does not “erode our neighborhoods.” Nor will it “cost taxpayers more” to treat everyone equally.
“The current bylaw seeks to create stable housing” is completely false. Punishing the less wealthy members of our community by making it harder for them to afford to live here in no way creates “stable housing.”
The adverse impact created by the bylaw was first noted in the Housing Sub-Committee of the Planning Board and Selectboard in August of 2022. As a Planning Board member of the sub-committee, I asked Ms. Davis why this prohibition on renters was in the bylaw. “Why are you asking me?” was her response. “Because you wrote it,” I replied. She then related her paranoid fantasy that “tenants would be renting multiple properties to do STRs with landlords getting kickbacks.” Conversely, we have a 0% vacancy rate for long term rentals in town and most tenants struggle to come up with an initial deposit of three months’ rent, the standard of the industry, in order to sign a lease. This conversation is accessible in the meeting recording, but Ms. Davis did manage to expunge it from the meeting minutes apparently because it was not supportive of her world view.
I find it deeply ironic, if not even hypocritical, when someone receiving a paycheck from the Town paid for, at least in part, by tenants’ rents, and making a living raising money from members of our community to support a wonderful non-profit dedicated to providing affordable housing, yet nowhere has she ever provided any evidence that she has even considered the possible negative impact her bylaw has created for the poorest members of our community. Nor has she provided documentation of her negative tenant/landlord fantasy having ever occurred.
Our latest housing analysis indicates that 954 households out of 2,830 in town are occupied by renters. Think about that. That is more than one third of our town. And of those renters, 43 percent are paying more than 30 percent of their total income on housing costs—“cost burdened” under national guidelines.
The bylaw in its current form allows non-resident property owners to do STR for 150 days a year and a resident owner to do STR 365 days a year, yet full time resident tenants are entitled to 0 days per year even if they have a spare bedroom for a week or need to be taking care of an ailing family member somewhere else. The poor in our community are already discriminated against in so many ways by our society, I do not think Great Barrington needs or actually intends to add to that load.
Please join me in voting in favor of this minor amendment to prove that we, the Great Barrington community, actually care about all our residents, not just the wealthy.
Jonathan Hankin
Great Barrington
The writer is a member of the Great Barrington Planning Board. He is a Broker at Berkshire Property Agents.
The Edge has corrected a previously erroneous identification of Mr. Hankin and apologizes for the error.
