I live in West Stockbridge, not Great Barrington, but GB and the little towns clustered around my beloved hometown — where I was born, where my kids were born — really add up to one interconnected habitat. I’ve closely followed the debate sparked by Selectwoman Leigh Davis’ proposal to regulate and limit short-term rentals (STRs) in the name of addressing our housing shortage, and related issues of accessibility and maintaining community. It’s united strange bedfellows, with New Jersey-based real estate agents finding common cause with local retirees. It’s also pitted friend against friend. In keeping with so much public discourse these days, the discussions have taken rancorous turns. It’s not clear where the proposal stands now.
But regardless of whether or not a bylaw is brought to town meeting and passed or rejected by voters, these conversations represent progress, and I’m grateful to Leigh for having the courage to put forward, and the persistence to stick with, her proposal. The notion that the debate itself is creating class divisions is absurd. Class divisions were created when humans were created. What’s new is the tsunami of economic pressures, compounded by the pandemic, that is finally peeling off the public veneer of class harmony.
I hope the selectboard discussions have opened a door to more dialogue about what we collectively value, and what makes a neighborhood. It is already forcing us to consider contradictory truths: how short-term rentals can be both a great opportunity for folks to earn much-needed income, and also a harbinger of a day when whole sections of town turn dark from Monday to Friday, as some elsewhere already have.
The fact is, the promise of Great Barrington as a vibrant, socio-economically diverse community has been dying for some time, and the Airbnb-ification of our neighborhoods is a part of this sad larger story. Leigh’s proposal is an attempt to put the brakes on one of many runaway trains, and in this, she’s hardly a maverick. Dozens and dozens of American towns and cities are similarly scrambling to regulate the STR market, and some are coming up with very restrictive rules, like outlawing “unhosted” sites, or banning STRs from certain areas altogether, as New Orleans has done. So much for “unamerican.”
But while it’s true that people are struggling with this issue all over, there’s a housing crisis all over, wages are not high enough all over, and the laws of supply and demand apply all over, we don’t live all over. We live in what tastemakers decided in 2012 was the “Best Small Town in America.”
But Great Barrington is not great, or even pretty good, for far too many of the people whose ancestors found opportunity here, who were raised here, and still make their living here. No one has the perfect solution up their sleeve for how to ensure that our neighbors have good places to live. There are affordable housing projects underway. Excellent. That’s the purview of the housing agencies.
What can we do as citizens? We can seek out and listen to the people who don’t have the time, agency, or trust in institutions to show up to evening Zoom meetings, and who have been bearing the brunt of those uncontrollable economic pressures all along. What can homeowners do? When we take stock of our assets, we can count community among them.
The “free market” is just made up of free people faced with decisions about how to get and spend money, and sometimes, I’m pleased to report, they defy market wisdom and put people before profit. I heard recently about middle-income sellers who rejected a cash offer on their house, holding out so they could sell to a local family who’d be making the home their primary residence. (That family has now settled in, loves their new house, neighbors, and job in Great Barrington, and their kids are loving school.) Another set of sellers were willing to postpone their closing several months so the buyers could get their finances in order. A local lawyer didn’t charge her clients for the $2,500 worth of her time she’d spent preparing their closing because the deal fell through, and she refused to make them pay a penny until they had a house to show for it. Sometimes regular people, working together, can hold back an army.
