West Stockbridge — Boston-area residents Kat and Eric Hudson own a home in West Stockbridge that they purchased in 2020 from Joan Kopperl, Eric Hudson’s mother. Kopperl and her husband downsized to Lenox, and the Hudsons now plan to offer the house as a short-term rental (STR)—a rental of not more than 31 consecutive days—with the property income helping make ends meet while their three sons attend college.
“We didn’t think we’d own a second home, and so we want it in the family for our children and for our legacy,” Kat Hudson said. “In the meantime, we need to repair it, we need to maintain it, so we need to have money to do all of these things.”
Despite the frigid temperatures, the Hudsons joined other West Stockbridge homeowners on January 7 at a hearing hosted by the town’s Planning Board to ascertain public opinion regarding the municipality’s proposed STR bylaw. Following more than an hour of testimony, the dais voted unanimously to continue the hearing to February 4.
Currently, West Stockbridge zoning regulations don’t include a category for STRs. The Planning Board has been working on the proposal for the past year, finalizing a draft of the new bylaw in July. On October 7, the town’s Select Board approved the Planning Board’s draft STR bylaw and sent the measure back to the Planning Board to set a public hearing.
The draft STR bylaw can be found here.
“We’re trying to have the zoning catch up to what’s happened with the creation of Airbnb and other things, agencies like that,” said Planning Board Chair Dana Bixby.
According to the proposal, all STRs would be required to be registered by the town. Owners could rent those units for a maximum of 40 days in one year without a special permit. However, if the owner seeks to rent the unit as an STR for more than 40 days annually but up to 80 days, a special zoning permit would be required, with no rentals allowed for more than 80 days. Bixby reasoned that the special permit would be needed since a rental for 40 to 80 days “is more of an impact on the neighborhood.”
The proposal aims to “balance private, neighborhood and public interests,” including protecting the residential character of the town’s neighborhoods; limiting STRs to prevent too many rental units from being converted from long-term housing to short-term; deterring commercial businesses from buying up housing and turning them into STRs; and enabling local citizens to earn extra money from their properties so they can afford to live in the community. “Those statements of purpose speak to the balancing act that this regulation is trying to create,” Bixby said.
Although the proposal requires STRs to be “owner occupied,” the proprietor is only required to live on that property for six months out of the year, a problem that she said may create “absentee landlords,” taking residential properties out of the local sales or rental markets to “create a business out of doing short-term rentals.” “The intention of the proposed zoning changes is to prohibit that,” Bixby said. “We do not want to allow absentee landlords to acquire lots of properties in West Stockbridge and to take houses off of the sales market or to create a commercial rental market in short-term rentals that is inconsistent with the nature and character of residential neighborhoods.”
For Bixby, a short-term rental is “really a commercial use in a residential district.”
Among other provisions, STR proprietors aren’t permitted to post signs on the property; have amplified sound; hold events or use the property for commercial purposes such as weddings or meetings; add dumpsters; or offer rentals for less than a 24-hour period.
“I’ve always taken the view that [an STR is] like a home occupation, that you have a low-intensity use of your house or residence for a business purpose,” Bixby said. “You can do it if there’s no impact on the neighborhood, and there’s a mechanism in our zoning for getting a special permit for most home occupations. I’ve always taken the view that a short-term rental is very analogous to how home occupations are done.”
Bixby said that Planning Board members received feedback prior to the hearing from property owners who don’t live on the same tract as the lot housing their STRs. She suggested the draft be modified to allow STRs on non-occupied properties if the owner is a full-time West Stockbridge resident who has lived in town for at least five years and limiting that owner to one STR on only one property that isn’t owner occupied. Also, she suggested requiring a special permit be obtained for any STR not owner occupied.
At the hearing, residents contested the maximum 80 days allowed for a property to be used as an STR and advocated for the deletion of the special permit requirement to increase the allowable days from 40 days to 80 days.
David Feldman protested the owner-occupancy requirement to the proposal. He said he bought his Lenox Hill Road home in 2019, prior to the pandemic, “with the thought of getting up here as much as we could to enjoy it whenever we could.” For Feldman, renting the property out for the short term helps subsidize the cost of its taxes, maintenance, repairs, upkeep, and improvements, and he is seeking some type of “grandfather” status should the STR bylaw move forward. He said he provides local restaurant and activity listings to his guests who shop, eat, and buy in town while his family participates in the Zucchini Festival and other town events. “We try to be as much a part of this community as we can,” he said. Feldman urged members to consider that his rental supports local businesses which, in turn, help the town.
Feldman questioned the low number of STRs that exist in West Stockbridge. “So, I’m not really sure how many people these new regulations and rules are really affecting,” he said. “I get that the whole point is people are coming up and buying it for commercial business property only. But somebody like us, using it to offset costs—we’re up here a fair amount of time—it’s a completely different mentality, it’s a different game.”
Feldman said he and his wife rented their West Stockbridge home for about 50 days in 2024 and, due to their work schedules, can’t be residents for six months out of the year. “We feel like we’re just being penalized for what is really people who came in here during the pandemic and after the pandemic and bought up property for commercial, purely for the sole business of being a short-term hotel,” Feldman said.
“That’s what we’re trying to manage,” Bixby said, “[to] create some reasonable regulations to manage.”
Feldman responded that he understands what the Planning Board is trying to do but that the proposal is “taking everybody down with the ship.”
Mark Viola, who has lived in West Stockbridge for 50 years, similarly questioned whether an issue truly exists for the town if less than 10 percent of homes are being rented as STRs.
“What we’re trying to do is to take an activity that exists, but which is actually illegal under the zoning, [and] we’re trying to create zoning which makes the existing activity legal,” Bixby responded. Pursuant to the town’s bylaws, she said short-term rentals today are a commercial use not allowed in any residential district, carrying with it the potential of the town’s zoning enforcement officer exacting fines for those operations.
“We’re trying to bring West Stockbridge zoning around to the modern age,” Bixby said.
Although Viola doesn’t have an STR operating today, the single father didn’t rule out that option for the days ahead and acknowledged two local families he grew up with who rented their homes out for the summer months “just so they could pay their taxes and keep their homes.”
“Looking to the future here, we have a new school to possibly pay for, a new firehouse to possibly pay for,” Viola said. “I work three jobs. I’m a single dad … Maybe I’m going to have to do that someday. I’m just trying to figure out why we need to have these strict rules and prevent people from doing that.”
West Stockbridge resident Jim Clary, who owns an STR with his wife Sheela [DISCLAIMER: Sheela Clary is a contributing columnist for The Berkshire Edge] just down the road from their residence, asked board members to do away with the special permit requirement. The couple generally rents their STR for 100 to 150 days annually, and he cited nearby towns that posted a greater number of allowable STR days including Great Barrington with 150 nights, Lenox with 110 nights, and Stockbridge with no maximum limit. “People come here, and they spend money,” Clary said. “They’re coming into town; they’re buying coffee; they’re going to Amici’s; they’re going to a number of places in town.”
The Clarys pay about 12 to 15 percent of the property value as local, state, and federal taxes on the STR, he said. “I hope that we can see some sort of middle ground on this regulation,” Clary said.
Sheela Clary urged the board to increase the number of STR allowable days to 150 days. She said that 40 nights of rental income “can barely cover your costs” of owning an STR.
“For us, that wouldn’t even be a break-even number,” Sheela Clary said. “You can’t make assumptions about someone’s income based on the number of nights because the cost per night is hugely variable.”
Randy Thunfors, who serves as chair of the West Stockbridge Zoning Board of Appeals and is a member of the town’s Master Plan Committee, weighed in, commending the Planning Board on its draft proposal. “To be quite frank, I think that when we’re doing short-term rentals in a community, that’s a hotel operation,” he said, calling the number of allowable STR days listed in the draft “reasonable.”
Bixby, Planning Board Clerk Ryan Beattie, and board member Jared Gelormino voiced approval for increasing the maximum number of days allowable for an STR to be operated annually, with Bixby stating the special permit requirement should remain in place but shift with the greater number of days allowable. “Every regulation that gets created, it does create a burden for people in some way,” she said.
Once the hearings have been concluded, the Planning Board can make a recommendation to the Select Board regarding the proposed bylaw, and the draft will then be listed on a town meeting warrant, with a two-thirds vote required for the measure to pass.
Building code changes may affect STR owners
Bixby voiced concern over a building code change requiring residential sprinkler systems be installed in all STRs, an issue that the group doesn’t have control over but one that may affect the pocketbook of local rental owners.
Elaine Hoffman, who maintains two lots housing her home on one tract and a longtime STR in an older building on the second tract, asked if there was any way around the new building code requirement. “I just want to say that that’s a killer,” she said of the sprinkler requirement. “That’s a really hard thing for an antique building to put in.”
Bixby declined to respond as her group, a zoning board, is only making those interested in STRs aware of the new code provisions.
Accessory dwelling units (ADUs)
At the same time as approving its initial STR draft, the Planning Board moved forward a bylaw proposed for ADUs, or in-law apartments either attached or detached from a family home such as a backyard cottage or basement unit. In August, however, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed into law the Affordable Homes Act, legislation intended to provide more than 65,000 homes within the Commonwealth by 2029. Touted as “the most ambitious legislation in Massachusetts to tackle the state’s greatest challenge—housing costs,” the law denies municipalities the ability to unreasonably restrict ADUs, states a press release produced by the administration’s Press Secretary Karissa Hand. That legislation goes into effect on February 2 within the Commonwealth. Subsequently, the West Stockbridge Planning Board deferred amending their proposed ADU bylaw until details of the state mandate had been fleshed out.
