Committee shuts the door on rental bill

The NH Home Municipal and County Federal government Committee on Monday voted to ship to interim analyze a invoice to loosen localities’ constraints on small-term rental homes, primarily placing off any legislation on the issue for this session. The suggestion to basically set off any action on the measure right until it can be additional examined passed by a vote of 17-2. The exact same measure was passed by the total Senate by a voice vote in February.

Senate Invoice 249 would forbid municipalities from prohibiting or restricting the use or of any one-loved ones or two-relatives constructing as a small-time period rental regardless of its area.

As introduced, SB 249 would have also prohibited municipalities from regulating the use of holiday vacation and shorter-time period rentals. Nonetheless, the Senate Commerce Committee amended the monthly bill to authorize municipalities “to frequently control parking, sound, protection, overall health, sanitation, or other linked municipal ordinances” as effectively as to sign-up and examine these attributes and charge a acceptable price for doing so.

In advance of voting on the invoice, the committee adopted on an 18-1 vote an amendment offered by Rep. Karen Umberger, R-Kearsarge, to exempt the Kearsarge Lights Precinct, in which she resides, from the invoice.

The monthly bill, sponsored by Sen. Harold French, R-Franklin, was supported by the NH Association of Realtors alongside one another with house entrepreneurs supplying short-term rentals. Opponents of the bill included the NH Municipal Affiliation, town and town officers, permanent and seasonal citizens and mattress and breakfast operators.

‘Big meddling in area affairs’

Opponents of the monthly bill claim it represents an unprecedented preemption of municipal zoning authority.

Margaret Byrnes, executive director of the Municipal Affiliation, reported the invoice preempts the zoning authority vested in municipalities by point out law and delivers shorter-term rentals an exemption granted only to the tilling of soil and harvesting of crops.

In committee, this argument was echoed by Rep. Laurel Stavis, D-Lebanon, who named the monthly bill “a huge meddling in nearby affairs, and that is not one thing we do in New Hampshire.”

Rep. LathaMangipudi, D-Nashua, said, “My inbox was filled with opposition to this monthly bill.”

And Rep. Joseph Guthrie, R-Hampstead, expressed opposition to the principle of the monthly bill.

Final week, Gov. Chris Sununu also expressed misgivings about the measure, saying he was “afraid of the extensive-expression implications” of it. “And I do not like telling cities what they can and just cannot do. If you are likely to think in area manage, then you believe in nearby control. And nearly anything that bans the cities from obtaining overall flexibility, that is likely down the improper route.”

Two cities — Bedford and Seabrook — have prohibited quick-time period rentals and at least a further 26 have restricted them, generally to unique zones or owner-occupied models and often each.

Bob Quinn, CEO of the NH Realtors Association, told the committee “the principle we’re striving to safeguard is private residence rights” and recommended SB 249 expanded the authority of municipalities to regulate small-time period rentals. With out the bill, he explained, litigious assets house owners would prevail in the courts, stripping municipalities of that authority.

Court docket conditions

Quick-phrase rentals have been the subject matter of two new courtroom conclusions — City of Conway v. Scott Kudrick and Operating Stiff Companions v. Metropolis of Portsmouth — which, whilst seemingly contradictory, show that handle of quick-phrase rentals rests squarely with municipal zoning authority.

The city of Conway sought to prohibit Kudrick from featuring 3 qualities as short-phrase rentals in a household zone, boasting the use is confined to owner-occupied units. The ordinance prescribes that if quick-phrase rental models meet up with the definition of a residential dwelling device by offering “complete and independent dwelling facilities” — most importantly kitchens — they require not be owner-occupied to function in household zones. “Transient lodging,” on the other hand, outlined as living quarters with out kitchens, must be owner-occupied in those zones.

Ruling towards the city, Judge Amy Ignatius of Carroll County Exceptional Courtroom found that Kudrick’s units satisfied the ordinance’s definition of a residential dwelling unit and ended up intended to be used for a household, not industrial, reason. She pressured that the definition can make no reference to the identification of the occupants or the period of their continue to be. Conway has appealed the choice to the NH Supreme Court.

In 2019, the Supreme Court docket ruled in favor of the town of Portsmouth and against a minimal legal responsibility firm, whose proprietors sought to use the assets adjacent to their principal residence in a residential zone for short expression rentals. In defining a household dwelling device, the Portsmouth ordinance expressly specifies, “This use shall not be considered to involve these kinds of transient occupancies as motels, motels, rooming or boarding homes.”

Quinn proposed the Conway determination, significantly Ignatius’s getting that limited-expression rentals depict a residential not business use, has huge software. Even so, the choose herself noted that “rulings normally count on the distinct language of a municipality’s ordinance.”

The challenge posed by quick-expression rentals, she famous, “is a concern that cries out for legislative way, dependent on statewide guidelines. Right until these kinds of a legislative plan perseverance is manufactured or until finally municipalities adopt new ordinances that evidently address this new sort of household rental, the Court will make decisions dependent on the language of the ordinances in effect, even if the benefits vary from just one municipality to the future.”

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