The city announced this week that it’s stepping up efforts to enforce regulations on short-term rental units. The move comes one year after the Common Council approved a zoning amendment to apply the same regulations and restrictions that govern hotels to short-term rental operations like Airbnb.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ninth Ward Alderwoman Michele Hirsch. who helped craft the zoning change and has been a strong advocate for placing limits on short-term rentals (STR). The proliferation of the units, rented via Airbnb and other such apps, has contributed to city’s housing crunch.

“We passed the zoning change back in May 2021 and it’s taken the city quite a bit of time to figure out the enforcement and get the building department up to speed,” Hirsch said.

The regulations adopted last year aligned short-term rentals in Kingston with Ulster County’s definition of a hotel and mandated their operators to register their businesses with Ulster County and pay the county’s bed tax. STR hosts who were paying the county tax prior to July 15, 2021 must also register with the city building department, pay a fee for an operating license and apply to the city Planning Board for a special use permit. More critically, the zoning change restricts STRs to the same commercial and mixed-use districts that allow hotels, effectively barring them from the city’s residential neighborhoods.

Enforcement of the new regulations falls to the city’s Building and Safety Division which recently added a new commercial building inspector position, in part to deal with illegal short-term rentals.

The pushback against short-term rentals comes as the city is in the midst of a housing affordability crisis. City officials point to their boom, driven by the city’s growing tourism sector, as a contributing factor to the problem. While some short-term rentals are small scale owner-occupied operations, others are houses that have been bought and converted to STR accommodations by out-of-town investors, contributing to the dearth of housing options for city residents. The units’ surge in residential neighborhoods has also generated quality-of-life complaints around issues like parking and noise.

“Short-term rentals have grown in popularity, which has contributed to a decrease in available rental properties and in turn contributed to a sharp rise in housing rental prices,” stated Mayor Steve Noble in a press release announcing the crackdown. “With these new regulations, we are looking to strike a balance that will support our local tenants and still leave room for the right amount of short-term rental units in the appropriate areas.”

In Hirsch’s Ninth Ward, a concerted effort by neighbors led to the shutdown of two illegal short-stay rental operations including one owned by an LLC out of Brooklyn that had already converted one home on West Chestnut Street into a multi-unit STR and was in the process of opening a second.

The enforcement push announced this week means the Building and Safety Division will take a more proactive approach to illegal STRs rather than leaving identification and reporting of the operations to neighbors. According to city Director of Housing Initiatives Bartek Starodaj, the city already coordinates its efforts with the county, which provides a list of all short-stay rentals which have registered within city limits. Starodaj said that he believes the Building and Safety Division would now start reviewing local listings on online platforms looking for potential violators, while still relying on tips from neighbors. The Common Council’s Special Committee on Housing has also recommended that the city employ software that can scan STR websites, identify potential violators and even generate and send warning letters informing operators that they’re not in compliance with local regulations.

The announcement of the enforcement effort comes as the city is in the early stages of adopting an entirely new zoning code that is expected to address the issue of short-term rentals — potentially with restrictions or regulations that go beyond what is currently on the books. In the press release, Noble described the current regulations as a “placeholder” until the new code is adopted.

Meanwhile, Hirsch said she believes City Hall had been reluctant to push enforcement of the regulations for fear of creating confusion once the new rules are in place.

“I think [Noble] is really reluctant to put this out at this time,” said Hirsch. “But we’re just losing homes to the point where if the zoning code gets held up by some sort of legal challenge, we need to preserve whatever we can, because it’s that bad.”