Short-term rentals listed through companies like Airbnb and VRBO boomed in Maine over the past few years as people looked to get away from cities and crowds during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that market is continuing to grow in spite of a recent national lull.
But while major tourist communities like Portland, Bar Harbor and Rockland began regulating short-term rentals years ago, parts of the midcoast have been slow to impose any restrictions and lack accurate data to help them make planning decisions.
Midcoast communities like Camden and Belfast are only now grappling with the right way to approach the often controversial issue or enforce existing regulations.
In Camden, discussions about potential regulations began at least a year and a half ago but nothing new has been adopted yet, said Ethan Shaw, chair of the Planning Board.
The popular tourist destination has a history of vacation, rental and second-home property ownership, so it’s important to find a solution that deals with the effect on long-term housing, he said. But without accurate data, that’s hard to do.
The city isn’t sure how many residential properties have been converted to short-term rentals. Recent analysis of short-term rentals in the Camden area put the number between 250 and 350 active listings, but without better data the town can’t track down and penalize property owners violating the ordinances, Planning and Development Director Jeremy Martin said.
Both he and Shaw think the town needs to hire a firm that will scrape online listings and give an accurate overview of the short-term rental market in the area, something Shaw said will likely be recommended to the Camden Select Board in coming months.
“We’re looking at those properties that are taken off the market and put into a short-term rental market, because we feel like that has the most impact on services in town,” Shaw said.
Getting accurate data about short-term rentals has been a challenge for Belfast as well.
“It’s been an issue that’s been brewing as we’ve seen short-term rentals increase [in Maine] over the last number of years,” said Hugh Townsend, chair of the Belfast Planning Board. “It’s hard to know exactly how it’s affected Belfast without having more data.”
Belfast has been pushing to address the community’s housing issues for years, but it only began studying the impact of short-term rentals on the city’s housing supply in January, officials said. Without city-level data, they’re forced to rely on anecdotal evidence. That’s why the Planning Board has recommended to the City Council the creation of a short-term rentals registry. That, the board said, is a first step in addressing questions and concerns raised by residents about the increase of short-term rentals.
But other steps — like including inspection requirements for short-term rentals — received so much pushback from owners that they were dropped.
Still, Townsend said the registry will help with planning decisions.
“[The city is] paying attention, it’s taking some action, it’s gonna get more data which will lead, presumably, to better decision making down the road,” Townsend said. “Rather than just shoot from the hip, ready, firing, let’s aim first.”
Ed Glaser, former Rockland mayor and city councilor, agrees that getting data is the right place to start in addressing the impact of short-term rentals on housing. Rockland implemented a registry for short-term rentals in late 2016 and capped the total number of non-owner occupied short-term rental properties to 45 in 2018.
Regulating short-term rentals without accurate data can make enforcing laws hard as well. While Camden already requires short-term rentals without a local owner on site to register with the town and a local ordinance says that dwellings cannot be rented out for less than a week, the rules are “impossible” to truly enforce at the moment, said Martin.
“You can’t go sit online all day, have the code enforcement officer scrub every online platform that [lists] short-term housing units,” Martin said. “You can’t even, on Airbnb, determine which location you’re renting until you click buy and put your credit card information in.”
And there’s also pushback to change like the Belfast Planning Board experienced. Glaser, who left the Rockland council in 2022, proposed an ordinance change last year that would have prohibited non-owner occupied short-term rental properties in residential districts. The council ultimately rejected it in a 4-1 vote.
“We just need more housing at every single level, and this is taking that housing away,” Glaser said.
Even without updating the restrictions, Louise MacLellan-Ruf, Rockland’s current mayor, still feels Rockland is “ahead of the game” on getting a reign on these properties. Having a cap on the number of non-owner occupied rental properties makes it manageable for the city’s code enforcement office, and she said there hasn’t been any discussion among city councilors about taking further action to lower, or increase, the number of permits.
Many midcoast communities agree that regulating short-term rentals is just one part of finding housing solutions. But Shaw in Camden said even though it’s not a “silver bullet” to solve the housing crisis, it’s a start.
“We’re trying to take it carefully, but we’re not going to just sit on our hands and not do anything,” Shaw said.
