A collection of public input periods will emphasis on no matter whether to let brief-phrase rentals like Airbnb attributes.
BANGOR, Maine —
As Maine readies for spring, communities are also bracing for another tourism period.
In Bangor, holidaymakers have booked limited-time period rentals as a result of Airbnb or other vacation web sites for yrs, but technically that kind of rental is not allowed.
“There are people today that are leasing this way,” Bangor Community and Financial Growth Director Tanya Emery claimed. “We know that. We are informed of that.”
Bangor Preparing Officer Anne Krieg claimed there are around 100 brief-expression rentals in the town, numerous of them Airbnb qualities.
Emery and Krieg led a public listening session Wednesday in an effort to create and undertake brief-time period rental restrictions.
The on-line assembly was attended almost by a number of dozen citizens together with several Airbnb hosts who built the argument to enable limited-expression rentals with the suitable rules.
Some claimed that with Maine’s tourism industry struggling last summer season as a outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic, more rental alternatives in the Bangor place could convey much more readers renting from local residents while investing dollars at downtown stores and eating places.
Other citizens fearful about a person purchasing an entire constructing and leasing rooms or flats as a result of Airbnb. They said they have found Airbnb areas in the vicinity of their homes and they be concerned they may well wreck Bangor’s standard neighborhoods.
“Being the only human being in a neighborhood that life there yr-spherical and owning that entire community staying rented is a problem,” Krieg stated.
A different variable in the discussion of short-phrase rentals is the problem of very affordable housing in the city.
“The Bangor market place is truly much less economical than Portland, which I assume shocked all of us,” Emery included.
City administrators will take community comment by cellphone or e mail and by a public survey. A second listening session will acquire position Thursday evening.
They will report the final results to the town council, which will then determine a policy.
“We’re not necessarily likely to make a hard and quickly recommendation, but I believe we’re going to give a collection of solutions for them,” Krieg said.