Owners of nonresident Airbnb-style properties — facing a Dec. 1 deadline that could shut them down — are pushing the Zoning Board of Appeals to reclassify their buildings as “boutique hotels” or “executive suites” and are facing pushback from fed-up neighbors.
Property owners have filed 10 applications to reclassify 202 residential apartments since city councilors began debating regulating the short-term stay industry that includes popular sites like Airbnb, Sonder and Homeaway in 2018. Four of those applications were filed in the month of August alone.
More applications are likely as proprietors seek “creative” ways to continue to market their lucrative short-term rental properties, said Richard Giordano, policy and planning director at Fenway Community Development Corp.
“Using the ‘executive suites’ definition is a new way to continue to do short-term rentals and skirt the new city and state regulations and laws,” Giordano said.
Rebecca Pinn, who lives in a 320 D St. apartment building where one-bedrooms rent for over $3,000 a month, said she was alarmed when she found out the hospitality company Sonder applied in August to reclassify 17 apartments in her building to executive suites so it could continue to rent out the units on a short-term basis.
“No one is representing the residents,” Pinn said, calling the rezoning a “black-box process” that favors developers and is confusing to residents.
Sonder spokesman Mason Harrison said the multinational company “seeks and abides by the appropriate licensing framework in every city” where it operates and has ceased operation of 125 spaces. The city’s regulations on short-term rentals took effect on Jan. 1 with a sunset clause of Sept. 1 for existing operations. Another Dec. 1 deadline looms to register short-term rentals operated by nonresidents. The company has submitted applications to reclassify 65 apartments in South Boston and at 186 Brookline Ave.
Applications to reclassify apartments doubled in the past month and City Councilor Ed Flynn, who represents the area, said this is an attempt to “abuse the system.”
“I don’t want to see loopholes,” Flynn said. “We need strict enforcement of the ordinance.”
Flynn said this is concerning the people who live nearby.
“These are neighborhoods — these aren’t hotels,” Flynn told the Herald.
Leslie Hammer of 320 D St. said short-term residential properties shouldn’t get “special treatment” to skirt zoning laws, especially when visitors drop in among among long term residents who care for the neighborhood.
“Would you want strangers living where you live,” she asked.
Hammer said guests are especially notorious for leaving trash behind.
“They have total disregard for our trash disposal system,” she said.
City Councilor Michael Flaherty, who chairs the Committee on Government Operations that hammered this ordinance out, said, “If operators are now getting cute and using other mechanisms to circumvent these guidelines then we will need to revisit the conversation and strengthen the regulations.”
Dar Sandler, a real estate investor who has converted houses in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain into de-facto hotels — including 21 Wyman St. where a man died last month in a police-involved shooting — said he supports the regulations despite causing “challenges” for his businesses.
Sandler applied to reclassify his Wyman Street property and another at 32 Perkins St. as boutique hotels
And the city councilor from that area, Matt O’Malley, sided with him on Perkins Street, though the ZBA shot it down. O’Malley told the Herald there’s nothing wrong with these property owners being allowed to go take their pitch to the ZBA, and that the neighbors on Perkins were supportive — unlike the neighbors around the Wyman Street property, which he opposed.
Sandler said he plans to withdraw his application to rezone the Wyman Street property.
“We always anticipated that if our ordinance passed, this would be a potential pathway for certain operators,” O’Malley said. “The community process is a proper place for these kind of boutique hotels or executive suites to go through. It’s the appropriate course for someone to petition the city.”
But City Councilor Tim McCarthy, who represents Hyde Park and Readville, said, “The classification as hotels is really concerning to me. I’m sure the next council is going to have to address what is a hotel and what is an Airbnb.”
