As the owner of a historic waterfront property in Murray Hill for 30 years, where my wife and I as newlyweds spent our first seven years together, I am astounded that our council has proposed legislation restricting short term rentals and the issuance of short term parking permits only to those “domiciled” in the city.
While we have extraordinarily deep ties and love for the city – my wife’s grandfather was Naval Academy 1908, her dad, born in Annapolis, was Naval Academy 1942. Both flag ffficers. Two of my three sons were born in Annapolis, baptized and attended preschool at St Anne’s, and learned to sail at Eastport Yacht Club, Severn Sailing Association and Annapolis Yacht Club.
We are as “Annapolitan” as anyone. My sons are now at an age where they are scattered, so we have changed our residency to Florida until we see where they end up.
We don’t use the house at this stage in our life, have zero interest in renting it out full time — it is full of things and memories that are too sentimental to crate up in storage, (and West Point’s sailing team uses it gratis four weekends a year to train with their Naval Academy brothers) and so turned to VRBO (after, incidentally, spending thousands to successfully challenge a baseless 50 percent property tax increase) to cover some of the costs of a property we hope to leave to our sons and someday grandchildren.
In fact, the house we are trying to hold onto was bought by St Clair Wright in 1942, one of the key people behind making Annapolis what it is today. She founded Historic Annapolis after the Marriot fiasco.
She wanted us to be able to purchase the house on her death, (she herself had rented it out for 30 years) and choose us because she knew we would be excellent stewards of this property … in fact, we just spent tens of thousands of dollars on silly things like replacing a 5-year-old fence ‘because it might have lead paint’ (lead paint was banned in 1978 and is hard to find for new construction!) The red tape was astounding … yet we did everything asked over many months, even that which was by any measure of common sense, wasteful.
I understand and support safety inspections, noise and nuisance ordinances, taxes on rental revenues and Maryland source income, even the potential requirement for a local manager for non-local owners, as we have. The 120-day stuff one can argue about.
But the idea that a 30-year property owner is somehow a carpetbagging investor destroying the character of the city is not only wrong. It’s blatantly unconstitutional.
I suggest the city and its voter’s google “Dormant Commerce Clause” and the prima facie lawlessness of imposing different rules based on residency or has the impact of benefitting a resident over a nonresident in Interstate commerce.
They also might review the famous Wynne decision, where no less than the U.S. Supreme Court recently found Maryland had violated the Constitution in a similar scheme.
I happily cashed my refund check from that case – one that cost Maryland’s Tax Payers $200 million.
The Residency Requirement, I think, is a summary judgment type federal case, and then the city risks not just compensation to those they have illegally targeted but having all the related regulations thrown out.
I guess “bring it on” might be the reaction of someone accustomed to spending other people’s money, but I strongly encourage the city’s taxpayers to read up the commerce clause cases with residency based discrimination.
It’s their money, not the council’s that’s on the line.
