Beacon Cracks Down on Short-Term Rentals

  |  August 22, 2014
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Usually, we get good news in our email inbox, but sometimes, the news is not so great. Like the alert we received from a loyal reader who let us know that the Beacon city council is set to review new short-term rental regulations that could, in our eyes, essentially kill the idea of the private residence vacation rental in the Dutchess County city. Here are the distressing highlights, courtesy our our aforementioned loyal reader:

“*Home who wish to rent to guests temporarily must be owner occupied during any rental period. For example, a family would not be allowed to rent their home while on holiday.

*Home who wish to rent to guests temporarily would have to acquire a valid NYS sales tax ID. The city of Beacon will essentially be requiring you to start a business if you want to rent your home for any period of time.

*Homes who even periodically do short term rentals would have to get special authorization from the Building Department every 2 years and would be subject to an inspect every 2 years to re-validate their certificate of occupancy.

*Short term rentals would have to have at least 3 off-street parking spots.”

If you’re interested in watching the entire city council meeting where the regulation is discussed, you can find it here. Here’s the regulation in its entirety. And, as always, we would love to hear your feedback on this.

About Kandy Harris

Kandy is a writer and musician/music teacher living in Saugerties, NY.

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