Proposed rental fee for long-term rentals - anyone else have these?
By:Â Brian-Logan Reid, Broker
I went to an open forum meeting last night regarding a proposition from the Health Inspector who wants to levy an annual fee ($100) to all home owners who rent their properties out for longer than 31 days.Â
As Nantucket is mainly a seasonal area, and whereby most homeowners who rent their property out, this would have a very broad and far-reaching effect for not only the owners but also many thousands of tenants.Â
I cannot even begin to put into words how hard it is for tenants to find housing for the season (May to October) or for the summer (June, July and August)…let’s just say it is very difficult.
Here are the main issues from the Health Inspector’s side:
- The Health Inspector has seen ‘deplorable’ conditions that would ‘make the hair on the back of your neck stand up’. Conditions such as tenants sleeping with their feet against furnaces, tenants living in basements with dirt floors, tenants living in basements without access to kitchens, tenants “doing their business” in bushes, etc.
- The H.I. wants to levy this fee so that he can increase the size of his department and try and rectify these ’sub standard’ living conditions
- “All it is going to take is for one catastrophe for this issue to come more to light”
I will try to outline the myriad issues from the tenant’s, the landlord’s, and the real estate agent’s side:
- The already very tight inventory of ‘affordable’ properties on Nantucket is hard enough to find and fill - this measure would only DECREASE the amount of housing
- Tenants that are living in these sub standard housing units cannot afford anything else and, as a result, will not report their landlords to the H.I. because they have no other place to go
- Landlords that rent out some of their houses (e.g. renting rooms out for the summer) in order to cover their mortgages would suffer financially if this income goes away
- Landlords would be responsible for rectifying the rental units and this additional financial burden may not be able to be paid for
- If the landlord does rectify the situation, the more than likely result would be an increase in rent, thereby making it even further unaffordable for tenants
- From my (real estate agent’s) perspective, this would provide a DISincentive for investors to purchase rental properties that are not 100% compliant with MA sanitary laws (someone said that 99% of all properties would not pass a rigorous inspection)
- It is understood, but not spoken of, that the majority of the people living in these sub standard rental units are minorities that are here working their tails off and keeping the service industry running…what happens to the local economy if they leave (as a result of being unable to find affordable housing)?
- Assuming for just one minute that this program moves forward, could one even begin to imagine the logistical and practical matter of actually trying to get all of these owners to register their properties? The H.I. himself believes that it would take in the area of 5 YEARS to register the properties!
There are so many other issues that I just do not have the time to type about, but here’s the basic premise. It is the H.I.’s job to try and keep the public’s health as safe as possible. Understood. But this approach does not seem to be the answer and only would excerbate the dire housing situation.Â
I’ve heard that this sort of rental housing certification program exists in other parts of the country and I would love to hear how it works.  Â