rental regulations, which have yet to be formally proposed. Before its momentum waned, the petition gained over 400 signatures, with plenty of comments arguing that renting out their home or a room was the only way they were able to afford their taxes and utility bills. Larger hotels are feeling an impact from home-sharing platforms nationwide. Even hotels, though, don’t have an issue with the lakefront segment of the homesharing market, said Teri Tarshus, the general manager of the Hilton Garden Inn on Seneca Street. On the lake, there is an acknowledged demand and need for short-
term rental housing, since there are almost no other options for visitors who want to stay on the lake as hotel alternatives are mostly concentrated either in downtown Ithaca or farther out towards Lansing on Triphammer Road, with another 131room Hilton Canopy hotel set to come online in the coming months. Much like virtually everyone else, Tarshus said local hotels are keeping a close eye on the continuing Green Street Garage conversations and whether or not the project will include a conference center. That would obviously create a significant boon to any lodging business in the
area, as the resulting center-based events would create additional, stable opportunities to house visitors, especially during the week. Tarshus said between 26-30 weekends in Ithaca per year are guaranteed sellouts for local hotels, but weekdays and the remaining weekends can be difficult to fill. Hotels aren’t the businesses facing the most severe threat from them. Instead, that falls on smaller bed-and-breakfast businesses, which have likely been operating for years before home-sharing swept in to dominate the industry. Helmholt said the complaints his department often hears from those businesses is that the lack of
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regulations and safety criteria for shortterm rentals through third-party companies like Airbnb put their businesses, which must meet stricter rules to stay in operation, at a competitive disadvantage. “There’s defintiely concerns that we don’t hear from residents, but from the lodging community, like the unequal application of regulations,” Helmholt said. “An established bed and breakfast, for instance, might be subject to a different set of code requirements and business requirements that the short term rental properties are not. That ranges from everything from fire safety to food safety to making sure the building is accessible. We hear that consistently from our hospitality partners.” Helmholdt also noted (and expressed surprise that New York State hasn’t intervened) that most Airbnb properties, at least the ones they monitor in Tompkins County, do not charge the standard eight percent sales tax that hotels or conventional bed-and-breakfasts must add to their final lodging prices for customers. That’s a bit of an anomaly, even for an online business, as online retailers of a certain size, like the behemoth Amazon, must now add state sales tax to goods they ship to New York customers. There are sure to be more legislative efforts to address short-term rentals, as it seems unlikely they will remain unchecked for much longer in municipalities. Cayuga Heights may maintain its title as the most stringent, but it will be interesting to see how others will play out. The Town of Ithaca, which also sees a significant amount of rentals especially near Cornell, might present their final draft of a short-term rental law for public feedback later this month after years of discussions. Currently, according to Short Term Rental Committee member Rich DePaolo, the town’s law would set a yearly limit of 29 days for unhosted rentals, meaning the homeowners are not on the property while it is being rented, but which would extend to 60 days for properties with certain setbacks and lot size requirements satisfied. He said the law does not apply to “conservation, agriculture or lakefront zones,” or hosted rentals. The Village of Lansing jump-started their own internal negotiations about regulations earlier this summer at the behest of the public, and City of Ithaca officials have recently started mentioning shortterm rental regulation, so that process could begin before the end of the year.