TUPPER LAKE — At a lively town board meeting on May 11, a Tupper Lake village resident renewed her request that the town and village enact restrictions on short-term rental properties.
Aside from applicable statewide rules — which largely pertain to tax and fee collection — and code rules that apply to residences there in general, Tupper Lake doesn’t have any specific restrictions on STRs.
The discussion has percolated from time-to-time. Then-town Councilman John Gillis proposed a set of regulations in 2024, but nothing became of them. Town Supervisor Rickey Dattola said at the time that he didn’t think STR’s had become enough of a burden to warrant regulation — and the expense that comes with hiring an enforcer. An article on that meeting is available at tinyurl.com/5hx6ds7v. Similar regulations had also been discussed in 2022.
It’s a departure from its neighbors to the east — Saranac Lake and Lake Placid — which have been “ground zero” for enacting these regulations, according to a recent state Department of State presentation held at the Adirondack Park Agency’s annual Adirondack Planning Forum.
Tupper Lake village resident Denise DeVirgeles brought these concerns to the village board at its Dec. 16, 2024 meeting. Village Mayor Mary Fontana said then that the town was taking the initiative on this, and recommended DeVirgeles reiterate her concerns there — as any potential regulations are something the two governments would work in tandem on.
DeVirgeles, on May 11, said she was frustrated about the lack of action during that time.
“The village told me that you folks can’t make up your mind about what’s going to happen with it and that it always gets tabled,” she said. “I want some rules. Where can they put them? How many people can they put in there? I’ve seen four, five big trucks — snowmobilers, hunters — in this house over here, all men. The road is filled with about 10 kids.”
DeVirgeles pointed to what she sees as a surge of STRs on Third Street and surrounding areas within the village, which she did not appreciate. She noted that they might make more sense in more outlying areas of the town.
“What are they doing in the French Village (neighborhood) with the houses one on top of the other?” she asked. “All you folks who live out in the nice big houses past the beach and out towards Moody and all that — that’s where, if you all want to put your houses out for rent, go ahead — but I don’t want these people! It could be perverts, how do we know? There are a lot of children in that neighborhood, and I don’t like it.”
She encouraged the town and village to discuss it at their next joint meeting, which the two governments are planning but haven’t posted an exact date yet. Town Councilman and Deputy Supervisor Tim Larkin, who presided over the May 11 meeting in Dattola’s absence, said it would be put on the agenda.
Larkin echoed Dattola’s past comment that regulations — at least those that can be enforced — aren’t free. It would likely involve hiring another town employee, and that the town should have a reasonable belief that the expense can be justified and worthwhile to the taxpayer before doing so.
“Call Saranac Lake and find out how they did theirs,” DeVirgeles said. “(Saranac Lake) put rules in. Lake Placid has rules. The only place that doesn’t have any is Tupper Lake — welcome home.”
Larkin reiterated that they have hired personnel tasked with enforcing the regulations.
STR REGULATIONS: STATE PRESENTS
At the May 7 Adirondack Planning Forum in Saranac Lake two local government specialists with the state Department of State walked municipal planners, policy wonks and local government officials through STR’s ever-changing legal and regulatory landscape.
Pulling from a variety of existing regulations from localities throughout New York, Paula Gilbert and Monica Ryan gave tips on best practices, discussing the wide array of regulations that are currently viewed as permissible, and what is likely to run into legal trouble.
Ryan said local governments have a lot of sway to regulate STRs, but unless local definitions and regulations are put on the books, they are treated as any other residence would be.
“At the end of the day, the function of that building is to house individuals,” she said. “If you don’t define it separately, you can’t decide.”
It’s a hot-button topic, she said, and one where local control is paramount — because STRs could be a much-needed boon to certain economies, a hindrance to others and often, it’s a nuanced situation where their impact all comes down to how they are regulated.
On the pro- side, she said many people have told her they otherwise couldn’t afford the annual taxes and other property expenses if they didn’t have STRs — and that contrary to the caricature of large firms or ultra-wealthy investors running these, it’s often socioeconomically middle-of-the-road folks who are turning modest profits secondary to whatever full-time job they are working.
On the con- side, she said noise, parking and waste all crop up as surface-level issues, along with deeper concerns of neighborhood character being erased, affordable housing opportunities evaporating and the hotels and motels — which often operate on thin margins — complaining that it’s unfairly hurting on their businesses while often being subject to far less oversight, and as a result, lower operating costs.
“Obviously the hotel industry is not crazy about these because it’s competition for them,” Gilbert said. “You’ll hear a lot of, ‘Well, you know hotels have to go through constant code inspections and is that the same for these houses?’ That might not be the same. There could be a lower cost to do business for short term rentals compared to other types of housing that is out there.”
She said the housing concerns tend to be exacerbated in rural areas due to underlying market constraints.
“We see this especially in rural places where the housing market is skewed so heavily toward owner-occupied that there aren’t a lot of rental units in some of these communities,” she said. “Everybody realizes we have a pretty significant housing crunch across all corners of New York state and there’s no real simple government solution to answer that crisis.”
Gilbert added that the housing crisis has been festering since the 2008 Great Recession, which essentially paused new home production for a decade. While that’s showing signs of recovery nationally and in other parts of New York, the issue is further magnified, and faces other obstacles, in the Adirondacks. Land is either at a premium or its availability is limited by either state-owned forever wild land, conservation easements or other robustly-regulated private land that drives up development costs.
Taken together, these supply constraints have led to a spike in home values here, compared to other parts of the state and nation. In areas where the free market is delivering such remarkable returns on home ownership, Gilbert said it can be especially difficult to implement effective policy.
“It’s hard to sometimes put effective solutions in places where it’s really driven by the market itself,” she said. “It’s really difficult when maybe people are purchasing properties that don’t live in your community but see profits that could be made.”
THE COURTS
While municipal governments might want to give local residents a hand up with STRs, such as prioritizing them if there are a limited number of permits, Ryan said emerging case law likely points to this being illegal.
A 2022 decision by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals — one level below the U.S. Supreme Court — ruled that local residents’ prioritization by the city of New Orleans in its STR regulations violated the U.S. Constitution’s implied Dormant Commerce Clause, which prohibits state or local governments from enacting laws that discriminate against out-of-state residents or businesses.
Notably, the lower federal court from which the case was appealed found the law’s interstate commerce discrimination was permissible because the court applied a balance test and found that it did not outweigh the law’s legitimate public interest of preserving neighborhood character. The appeals court ruled that the district court erred in trying to balance this, as the legitimate public interest could be achieved through other lawful means, namely more equal STR regulations.
Ryan noted that no New York state court has ruled on this yet, but the “Hignell-Stark et al. v. City of New Orleans” decision is probably indicative of where that would land.
“You’re really getting into the ‘who,’” she said. “Local regulations should not be getting into the ‘who.’ That’s something the courts have frowned upon.”
But aside from this residency-based regulation, Ryan and Gilbert said the Fifth Circuit’s ruling largely upheld local governments’ rights to regulate — finding that the issuance of STR permits are a privilege, not a right.
Ryan said that state courts have ruled that STR regulations are not a taking, as owners are entitled to “reasonable,” not “most beneficial” rates of return when they apply for a special STR permit. She added that this distinction can only be made when the local government has regulations such that STRs must apply for these.
As long as those are in place, Ryan said courts have found that the typical appreciation that single family homes experience is reasonable, and that owners cannot claim the money they would have lost out on from not being able to operate an STR is part of that “reasonable” rate of return.
“You could sell it, you could lease it long-term,” she said. “There’s ways in which to make your money back.”
Ryan said this and other rationales for regulations were similarly upheld in federal court when a group of property owners sued the town of North Elba and village of Lake Placid over their joint STR regulations. Ryan said the lawsuit threw the kitchen sink at the regulations, challenging it as unconstitutional on the grounds of equal protection, unreasonable search and seizure, property rights, due process, it’s a taking, contract clauses in the state and federal constitutions and First Amendment rights.
“You might as well throw it all at the wall,” she said of the First Amendment argument in a moment of levity.
The court dismissed everything except the unreasonable search and seizures aspect. It found that the town and the village could not have their code enforcement enter the property without permission, which the two governments subsequently revised to be in compliance with.
CLARITY AND ENFORCEMENT CAPABILITY
Ryan said that less is more when it comes to STR regulations: clearer and concise definitions are often easier to enforce. She said municipalities should first consider their comprehensive plans, and what goals they hope to achieve through regulations.
“It could be that you talk about the need for more tourism accommodations,” she said. “Well they’re a form of that — so maybe your plan would be supportive of short-term rentals. You need to keep that in mind. But you might also have something about housing shortages, and the idea that short-term rentals are impacting available housing and affordable housing for your local workforce. If housing is talked about generally, you could tie back the need to regulate short-term rentals to it. So there can be goals in your plan without calling out short-term rentals.”
Ryan said that enforcement capacity should be a critical part of the conversation, adding that some communities in the Catskills that spent upwards of a year lining up the staff, procedures and funding for enforcement before they passed their law, knowing that would be the real challenge.
“The minute you adopt a short-term rental law, whatever that says, somebody is going to expect you to enforce it,” she said. “You have to have the capacity to deal with that.”
A MYRIAD OF METHODS
Much of the presentation featured examples of how other New York villages, cities and towns have strictly, loosely and/or creatively regulated STRs.
The town of Rhinebeck in the Catskills, with about 1,400 households, caps its STR permits to 15 — which are assigned by public lottery and up for a redraw every year. On top of that, these permits only allow a maximum of 16 rental days per year, with a required seven-day minimum gap between any renters. It also prohibits on-premise advertising and driveway expansion.
Gilbert said it’s among the most localities restrictive in New York that still, technically, allows STRs.
“They chose to be on the side of ‘really strict,’” she said. “They have a pretty tight housing market there.”
The city of Buffalo takes a more permissive approach. While it requires annual inspections, registrations and renewal fees — and spells out numerous other codes specs and tenant obligations — it doesn’t have a blanket cap. Instead, she said it has escalating fees and license revocations for violators, with the goal of avoiding nuisance situations.
Ryan said Cooperstown has a fairly strict law, with STRs only allowed in single-family homes in certain zones within the village. In certain districts, they’re not allowed in accessory-dwelling units, except for a grandfather clause, nor apartments. Ryan said the intent here was to preserve those units for long-term housing.
But, she said there’s a caveat unique to the community’s needs.
“All of this is thrown out the window for 60 hours during (baseball) Hall of Fame weekend,” she said. “Which is because they don’t have enough lodging. … They recognize the need during those 60 hours.”
Woodstock, Vermont has similar laws, but Ryan said this extends to a six-week window to take into account leaf-peeping seasons, with significantly more restrictive laws the rest of the year. She also noted the town has a cash-incentive program for landlords who keep their properties as long-term rentals.
The town of Queensbury was highlighted for its relatively self-enforcing set of laws. There is no cap or required permits, but the town requires a four-night stay minimum between May 15 and Sept. 15 and owners to establish written rules. There are quiet hours between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. and occupancy limits are two people per bedroom, plus two. The town also requires that a contact person must be provided to adjacent property owners to reach out to in case of issues.
“This is definitely a different way to handle things and they’ve made changes over time,” Ryan said. “My guess is on some level maybe it does work because they probably would have instituted more things over time (otherwise).”
With such different approaches on the books across New York, Gilbert said localities wishing to regulate or modify existing STR regulations have lots of options at their disposal.
“Really, it’s up to you as a community to decide if you’re going to regulate short-term rentals and what you’re trying to achieve in that (and) making sure you have the proper capacity to do so,” she said. “It’s up to you on what you think works best.”