Portland city councilors voted unanimously Monday night to approve new regulations on short-term rentals.
Non-owner occupied rentals in Portland were previously capped at 400. Under the new rules, the city will reduce the cap to about 285 units, or about 1.5 percent of Portland’s long-term housing stock.
The new rules are intended to prevent investors from scooping up homes that could otherwise serve as long-term rental housing, Councilor Kate Sykes said.
“Hopefully, we’re going to build a lot more housing, and if we do, we can have more short-term rentals,” she said.
Many owners, however, said that they maintain short-term rentals as a way to supplement their own income, and that they rent units to tourists who otherwise couldn’t afford to stay in a Portland hotel.
And a few short-term rental owners, including Portland resident Adam Simon, said the fees he collects from tourists and guests allows him to keep rents relatively low for long-term tenants.
“To keep my long-term rentals at a fair and reasonable price, I need to have that supplemental income where I can get a little more from a couple of the apartments in each building,” he said.
Existing operators will keep their licenses under the new rules. But the city will not approve new permits until the number of non-owner occupied units in Portland falls below the new cap.
Councilors also scrapped two changes to the city’s minimum wage on Monday night.
One measure would have raised the city’s minimum wage from $15 to $20 an hour over the next four years. Another proposal would have eliminated the tip credit for restaurant workers, which Portland residents voted down two years ago.
Neither measure will be on the November ballot.
Several restaurant workers spoke in opposition against the tip credit proposal, arguing that it should be up to individual businesses to determine how best to pay their employees.
But Portland residents will vote on a separate measure in November, which would limit the use of a 50 percent boost in the city’s minimum wage for non-remote employees during any state of emergency. The referendum would restrict the use of the ordinance to circumstances when the City Council declares a state of emergency, not the state.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
