South Portland’s city council approved an ordinance banning short-term rentals of unoccupied homes in residential neighborhoods.
Maine Public reported that the ordinance adopted in a 6-1 vote Tuesday night will allow people in the city’s commercially zoned neighborhoods to continue to rent out un-hosted homes.
“Over the last couple years there’s been a proliferation of purchases of homes from people who never intended to live there, who bought them strictly as investments to run them as little hotels,” District 1 City Councilor Claude Morgan told Maine Public, adding that those un-hosted rentals had made South Portland’s tight housing market even tighter.
City Councilor Adrian Dowling, who opposed the ordinance, said he preferred a less extreme measure that would allow un-hosted rentals by people who do live in their houses but go away for part of the year allowed in the residential zones.