The Connecticut Supreme Court issued a ruling that it makes it easier for the state’s property owners to offer their homes on short-term rental platforms including AirBnb and VRBO.
According to a CT Mirror report, the court’s 5-2 ruling determined that a “residence” is not synonymous with a permanent presence. The ruling reverses 2018 zoning regulations in a town that insisted a permanent presence at a property defines residency.
“Although we agree with the defendants that this characteristic can be attributed to a ‘‘home’ and a ‘residence,’ we do not agree that those terms necessarily refer to places where an individual will live for any particular length of time,” said the court’s majority opinion.
The justices in the minority questioned whether a brief stay at a property could be considered as a residency.
“It is hard to imagine a person claiming with a straight face that he or she made a reservation at a local hotel when visiting a family member for a weekend and properly characterizing it as his or her ‘‘residence’’ for the thirty-six hours that the person was in town,” the dissenting justices wrote.
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Bob Duff, a Democrat, issued a statement after the ruling claiming the court’s decision will further aggravate Connecticut’s ongoing housing shortage.
“This ruling makes it clear that we need to do more than tinker with housing policy if we want to address this issue, and the legislature will need to consider creative policies to prevent the erosion of our communities by corporations seeking to make a buck at our communities’ expense,” said Duff.
;
Short term rentals will have to be addressed by the United States Supreme Court in the next five years as different courts make different rulings on the same issue.