The legality of short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods on Nantucket is once again being challenged.
Later this month, the Zoning Board of Appeals will hear a new case brought by Silver Street resident Cathy Ward against her neighbors Peter and Linda Grape, who she accuses of violating the town’s zoning bylaw by operating a short term rental at their property on West Dover Street.
“My neighbors are running a business at 9 Dover Street – plain and simple,” Ward wrote a letter to the ZBA. “I, along with my neighbors in the immediate vicinity of the property, have been significantly disrupted because of the commercial use of the property as a STR (short term rental).”
The Grapes did not return a phone call and an e-mail seeking comment.
Ward is a member of the new advisory committee of ACK Now, the non-profit group that attempted to restrict and regulate short term rentals on the island through a bylaw proposal that was defeated at Town Meeting in June.
Ward submitted a zoning enforcement request to the town in September, which was denied by building commissioner Paul Murphy. She is now appealing that decision to the full Zoning Board. The ACK Now organization is advising Ward in her appeal, and also helped pay for the filing fee.
“As demonstrated by our experience with customers at 9 West Dover, the property’s use as an STR is antithetical to the surrounding residential uses within the ROH (Residential Old Historic) District,” Ward wrote to the ZBA. “The property’s owners are operating a business at the property for commercial purposes in violation of the Zoning Bylaw.”
A similar case unfolded last year at 14 New Mill Street, a legal effort that was funded by ACK Now and made it all the way to Massachusetts Land Court where it was dismissed last month after The Copley Group sold the property.
Ward and ACK Now believe their case is clearly supported by the recent Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision in the Styller v. Zoning Bd. of Appeals of Lynnfield case, which stated “short-term rental use of a one family home is inconsistent with the zoning purpose of the single-residence zoning district in which it is situated, i.e., to preserve the residential character of the neighborhood.”
That ruling has roiled the vacation rental home industry in Massachusetts, as well as municipalities like Nantucket that are under pressure to regulate or restrict short-term rentals.
“In a decision which I understand to be binding on all lower courts and those enforcing zoning bylaws, the state’s highest court has issued a clear decision that short-term rentals are antithetical to traditional residential uses in residential zoning districts,” Ward wrote to the ZBA. “Nantucket cannot play by its own rules. It must enforce its zoning bylaw – that prohibits commercial uses in residential districts – the same as all other communities in accordance with Styller.”
Nantucket Planning and Land Use Services Department director Andrew Vorce believes the Styller cases is so unlike the two Nantucket zoning enforcement cases that it does not apply. Regardless, Vorce said this summer that he intends to prepare new zoning and general bylaw amendments for consideration at the next Town Meeting that would essentially codify the existing use of short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods.
