Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Limitation of number of renters question

[Reede Stockton (commercial]

I'm not sure restricting the number of rentals would actually be legal.
Anyone know for sure?  A planning commission could certainly do that, but
not sure about a cohousing community, which is basically a home owners
association, right?

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 6:37 AM, Muriel Kranowski <murielk [at] vt.edu> wrote:

> The Town restricted us to 4 rented homes (out of 33) as a condition of
> granting our rezoning request in 2000. I think we've had a maximum of 3
> homes rented at one time; right now there is one. The Town's goal was to
> discourage us from turning into a student-rental neighborhood, as this is a
> college town where that is always a big concern.
>
> Our history with rented houses has been mixed. Some renters were families
> who were wonderful community members, completely integrated into the
> community, and in fact in some cases they purchased houses that came on the
> market when their rental period ended after, usually, two years.  One owner
> was on the verge of losing his house to bankruptcy for several years, so he
> rented out parts of it while sometimes living in it - he did try to get
> suitable renters who were interested in being part of the community, so
> that was not too bad while it lasted.
>
> One house however did turn into a student rental, and it was rather
> unpleasant - the students weren't horrible in themselves but their
> boyfriends/girlfriends ended up living with them and we had constant
> turnover of young strangers who mostly did not even attempt to become part
> of the community; they took up a lot of our supposed visitor parking
> spaces, used our Common House and other resources without doing any
> community work, and generally reduced the level of pleasantness. (It was a
> great income stream for the homeowner who had moved away and didn't make a
> serious effort to sell the house.) In the end we changed our Bylaws to make
> this outcome less likely.
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