New regulations approved by the Bangor City Council Monday night will limit the number of short-term rentals in the city to 1% of its housing stock.
The cap applies only to units where the owner or operator doesn't live on site.
Anne Krieg, the city's community and economic development director, said Bangor currently has about 136 hosted and non-hosted short-term rentals. Because the regulations cap the number of non-hosted units at about 150, the city has room to add more.
"Because we only have 136 right now, we're really at a great opportunity to see how the use may or may not affect the city, as we do allow for some growth," she said.
The new measure also requires short-term rental owners to apply for a license and have their units inspected every three years. In addition, short-term rentals can't make up more than half of a multi-unit building, and owners can't operate more than five units each, according to the new policy.
Krieg said she believes the new regulations strike a balance between those seeking to rent a bedroom or an apartment over the garage for extra income, with those concerned about preserving the character of their communities.
"We have a different consumer of short-term rentals than maybe coastal communities have. Assuredly we have visitation and tourism, but we also have people who are here for a week or two, less than a month, who are here for work," she said. "We wanted to balance that, the importance of those populations coming here, with issues that we've seen coastal communities have — the displacement of housing, the increase in value of the house and also neighborhood erosion."
These regulations have been the subject of debate for years, said City Councilor Gretchen Schaefer.
"As long as I've been on council we've talked about short-term rentals," she said at Monday night's council meeting." You're here tonight to see us try to preserve the housing stock for workforce housing, for apartments."
The measure was approved after members of the public spent more than an hour criticizing the city's order to remove some individuals from a tent encampment last week. Others called for more affordable housing in Bangor.
