Short-term rentals (STRs) offer a way to get income from a residential property and can help current residents cover some of their housing costs if done carefully and limited to owner-occupied structures. Without such restrictions, or a limit on the number of STRs, they can drive up prices for homes and decrease the supply of long–term rentals available for residents.  

Communities have a variety of tools available to address this area of concern. First, they should require that all STRs are registered and then inspected to meet rental code. Additional state registration and enforcement/code inspection is needed as many communities, especially those without local land use regulations, have no staff for such programs. Towns can limit STRs to certain areas of town and to certain amounts. One of the easiest limits is to only allow them only in owner-occupied structures (an owner could rent their own unit for a limited amount of time or could have a unit inside of a structure they also live in or on their lot).