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New Boston Airbnb regulations cause owner of small Beacon Hill apartment building to make it a hotel
By adamg on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 11:37am
The owner of a nine-unit apartment building on Charles Street won city approval this week to convert it into a hotel - like it was before he bought it several years ago.
At a hearing on Tuesday, the Zoning Board of Appeals gave owner Brent Berc permission to reconvert 94 Charles St. into nine hotel units, serving mainly people getting care at nearby Mass. General and their family members and other people in Boston for family visits.
Berc, who bought the building in 2012, had already been renting out the nine units via Airbnb and other rental services. He decided to go back to the building's days as the Charles Street Inn after learning about Boston's new regulations on short-term rentals, approved in June.
Berc is not planning any changes to either the exterior or interior of the building.
The proposal was supported by the mayor's office. The Beacon Hill Civic Association voted to not oppose the proposal.
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Comments
AirBNB
Good. This is exactly what should be happening. The building was operating as a hotel and now he's getting the building properly zoned to be hotel and will operate it as such, including complying with all of the safety and access requirements associated with being a hotel. I hope he has great success.
Good job, government
What did I tell you? They stuck their nose into this whole business and crowed about how a residence can't be an Airbnb...so the property owner chose the profitable venture over human shelter. And he was more than happy to have it both ways until he was told no.
It's a sign of how terrific private sector employment is in Boston when you can't do better than these simpletons in office.
Huh?
I honestly can't tell if you're happy about this or complaining about it? Or is it sarcasm? So confused.
What? Here's what happened
What? Here's what happened
There were never any changes to the interior or exterior of the building, remodeling to make it not a hotel. All that happened was that regulations closed a loophole he was using. No one was living there as an apartment that is now out on the street. Nothing was removed from properties available for human shelter.
Read much?
So this used to be a hotel and then it was an AirBNB 'hotel' and now it's a hotel again.
It wasn't a residence before he bought it. If the city hadn't 'interfered', it still wouldn't have been a residence so at no point was this property owner considering this real estate asset to be a future yearly rental property.
So yeah, I'd rather have a hotel operate as a hotel for insurance and licensing reasons than not. Again, move to Somali if you want to do your own thing without the big mean government telling you what to do.
Move to (blank)
Republican voter, I take it?
So dense
I am fine with living in a city where the city has and enforces laws to make hotels operate as hotels and make sure that people getting paid to drive other people around for money are properly insured.
You seem to think that we'd all be better served by just not having things like licensing or regulations, like we lived in Deadwood or something. So my suggestion was that perhaps you should and could just move to a place with a lot less laws (and protections for consumers) and enjoy your freedoms there. Somalia came to mind but I'm sure there are other options.
By chance
Do you derive any personal wealth from the insurance industry? Curious.
Nope
Here's a cool fact that I guess you weren't aware of -did you know you can easily avoid the licensing costs of running a hotel but simply not opening one? And if you don't buy the building, you don't even have to pay for the mortgage or taxes or anything. It's pretty neat.
Can I demand to also run a hot air balloon ride for tourists on the Boston Common? I mean, sure there are laws but why should that stop my business dreams? #iamjohngalt
I mean if you want to make a nihilistic argument
Why does anyone even exist or try at life at all?
There's no point in living if you're not going to try to get your way as much as you possibly can. Your proposed hot air balloon ride does not impede with my interests in any way (until it does), and I would hope that you can start such a business with little interference.
I don't get it
Your core argument is that some guy should be able to use Air BnB to create a hotel even though running a hotel has been a specifically regulated industry for centuries in Boston?
You seem to be more of a nihilist than I am - after all, I believe in living somewhere with governance and you seem to think regulations are capricious impositions.
What's not to get?
Yes! Sweet Jesus, yes! What he's doing isn't bothering me, thus, I don't need for my elected officials to troll the guy on my behalf. On you to make a case for why I should want government to protect me from this guy.
If he's truly awful as any kind of hotelier, the Internet will tell me to steer clear. I've stayed in a couple of Motels 6 I didn't like, so I stayed in a different one. And then they raised their prices, so I tried Airbnb and now use them annually when I summer in San Diego. I've stayed in three different houses, and the experience was great each time.
1) There's a middle ground between the Wild West and a nanny state. I occupy it. I wish you had a more contemporary attack on where I stand than the citation of a literary character introduced 61 years ago.
2) Oh, no, this regulation is not a capricious imposition. The transaction between the hotelier and the customers was undercutting somebody greedy and influential, so it got stopped by people who need to keep their public jobs on grounds of being too incompetent to get private sector jobs.