Short Term Rentals

The problem isn’t that we have too many tourists. Tourism is the major industry in the Hudson Valley.

In Ulster County alone, tourism was responsible for 45% of all jobs created in 2021. Ulster County property owners realized over $7 million in revenues from the Short-Term-Rental business.

This a small piece of the beneficial economic impact that Short-Term-Rentals have on Ulster County; the tourists do not stay in their accommodations all day and night. They are out spending; spending in restaurants, shops, events, attractions so the economic benefit is multiplied many times over.

They keep the restaurants filled, creating jobs for cooks, wait staff, food service supply and many other job categories. Those shopping in local shops have resulted in the renaissance, i.e., in Uptown Kingston, where new shops of all kinds have replaced the boarded-up windows that were there for 20 years.

The problem isn’t that we have too many tourists, we don’t have enough housing. We have a supply problem caused by multiple layers of zoning, environmental, construction regulations and increasing costs that make it impossible to build new housing.

The solution requires a radical adjustment in zoning, environmental  and tax policy to incentivize the  building of new housing to bring supply and demand into balance.