Hillary Seeger: Town of Meredith is putting rental company's needs ahead of locals'

To The Daily Sun,

Voters enact zoning legislation as a way to keep the activities that businesses can generate from encroaching on the quiet enjoyment people should be able to expect at their homes. Sometimes these zones overlap, as is the case in downtown Meredith. Businesses thrive in downtown and people purchase homes there knowing full well that they are next to a business. With the advent of Airbnb and VRBO, people are losing the quiet enjoyment of their homes as “vacation homes” are purchased by monied out-of-area entities and are rented out to people who may just want to enjoy the beauty of Meredith or who may be coming up in large groups to have weeklong parties in these once quiet neighborhoods.

Currently there are 34 rentals on Airbnb in Meredith that will accommodate at least eight adults. There are 60 more on VRBO. I find it sad that this trend has gotten to a point where the selectboard is disregarding the wellbeing of year-round residents in favor of these short-term rental companies. The fact that they decided in favor of an entity that purchased a vacation home for well over a million dollars in 2020, and are saying they are only renting it out a little bit to cover property taxes, is disturbing. If they weren’t able to afford those taxes, maybe they should have rethought the purchase and secondly, why are the year-round long-term neighbors of this property being made to suffer? I understand that tourism is a huge part of our economy, not just in Meredith but in the whole state of New Hampshire. There are certainly enough people who own second homes for their own personal use and enough hotels that the selectboard in Meredith should rethink their decision to grandfather a 2020 purchase and enforce the zoning ordinance for a residential area. 

Hillary Seeger

Alexandria