How Many Registered Short-Term Rentals Are There In Hudson?

A few years ago, at an Informal Common Council meeting, I asked City Treasurer Heather Campbell why there was no list of the registered short-term rentals (STRs, made up primarily of hotels and AirBnB's) on the Treasurer's website.  Considering the proliferation of STR's at the time, as well as the issue of AirBnB's skirting Hudson's STR laws, a list available to the public online seemed like a logical thing to have, so I asked Heather if she thought a list on her webpage would be a good idea.  She replied that if any Hudson resident wanted to know if a property was a registered STR, they could call her office to get an answer.  I decided not to push my point. 

A few minutes later, alder Rebecca Wolff raised her hand to speak to Heather, saying "I would like to follow up on Bill Huston's suggestion for a list of registered STR's on your website."  Rebecca thought it was a good idea, asking Heather if it could be done.  Heather responded that a list could be offered on her website and that it would take her a month or two to get it installed.  Within two months, a list of registered STR's in the City of Hudson appeared on the City Treasurer's website.

A portion of the STR list that is no longer available
on the Treasurer's website

The list, in the form of a table, was easy to find and peruse, and included all sorts of helpful information, including the property owner's name, the business name, the address of the STR, the number of rooms and the registration period. 

A few weeks ago, in mid-April, I decided to compare last year's number of STR registrants and rooms to this year by looking at the updated list.  Since the list hadn't been updated since February 2022, I called the Treasurer's office to see if it could be updated.  I was told by someone that was not Heather Campbell that the list would be updated within a week or two (the person appeared to be unaware that the list had not been updated in over a year).  Indeed, within two weeks the link on the Treasurer's site to the list indicated that the STR list had been updated in February of 2023.  But the updated list looked exactly the same as the old one, with the same number of registrants (102) and same total number of rooms (460).  Additionally, the registration period for each registrant was still listed as through February 2022.  The new list appeared to not have been updated at all, regardless of what the link stated.

Then I noticed another STR link on the Treasurer's page, titled STR Registrants as of February 2023, that I had never seen before.  That list consisted of 120 addresses in no particular order, and nothing else.

The new list, recently added to the Treasurer's site

Today, in City Hall, I spoke with Heather Campbell to try to get an idea which list was accurate and updated.  At first she didn't believe me that that there were two STR lists on her own department's website.  Surprised to see the two lists offered, she then told me that the original list never should have been put on the site because "we don't want to reveal the property owners' names."  Heather admitted that she had made a mistake a few years ago by making that list available on her department's site.  She was not aware that the STR list with the property owners' names had been on her site for 2 or 3 years, claiming that it never should have been there in the first place.  This is the same list that resulted from my (and Rebecca's) suggestion to Heather at the Council meeting years ago.  The suggestion for a list that Heather acted on.

"Was the original list actually updated in 2023, as the link claimed it was? " I asked. 

"No, it was not.  That is a mistake," Heather admitted.

"So, is the other list accurate and updated?" I asked Heather.

She told me that the newer STR registrant list was the accurate and updated list, and that she would remove the original list.  (Within an hour, the link to that list was gone.) 

"Can I make a suggestion about the new STR list that has just the addresses, Heather?" I asked.

"Sure," she replied, somewhat reluctantly.

"It would be helpful if it were organized in some fashion, perhaps alphabetically or numerically, to make it more user friendly.  Would that be possible?" I offered.

Heather said that she could do that, though she didn't seem thrilled at the prospect.  "How about this?" she offered me.  "Within a week or two I will organize the list alphabetically.  Would that make you happy, Bill?"

I could not believe my ears.  "Would it make you happy, Heather?" I responded.

"No," was all she could offer. 

"Then please don't bother doing it," I said as I parted, having been given the same dismissive treatment which I received years ago at the Council meeting.  I was also not thanked by the Treasurer for pointing out her two "mistakes" made on her own website, one of them having been in plain sight for years.

The new, unorganized list that Heather has decided to stick with offers nothing more than addresses of the registered STR's.  There is no way for the public to know by looking at the list how many rooms an STR has or who the owner is.   This, according to our Treasurer, is an improvement.

It appears, if one is to rely on the accuracy of last year's STR registrants list and this year's (different type of) list, that the number of STR's in the City of Hudson has risen from 102 to 120 in the past 16 months or so.  That's all I wanted to determine -- had the number of registered STR's gone up or down, and by how much?  Knowing the change in the total number of STR bedrooms in Hudson would have been helpful, too, but that is no longer possible.  These are things, Heather told me today, that she "does not keep track of."