This Is How Monroe Becomes A Zombie Town

The plague of short term rentals, and minimal to no code enforcement officers, continues to turn the suburban commuter town into a shell of its former self.

The Monday, May 20th, 2024 Town Board meeting was notable for how well the Town Council members got along without Supervisor Cardone.

I’m hoping residents take note of how smoothly everything went.

That’s glimpse into a future we can all be proud of.

Assuming, of course, that people still live in the Town of Monroe between now and Election Day 2025 — Doomsday for Mr. Cardone — which is still 531 days from now.

Because bubbling underneath the surface of this well functioning meeting was the potential for Monroe to become another “Zombie Town.”

What’s a Zombie Town? According to the author of Homesick: Why Housing is Unaffordable and How We Can Change It, Brendan O’Brien …

“The idea of a Zombie Town … it’s this idea that the town is still operating, and anybody who goes there can go to shops, and they can buy things. They can go out to eat, they can have someone serving them, they can stay in a house or a hotel. The town seems to be thriving. But it’s just been hollowed out, where increasingly the people who work the jobs there don’t live there. They have to drive 30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour away. And the town itself has become just a shell. It’s like a movie set, where people can go and experience it, and experience these beautiful parks, but there’s no sign of the people who maintain them. They can go and admire the art in town. But the artists increasingly don’t live in the buildings. The people who do everything that makes the place a community have ceased to exist in the space.” (Source)

Or, put another way, listen to this description of what happened to Prague after it got inundated with Short Term Rentals:

So, how can we stop that from happening here in our town and county?

I’m glad you asked.

A huge chunk of last night’s Town of Monroe meeting was taken up by Short Term Rental Applications, including our old friends at 649 Lakes Road (aka US Asia Global Inc.) and 14 Ruby Road.

Credit where credit is due though, these applicants are going through the appropriate process.

To date, only 5 have.

Another 20 or so have, not.

And while Monroe does have laws on the books concerning short term rentals, they’re not quite on par with other laws both here in the United States (see: LA) and in Canada (see: Vancouver.)

Of course, Monroe isn’t Los Angeles or Vancouver.

What’s An SRT?

A short term rental (SRT) is exactly what it sounds like: Someone renting out their home, or even just a part of their home, for a brief period of time.

If you’ve used AirBnB, you’ve visited a short term rental.

Now, full disclosure: About a decade ago, I did some consulting work with AirBnB.

That work was specifically about the city of Los Angeles, and the company wanted to develop a content strategy focused on baby boomers — since they own almost all the real estate — to rent out space in their home, or their entire home, for some extra income.

I stand by that work, because there’s nothing wrong with renting out your home, or space in it, to make an extra buck or two.

Times are tough. We’re living through a second Gilded Age. Yadda yadda yadda.

So, in most cases, where someone who owns their home wants to rent out that home , or rent out part of it, for additional income? I fully support it.

Where I have a problem is with stuff like 649 Lakes.

That’s an LLC in Brooklyn, looking to rent out a home it acquired solely for profit.

And you know something? If Orange County had reliable train service, Brooklyn wouldn’t be a big deal to me.

But by car?

Brooklyn is a hike.

And that’s just from Monroe. Now imagine trying to get from Port Jervis to Brooklyn in a reasonable amount of time.

It ain’t happening.

Why is this a problem?

Accidents happen. Fire happens. Shit happens.

In 2021, The National Safety Council found that 57% of all safety-related accidents happen inside the home.

And considering there are 2 million AirBnBs (and VRBOS, and the others …) in America, that’s a whole lot of homes where people are experiencing accidents.

And many of those have no local landlord.

It’s a corporation operated by some schmuck who buys up whatever housing stock he can then rent. Thus displacing people in the process and causing homes to become more expensive and out of reach for more and more people. That in turn displaces people and the cycle repeats on and on and on … Until you get a Zombie Town.

Housing Is Not An Investment, It’s a Human Right

People, mistakenly, think short term rentals can generate “passive” income.

But “passive income” is more or less a myth unless you’re super into putting money in an index fund.

Everything else requires work.

A short term rental, unlike a long term rental, has twice the maintenance cost for the person managing the property because it requires constant supervision and repair.

You can’t supervise these things properly if you don’t live here. Failing to do so puts the health and safety of the neighbors around the short term rental at risk.

With a long term rental, ideally, someone is moving into the community and putting down roots.

So they’re going to be there for a while and will (hypothetically anyway) be more mindful of minding their property.

Whereas someone who’s here as part of a short term rental has none of that investment, and will have no problem trashing the place.

Not that all short term renters do this, but if you ask anyone maintaining an SRT, they’ll tell you that they have to regularly turn things over (think: Furniture, carpet, plumbing, ect.) because of the activities of previous tenants.

Another thing people don’t realize is that the market is saturated with Short Term Rentals. So, yes, while it’s true AirBnB has a market capitalization of almost $92B, you have to remember much of that value was generated when the SRT market was red hot. After COVID, it’s anything but.

And the thing that drove that value for AirBnB was that 70% of its renters preferred having the entire home to themselves. Not renting out a bedroom.

This is what led to corporations and other wealthy people buying up multiple homes and properties, which in turn, wound up causing rents in places like New York City to increase. Today, NYC residents are paying an extra ~ $400 in rent because units are taken off the market and being used explicitly for short term rentals.

In places like Monroe, the Short Term Rentals also have an effect on housing prices, making the homes more expensive because the use of other homes for SRTs limits the overall inventory available for home buyers.

So, not only do SRTs represent a good source of “passive” income, they also contribute to homelessness.

Eating Communities From The Inside

If you’ve ever read the book, Bowling Alone first, I’d like to say, I’m sorry.

The book is dense and mostly impenetrable.

On the flip side, it makes for an awesome door stop.

But there are some insights in the book that are worth noting for our discussion here. Primarily, the concept of social capital and its impact on communities.

The more people you take out of a community, through something like a short term rental, the less social capital that community has. Ditto if people get fed up and move away, like you’re seeing in South Blooming Grove.

Lower social capital may sound like an abstract problem, but it has very real consequences.

As Dr. Putnam pointed out in Bowling Alone, lower social capital allows corrupt politicians to flourish (see again: South Blooming Grove, but also Monroe with Cardone.)

Why?

That’s because there are less and less members of the full time community around to check their elected officials worst impulses.

Say what you want about United Monroe, but they packed those Town Board meetings.

Many of those people? They’ve since moved away.

Look at the attendance now for the Town Board meetings.

It’s almost comical to be using such a huge room to host these meetings given the low turnout.

For children, less social capital in a community has been linked to low probability of child abuse being reported.

So the health and safety of the Town’s children is affected when you rubber stamp homes explicitly being used as short term rentals.

If you’re next door to a short term rental, you don’t know your neighbor and they don’t know you. That means one less person a kid can report a problem to.

One more point on kids: The loss of a strong community has a proven connection to lower student success and performance overall in school.

These are things we don’t think about, but there are ramifications to changing out residents and neighbors for landlords and renters.

Stop Your Town From Turning Into Another Zombie Town

Monroe residents don’t need to look very far for a solution. In fact, we just need to look to Orange County’s only city:

Here’s what we need to do, and the great news is that — According to Councilwoman Richardson — Some of this is already in the works. Which is great to hear because, under Cardone, many of these SRTs have been rubber stamped and monitored under the weak laws Cardone, Dorey Houle, and others helped create.

The Town, and I think the County if it can do so, should adopt rules much like the following:

1. SRT Hosts need to register with Monroe or their local municipality every year. (Such a list is in the works in Monroe.)

2. All SRT homes need to be thoroughly vetted by code enforcement. (This may be happening in Monroe.)

3. The SRT Host needs to pay an annual fee of $1,000. This fee would be explicitly for land preservation.*

4. You can only rent out your place of residence for a short term rental.

5. The Town should make the Village Co-terminus with it, which would allow the Village Police to help with the enforcement of these SRTs. Or, if that can’t happen, the Town should sign an IMA with the Village which would pay them to patrol the Town roads and assist with enforcement.

6. For the county, if it were to implement a version of this, the annual fee could be used to hire and train more code enforcement officers.

These guidelines will go a long way toward addressing the concerns of Monroe residents that have been raised for months now at Town Board meetings.

It’ll also keep this place from becoming a Zombie Town, which is the path we’re walking under the Cardone administration.

*It may be that this fee first has to fund the IMA with the Village Police, and then be used for land preservation. That’s a fine compromise for the fiscally conservative crowd.