Opinion: What Is A Neighborhood Without Neighbors?

By Alder Mandy Martinelli

Rent rises are unprecedented. Regulating short-term rentals can help slow the climb and keep our neighbors in their homes.

(Opinion) I grew up in a small town where community meant showing up on a neighbor’s porch with a warm meal when life got hard. When I moved to New Haven, a city of neighborhoods, I was relieved to find that exact same spirit in a bigger city. When I was in need, my neighbors dropped everything to make sure I was not alone. Having neighbors who were deeply rooted on our street is what truly made me feel at home — and protecting those rooted communities is why I serve as alder for Ward 8.

This is my chosen home. Since the pandemic, there has been a fundamental switch in how we value our living spaces. Since 2020, rents in New Haven have risen 53 percent, from roughly $1,290 to nearly $2,000 a month, according to Zillow’s Observed Rent Index. We no longer just sleep in our homes; our work, our lives, and our entertainment happen inside them. It’s the heart of our daily lives. But while everyday families were spending more time at home, Wall Street and private investors recognized and seized a commercial opportunity. Private investors realized they can make as much money in a single week with a short-term rental as they can in almost an entire month of long-term housing. That brings us to an urgent decision: Where do we draw the line in the sand?

It’s your neighborhood. It’s our community, together. When we lose a home, we don’t just lose housing. We lose a neighbor.

That is why I co-introduced Ordinance OR-2026-0039. It draws a clear line: vacation rentals of 30 days or less belong only in a host’s primary residence. Local residents can still share a spare room or rent out their own home while away, but investors can no longer turn our neighborhood houses into unhosted nightly hotels.

Having investors keep buying up the houses around you to run nightly hotels right next door is unprecedented. We see this unfolding across the country in places like Irvine, California and New York City, and right here in Connecticut, where 15 towns and cities are regulating, and residents in West Hartford are calling for bans. When homes become nightly hotels, it breaks the foundation we stand on. It directly inflates market prices, spikes rental rates, and displaces working people who have no seat at the table and no leverage to fight for themselves.

This isn’t about homeowners. I understand owning a home has unique challenges, and you can still rent for 31 days or more, which keeps your home available to a neighbor. It is not an end to home-sharing. This does not close our doors to the people who make New Haven a hub for medicine, research, and learning. This ordinance covers stays of 30 days or less. The traveling nurse, the visiting researcher, the grad student, the specialist here for a longer assignment: they are not affected. And visitors here for a weekend still have our hotels, our bed and breakfasts, and licensed home-shares.

The city has set an ambitious goal of building 10,000 new housing units by 2034 — at least 30 percent of them affordable — and regulating short-term rentals protects the homes we already have while we build more. Returning these units to the long-term market won’t instantly solve every affordability challenge, and these homes won’t automatically become affordable units, but it will relieve market pressure and slow the relentless rise of rents.

New Haven is 70 percent renters. Renters are the backbone of this city’s economy, and they pay the highest share of their income toward housing. To the struggling residents who feel like they are drowning with no air: I see you. This regulation gives our renters a seat at the table. It gives working families a fighting chance to breathe easier and stop living in fear of being displaced from their homes. This is just the first step — we have much more work to do, but this will ease troubling minds about rent increases and displacement. When our Legislation Committee met in October, members listened to those fears and passed this ordinance favorably.

What constitutes a neighborhood? Neighbors. Here on Brown Street, it is a familiar face handing you a slice of apizza as you walk by, grounded in the understanding that we are all in this together, and that we are only as strong as our weakest link. When making more money comes at the direct expense of a family’s stability, it ceases to be standard business — it becomes the destabilization of our residents.

What is a neighborhood without neighbors? It is constant annoyances, weekend parties, piled-up garbage, and a rotating cast of new faces on a weekly basis. Right now, the city does not know how many short-term rentals exist; thankfully, New Haven Rising researchers created a report, they stepped in to gather the data. This business model drives systemic inequality. About 100 short-term rentals were listed in Ward 8 this past summer, at least 79 of them entire homes or apartments. Citywide, there were more than 1,000 listings, with over 650 operating as entire units.  On my own very small street alone, three multi-family homes became short-term rentals in just two years.

Airbnb, a $100 billion company, takes a cut of housing transactions without building or owning a single home, and investors who convert long-term housing into unhosted hotel rooms are extracting from the homes we already have rather than adding new ones. They are investing much time, money and effort into to turn your future home into a hotel and stopping this regulation. The last time America faced wealth this concentrated, reformers didn’t wait for the market to fix itself. They passed tenement laws, building codes, and zoning rules that helped build a middle class. We need to again look at how we built equality back — by protecting working people and rewriting the rules of our local economy.

Ordinance OR-2026-0039 was written with that progressive tradition in mind. The primary resident mandate protects long-term residents and owner-occupants can still leverage the platform economy by renting a room or listing their own primary residence while out of town.

Sharers must register and secure a three-year renewable license. This allows the city to maintain accurate records of who is operating a short-term rental through Livable City Initiative (LCI) licensing enforcement. To prevent residential units from turning into unhosted party houses, rentals will be capped at a maximum of 10 guests total, or two adults per bedroom. Traditional hotels, motels, and bed-and-breakfasts remain completely exempt.

I am here to serve my residents, protect future generations, and keep our neighborhoods intact. We have stood at these crossroads before, and we will not falter. The full Board of Alders will vote on this ordinance soon. If you believe working renters deserve a seat at the table and that neighbors should stay neighbors, please join us in standing up for our residents, email your alder. Let your voice be heard, so the corporation doesn’t speak for you.

When my life got hard, my neighbors showed up at my door. I am fighting to make sure that when you need a neighbor at your door, you still have one.

Mandy Martinelli is the alder for Ward 8. She is dedicated to building a community where neighbors feel connected, heard, and valued.