The Middletown Zoning Board of Review approved an owner-occupied short-term rental permit for a Morris Avenue home at its July 28 meeting, but only after one member argued the approval would push a still-residential block toward the same fate as a nearby street he said has already been taken over by short-term rentals.
The petition, filed by the property's owner for 214 Morris Avenue, sought a special-use permit under sections 602, 902 and 27C of the town's zoning ordinance to operate an owner-occupied short-term rental. A special-use permit is not a variance; it allows a use the ordinance already contemplates in that zone, provided the applicant meets a set of written criteria. The board approved it by voice vote, according to the Middletown Zoning's published meeting recording.
The owner told the board he bought the three-bedroom, one-bath house about two years ago and moved into it from the house next door, which he said operates as a separate, grandfathered short-term rental. He said he tried monthly rentals this summer and found it difficult, and that a winter tenancy by students ended with unpaid utilities and a tank run out of oil. Under an owner-occupied short-term rental permit, the owner must be living on the property while it is rented — a point board members returned to twice during questioning. He said he would occupy one of the three bedrooms and rent the other two.
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The debate came during the board's discussion after the public hearing was closed and a motion to approve had already been seconded. No abutters or members of the public spoke for or against the petition.
One board member said he had brought his own color-coded map showing existing short-term rentals in the neighborhood, and offered to pass it down. He drew a direct contrast with the petition the board had approved minutes earlier — an owner-occupied short-term rental on a street where, by the applicant's own account, roughly eight properties on the block are already short-term rentals.
"That entire block has become a short-term rental block," he said of the earlier case, adding that "the character of that neighborhood has already been changed." The Morris Avenue neighborhood, he argued, "still has the possibility, the ability, to not become overrun with STRs."
He anchored the objection in the ordinance text rather than in general concern. He cited the third criterion for a special-use permit — that granting the permit "will not be detrimental to or substantially or permanently injure the appropriate use of property in the surrounding area or district" — and said continued approvals in that area would "drastically change" what is currently a residential neighborhood. He recommended the petition not be approved.
The response: the criteria, as written, are met
Other members did not dispute the trend so much as the remedy. One member said he understood where the objecting member was coming from and agreed neighborhoods are changing, but that under the short-term rental ordinance as written, the objection "just doesn't hold water." He said the applicant had satisfied the criteria and had been a responsible short-term rental owner, and that he would support the petition.
Another member said the applicant had met the elements, and added that the outcome "might have been different if there were multiple people, your surrounding abutters here, objecting to it" — but no one appeared to object.
Board members also asked town staff whether there had been complaints about the applicant's existing short-term rental next door and were told there were none on record. The board reviewed parking, and the applicant said the two-car garage, carport and driveway fit about six cars. A driveway on one side of the property is an easement serving a separate dwelling behind the house, which the applicant said he cannot block.
Five members voted on the petition. The recording indicates one member who had been seated for an earlier case, filling in for a recused colleague, did not vote on this one. The chair announced the motion passed; the recording does not include a numeric tally for this item.
What it means, and what it does not
The approval is final board action on this permit. It does not change the ordinance, and it does not set a cap on how many short-term rentals a Middletown block can hold. The exchange on Morris Avenue was, in substance, an argument about whether the special-use criteria can measure cumulative effect at all — whether a board reviewing one house at a time has any tool to weigh the twentieth approval on a street differently from the first.
No member proposed sending that question to the Town Council or the planning board, and no motion to amend the short-term rental ordinance was made. The objecting member's map was passed among members but, as the chair confirmed during the earlier petition, such a map was not entered as an exhibit in the record.
Residents who want to weigh in on future short-term rental petitions can appear at the public portion of each hearing, which the chair opens before any vote is taken. The board's next meeting is scheduled for August 25, when several petitions continued from July are due back, according to the published meeting recording.