Climb into the back of Ryan Fallon’s dark blue Ford 500 sedan and you’ll be greeted with bottled water and individually wrapped snacks. It’s his small way of connecting with the passengers he picks up as a driver for Uber, the online ride-sharing service that’s expanding outside of large cities like Boston and New York. Portsmouth and Manchester are the latest additions to the list of cities where passengers in search of a ride can use Uber’s smartphone app to connect with a local driver, like Fallon, who’ll get them where they need to go.
“You can drive when you want, and if you don’t, there’s no set schedule. It seemed like a great opportunity for regular people to earn money on the side,” says Fallon, who is 29. He’s been driving in Portsmouth for Uber for about a month, picking up passengers on Friday and Saturday nights, usually after the bars close and people are looking for a ride home. His first weekend, he gave more than 30 passengers rides in and around Portsmouth.
“We’ll go anywhere,” Fallon says. “If (the passengers) want us to drop them off at the airport, we’re supposed to accommodate them as best we can.”
Fallon’s career as an Uber driver has come into conflict with Portsmouth officials, who say Uber is essentially a taxi service and should be subject to the same strict regulations as the city’s other taxi drivers. At a meeting of the city’s taxi commission earlier this month, city attorney Robert Sullivan said that, under city ordinances, Uber meets the definition of a taxi service.
At a Dec. 22 city council meeting, councilors voted down a measure that would have allowed Uber drivers in the city to operate without being ticketed for 60 days. However, Fallon says police officials have told him that, since there’s no specific ordinance that addresses ride-sharing services, they will refrain from ticketing Uber drivers. A public hearing on Uber is scheduled at a taxi commission meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 14.
Meanwhile, Portsmouth officials are also struggling with how to regulate services like Airbnb, which allows users to book short-term rentals in private homes, apartments, and other locations online. The city’s zoning board recently declined a special exception for two city residents who were renting out rooms in their homes through Airbnb. However, many residents in Portsmouth and in neighboring cities are renting out homes and apartments through Airbnb; a recent search for rentals found more than 200 results in the greater Seacoast area, with 20 in Portsmouth, 14 in Kittery, six in Dover, and many others.
It’s a clash between city ordinances, which are often slow to change, and the online services that, thanks to the sharing economy, have quickly established themselves across the country. And, while officials try to keep up with these changes, residents using the services find themselves stuck.
A short stay
Jeffrey Cooper and his wife loved having short-term guests at their house. “It’s really cool seeing people have a great time, seeing people enjoy Portsmouth,” he says. “How does traveling become fun? You want to meet real people, talk to them, get to know them.”
Cooper and his wife Abigail rented out their Park Street home to guests through Airbnb for a little more than a year and hosted several guests — some from around New England, others from across the country. In November, he received a cease-and-desist notice from the city’s zoning officer; earlier this month, the zoning board denied Cooper’s request for a special exception to rent out a room in his home.
Another city couple, Robert and Eileen Mackin, also received a cease-and-desist notice and were likewise denied a special exception.
One problem, according to city officials, is zoning. Some zoning districts allow for a mix of residential and commercial use; others don’t. Cooper’s home is in a neighborhood zoned only for single-family residences. That zoning designation doesn’t allow uses such as renting out a room for a few nights.
“If anything isn’t consistent (with the zoning use) … it is not allowed,” says city attorney Robert Sullivan.
The other problem is that Airbnb doesn’t quite match up with any of the definitions offered in the city’s zoning regulations. A bed and breakfast offers “short-term lodging and breakfast within an owner-occupied dwelling” and accommodates no more than 25 people. An inn, meanwhile, offers “lodging for transient boarders with up to 15 sleeping rooms” and may “have a caretaker residence, but does not have to be occupied by the owner, and shall not serve food to the public.” A boarding house is “a residential structure, other than a bed and breakfast, in which rooms are rented, leased, or otherwise made available for compensation to more than two but not more than 10 individuals, and where such rooms do not contain separate cooking or bathroom facilities.” The definitions of motels and hotels don’t encompass services like Airbnb, either.
Cooper hopes the city council will take up the issue and make changes. “I think there’s a real solution to this that benefits everybody,” he says. “I’m not blaming the zoning board or anything; they were expressing their concerns and their worries. I want to have a positive discussion with the city about how to move forward for everybody’s benefit, and mine in particular. I’d sure like to start up again.”
Concerns and complaints
According to Cooper, after he received the cease-and-desist notice, he learned that a number of neighbors had complained about his Airbnb rentals. The complaints varied; one was about parking, another about traffic in the neighborhood and renters asking for directions to the house.
Sullivan says the city is dealing with Airbnb “under our existing regulatory framework, which was created before those services were.”
“It’s not a perfect fit,” he adds. “We are dealing with those issues particularly as they arise from citizen complaints.”
Portsmouth cab drivers have to undergo background checks by the police department and must provide copies of their driving and criminal records. The cabs undergo an annual inspection by both city and state officials. And there are insurance costs. Insuring a commercial vehicle is expensive, according to Merle White, owner of Anchor Taxi. Uber drivers aren’t required to carry commercial insurance.
I want to see (Uber) gone. — Merle White, owner of Anchor Taxi
The city licenses taxis through a taxi medallion program; currently, the city allows for 28 taxis to operate in the city. Medallions cost $100. Uber drivers skirt all those regulations, and to White, that means customers aren’t as safe — and that local cab companies are at a disadvantage.
“Right now, we’re starving to death as it is” with the current number of cabs in the city, he says. “We have enough checks and balances with the way the city’s set it up so that a customer can feel safe in a cab.”
The city’s famously competitive cab companies finally agree on one thing, White says: they don’t want Uber in Portsmouth. “I want to see them gone,” White says.
Disrupting regulations
Sullivan says services like Uber and Airbnb are “extremely difficult to deal with for a municipality.” Drafting new ordinances or regulations can be challenging, he says. “There are strong feelings on both sides of the question, so a municipal response by way of rewriting the rules doesn’t come easily.”
But that’s the whole point of the services, according to Dan Innis, a former Congressional candidate and co-owner of Hotel Portsmouth.
“Airbnb and Uber are disruptive … because they’re completely different than anything we’ve seen in the past,” he says.
Rather than coming up with new regulations, Innis hopes the city takes a more flexible approach in dealing with these new businesses.
“Any time you’ve got an entrepreneurial mindset coming into a market, you want conditions that help that grow, and I’m not sure we have that rig