What the act did not change — and why that matters

Section 2 of Chapter 165 reprints the whole of § 42-63.1-14, which invites a misreading. The only thing the act adds to that section is subsection (l). Everything else in it is pre-existing law, restated. Three of those standing provisions are worth knowing because owners routinely confuse them with the new duty:

The state registration requirement already exists. “Any short-term rental property listed for rent on the website of any third-party hosting platform that conducts business in Rhode Island shall be registered with the department of business regulation”, renewable annually on the anniversary of the original registration, and completed “prior to a listing by a hosting platform.”

The state definition of a short-term rental is thirty nights: “For purposes of this section, the term 'short-term rental' means a person, firm, or corporation's utilization, for transient lodging accommodations, not to exceed thirty (30) nights at a time.” Municipal ordinances frequently use a shorter period, and the state figure does not displace them.

And the municipal constraint already exists: where a hosting platform collects and remits the applicable sales and hotel taxes in compliance with the cited tax provisions, “cities, towns, or municipalities shall not prohibit the owner from offering the unit for tourist or transient use through such hosting platform”. None of that is new in 2026.

Where the duty lands in a condominium or HOA

On the unit owner, in both versions. Chapter 165 makes no association a landlord, gives no association an enforcement role, and imposes no duty on a board. But three consequences reach the board anyway.

The association holds the documents. Subsection (e)(1)(ii) obliges the owner, on request, to provide documentation of public rights-of-way “in the landlord's possession”. For a unit owner in a waterfront condominium, the recorded rights-of-way, CRMC assents and plat notations affecting the frontage are almost always in the association's files rather than the owner's. An association that keeps them unsorted is going to field requests from January.

A private-beach rule now contradicts a required notice. Plenty of Rhode Island shoreline communities restrict beach use to owners and guests by declaration or rule. From January the same community's renting owners are statutorily required to give their renters a notice stating the public may use the shore up to ten feet landward of the recognisable high tide line. The notice is not an admission about the association's own frontage — it recites a general statutory right, subject to § 46-23-26 and other law — but a board is likely to be asked to reconcile the two, and a rule reviewed now is cheaper than one argued about later. Our Rhode Island short-term rentals page covers how far an association's rental restriction reaches in the first place.

The frequency differs by route. A tenancy disclosure is owed before each tenancy, with no minimum term — so a weekly summer let is a tenancy for this purpose and the notice is owed each time. A short-term rental disclosure placed conspicuously in the platform listing is owed once, for as long as the listing carries it. Owners who rent both ways will be operating under both subsections.

A checklist a board can work through before January 1

Assemble the access file. Every recorded right-of-way, plat notation, CRMC assent and access easement affecting the community's frontage, in one place, available to owners on request. This is the single highest-value thing an association can do here, and it is work only the association can do.

Tell owners which of the two duties applies to them. Many will assume registering with the Department of Business Regulation covers it. It does not; the registry and the disclosure are separate, and the DBR registration also does not satisfy a municipal licence.

Check whether the community is even in scope. The trigger is “shoreline property as defined in § 5-20.8-1” — a definition in the real estate sales disclosure chapter, not a coastal one. Whether a particular unit qualifies is a question about that definition, and it is the first thing to establish rather than assume.

Do not add a duty the statute does not impose. Nothing in Chapter 165 requires the association to give any notice, police owner compliance, or fine an owner who fails. A board writing a rule to enforce a statute it is not charged with enforcing is inventing exposure.

What to watch next

Rhode Island's House commission on short-term rental policy had its life reinstated in February 2026 by Resolution 98 and is required to report to the House on or before September 30, 2026 — within weeks of this article. Whether it recommends aligning the thirty-night state definition with the shorter definitions municipalities use is the recommendation that would most change what an owner in a covenant community has to comply with.