Pawtucket, RI Short-Term Rentals: Occupancy Limits (2026)

Pawtucket's Zoning Ordinance never uses the phrase "short-term rental." Instead, transient lodging out of a home falls under the "bed-and-breakfast" definition in § 410-132: a single-family dwelling that rents rooms to the general public and can serve food prepared on site in a common area, but "shall accommodate no more than four transient guests at any one time," and only where "the owner must reside on the premises." Anything bigger, or run without an owner living there, falls out of the bed-and-breakfast category entirely and into "hotel and motel," defined as dwelling units or a rooming house offering transient lodging that doesn't meet the bed-and-breakfast definition, a use with its own, separate zoning-district permissions.

Operating a bed-and-breakfast also isn't automatic: it's on the special-use-permit list in § 410-60, item AL, where the only added condition on top of the four-guest, owner-occupancy cap is that "the maximum number of parked vehicles must be consistent with available on-site parking." The Zoning Board of Review reviews that special-use application. Once approved, § 410-76's off-street parking table requires one parking space per guest room for a "bed-and-breakfast, motor inn and hotel" use, the same ratio applied to full hotels. Short-term rental of an accessory dwelling unit is separately and flatly barred: § 410-46(7) states that ADUs "shall not be offered or rented for tourist or transient use or through a hosting platform," pointing to the state's hosting-platform definition at R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-63.1-2, so an ADU built under Pawtucket's ADU rules can never legally become an Airbnb-style listing.