||| FROM SHEILA GAQUIN |||
The vacation rental debate rages on. People argue about housing affordability, water usage, and traffic, but sadly, little attention is paid to the long-term damage being done to residential neighborhoods. I’ve lived in a neighborhood where the homes were occupied by owners and long-term renters, and I’ve lived in a neighborhood—the same neighborhood–with several vacation rentals. The difference is dramatic.
It’s a given that tourism is an economic mainstay of San Juan County. Prior to the AirBnB era, though, we found respite from the summer busy-ness in the quiet of our neighborhoods–places where we enjoyed security, mutual aid, and long-term social connections.
Lawnmower won’t start? A neighbor offers hers. Just got home from the hospital? Neighbors deliver food. Someone going to the mainland almost always asks, “need anything?” We value our neighbors because know we are all in this together, and are stronger for it. Is that now slipping away?
Generations of our neighbors embraced volunteerism. They gave countless hours to the food bank, the Exchange, the library, or the Senior Center. Volunteers maintained the post office landscaping and joined the Great Islands Clean Up. This unstoppable spirit has always been part of what made our islands a better place to live.
As neighbors, we’ve watched each other’s children grow up, and then we turn right around to help others age in place. We check in spontaneously, offer to pick up groceries, or take someone to the mainland. Such unselfish gestures help provide assistance and security, all contributing to the fabric of our society.
These vital-but-intangible elements of neighborhood life are dramatically diminished when family homes become business ventures. Transient renters—no matter how well behaved–stay but a few days and then move on, contributing nothing to the interdependence, the sense of place, helping hands, community pride, shared history, and stewardship of our common resources—all elements that have long been part of our island character.
Healthy, complex, interdependent communities are being shredded in the rush to turn homes into moneymaking commodities. We can save our neighborhoods and preserve what residents and visitors alike value most about the islands with vacation rental caps, strong regulations, and strict enforcement.
Sheila, you’ve hit on the ONLY viable argument about negative effects of vacation rentals. Housing affordability, water usage, and over-tourism have a multitude of other causes, but vacation rentals have been unfairly made the scapegoat. But there are two sides to the accusations of neighborhood damage, also. We are in a neighborhood where there is one vacation rental, an attached wing of the owner’s house with a separate entrance. None of the neighbors have ever complained about traffic, noise, trespassing, or any other breach of neighborhood peace that vacation rentals are being accused of.
The new VR regulations passed by the County Council in 2018 ARE saving our neighborhoods and preserving what residents and visitors alike value most about the islands, with strong regulations, and strict enforcement.
“We are in a neighborhood where there is one vacation rental, an attached wing of the owner’s house with a separate entrance.”
This sentence explains a lot. There is only one vacation rental in Dan’s neighborhood, and the rental is attached to the owner’s house with a separate entrance. I think this situation (where the short-term vacation rental is on the same parcel that is occupied by the owner of the rental) should not be included under the “cap” that is proposed for each island.
But caps are necessary for short-term vacation rentals where the owner is not present on the parcel containing the rental.
Haven’t we all come to the end of tolerance for lack of foresight and planning? Our leaders in WA DC are battling over whether to pay for long overdue plans
for improvements to infrastructure. While we in the San Juans are watching our ferry system (infrastructure) fall apart. We must continue to demand that our leaders do the harder thing: step up and plan for the future. So often, planning and investment in infrastructure is waylaid because good government in the short term is not immediately profitable. So instead we get farther and farther behind. How many vacation rentals are too many?
Susan, while I won’t weigh in on the amounts etc.. you hit the nail on the head.. when do our leaders lead..
not for commerce or political gain.. but doing the task afforded for their elected positions.. I’m afraid our leadership has fallen to low fruit.
I say this only by their inept actions. The singular notion of shortsightedness shows their lack of vision.
Good people are good people – no matter if they are visitors or locals. As a professional property manager for 35 years I’ve seen the good and the bad in renters, owners and local islanders. When I managed vacation rentals, I was always heartened by the Sea Acres community who – (residents and weekend owners) would hold weekly beach potlucks. Everyone was invited, including my vacation rental guests staying in Sea Acres homes and cabins. The wonderful stories shared by the guests warmed my heart when these “tourists” told of adults and children, coming together in the beauty of the island sharing food and humanity. Just being good people – no matter if they were transient renters in the neighborhood or year round residents.
I just returned from visiting my parents and my brother and his family for the first time since 2019. We rented a vacation rental home on the Delaware coast, and for five days were able to act like a family again after the long separation caused by the Pandemic.
The area we visited is more populated than anywhere in the San Juan Islands, and we had ‘neighbors’ all around us. My brother helped one of them put together her new grill while they chatted about their dogs. Seemed rather neighborly of him.
On the other side of our place, another resident’s dog barked incessantly throughout the night. At the time, the noise seemed markedly un-neighborly.
My point is that neighbors are people, and people act in different ways depending on who they are. Vacation rental guests can be every bit as neighborly as year-round residents. In fact, since I’ve been at a collecting point for anecdotal stories during the VR discussions, I’ve heard dozens of stories about the bad behavior of year-round renters and residents. Toby Cooper with the Vacation Rental Working Group (VRWG), in fact, has often repeated publicly the story of the shed that was sawn in half down the property line. Ironically, when asked about it in more detail, it comes to light that the person who did the sawing was not in fact a VR guest, but the property owner himself. The incident was the result of a spat between the two property owners, not VR guests.
I’m reminded of two guests who stayed at my rental in September. One couple came to visit their daughter, who was finishing up her summer as a counselor at Camp Orkila, where she had once been a camper. The other couple came back to the islands to unwind after their long spell in Seattle during the Pandemic and to revisit the islands where the wife had previously worked at the Friday Harbor Labs. Surely these people have meaningful ties to the islands, and are capable of being neighborly, connecting with residents, and upholding our desire to treat each other and our natural environment with respect.
Perhaps we should be focusing on bringing people together, not constantly finding ways to pit Us Residents against Those Vacation Rental Guests.
Thank you, Karen, I have lived at Sea Acres for 24 years and my family and extended family for 60 years. I too remember many potlucks on the beach.
Most of the 14 vacation rentals in Sea Acres are run responsibility and have only minor issues. However, the problem we are having now is new owners who have no respect for the CC&Rs or county rules and have constructed purpose built multiple family units. A neighbor bought the property in foreclosure with a Short-term Rental Permit that expired years before as an operation of law pursuant to SJCC 18.40.275 (k) (5) when not transferred after the trustee’s sale. The new bunkhouse he built would ineligible under SJCC18.40.275 (A) for a vacation rental permit even though the existing residence is presently occupied in a short-term fashion without any permits occupancy or short term rental. The new owner directly ignored warnings during construction that only single-story single-family units were allowed, not multi-story multi-family units; that is clear under our CC&Rs and County regulations. However, the financial rewards were so great he chose to ignore everyone to get the income stream flowing.
The county has not enforced the building code or land use regulations, so enforcement fell to the owners. We have spent tens of thousands of dollars on enforcement of our CC&Rs while the county has failed to enforce anything. The county granted an ADU “bunkhouse” permit with three separate units and entrances and then proceeded to tell the owner he could attach the ADU to the main house and be eligible for a vacation rental. That represented a land use change from single family to four separate units with short term rentals.
The economic pressure to ignore regulations is very strong and as a community it has a high cost just to protect the views and character of the community. The simple equation is that we have had to spend a huge amount of time and money to enforce simple rules that we all agreed to live by as the economic pressure increases.
Since June of this year that owner has been building without permits and the building department has refused to enforce the existing rules or even inspect the property since 2017.
In addition, the units have been occupied without any occupancy or short-term rental permits or inspections.
Finally, the short-term rentals on private roads create a safety and nuisance issue as the number of trips increase. The first are the cleaners who arrive to inspect and clean. Because of budgetary constraints these workers are in a hurry and drive at excess speeds raising dust, generating noise, and degrading the road. Next are the vacation renters who make multiple trips to sightsee, shop, and explore. Then when they leave the cleaners return. Finally, the garbage pickup by the rental agency also comes down the lane and back always in a hurry. All of this traffic is an increase from normal single-family residential traffic representing an undue burden while all the other neighbors must bear in the form of dust, noise, increased road maintenance, and safety concerns.
My point is that the economic pressure for vacation rentals has to be strictly regulated by the county and if the county does not have the resources or motivation for enforcement, then no permits should be granted.
Shawn Alexander
Thank you Shawn,
Thank you for pointing out the truth of what has happened in our beloved and historic Sea Acre community, one of the last of its kind… that our residents are fighting hard to save.
Our own small community has begun to sadly evolve into a new type of business model rental community of constantly changing and revolving vacation renters because of lack of enforcement of County building rules by County officials.
Why haven’t our County officials properly enforced our building inspections and codes?
Our residents who live here are not being treated fairly.
Vacation rental businesses such as those owned by companies and non-residents should be restricted in residential communities.
Our County officials must honor our historic communities instead of catering to businesses first.
The cost to our once peaceful, serene and connected Island communities will be devastating and permanent if they do not.
Just look and read at how quickly this issue has already drastically divided our Island neighborhoods. It has become Business vs Residents.
Business is winning.
Business should not be having free reign to control the fate of the continuity of our communities.
Yes, I read this article by Sheila Gaquin , it is spot on and she is totally correct with her experienced observations of how vacation rentals have changed our beautiful Islands with the loss of established community oriented family neighborhoods.
Annie B. Crane
Yes, the County needs to take enforcement of its regulations much more seriously than it does now. Why not use a portion of the lodging tax on vacation rentals to hire and pay an inspector specifically devoted to Orcas Island, where the greatest VR problems are obviously occurring, given all the negative reactions?
I agree that all the elements that Sheila noted — interdependence, sense of place, helping hands, communty pride, shared history, stewardship of our environment — have all been elements I have found in all of the places I have lived. The San Juan Islands are unique in many ways, but its people are no greater than those I have lived near all my life.
Joe Biden paraphrased Dwight D. Eisenhower when he cautioned, “Never question another’s motive. Question their actions but never their motive.”
I know how important that intangible sense of community is when it comes to building relationships and security. Though the people who visit the islands contribute to our commonweal by buying tickets for our concerts and festivals; the distribution of bed taxes help bolster community organizatons directly.
Because we are good does not mean they are bad. This is a sad us/them dichotomy.
Tourists are people. For eons the traveler has been welcomed. How did it come to this that we will not welcome because they do not do what we do, and look like we look.
The Northern Straits Coast Salish have a spirit guidance that requests “Healing, Honor, Hospitlity, Respect and Protection.” These first inhabitants of the islands “never stopped in one place,” according to historian James Joseph. “They went from place to place.”
Lummi master carver Jewell ‘Praying Wolf’ James Se-Sealth has said of this year’s 20th anniversay of the Totem Pole Journey: “The totem pole isn’t what is Sacred. It’s the gathering of the people around the Pole — that is Sacred.”
We might then say, as tribute to the islands, that the islands are not what is Sacred. It’s the gathering of the people around the islands — that is Sacred.
Very well said Sheila! A homeowner having a vacation rental is one thing but multiple ownerships, unattended vacation rentals especially with lax enforcementds
is another. When homes are turned into commercial enterprises neighborhoods and the community in general is eroded. A common sense limit on numbers and concentration of vacation rentals is needed.