||| FROM SFGATE.COM ||| Repint at request of Orcasonian reader
Six months into a moratorium that halted short-term rentals permits in North Lake Tahoe, Placer County is considering a new set of rules to rein in the proliferation of vacation rentals and protect what little housing inventory remains for locals.
The new ordinance would cap the number of short-term rentals in eastern Placer County, permitting about 25% of current housing stock on Tahoe’s North Shore and West Shore, from Kings Beach to Homewood, and Olympic Valley and Northstar, to operate as short-term rentals.
Local residents say the new rules don’t go nearly far enough. Many want the county to crack down on short-term rentals even more.
Nearly 200 people, in person and via Zoom, attended the public hearing for the new short-term rental ordinance, held at a Placer County Board of Supervisors meeting in Tahoe City on Tuesday.
Dozens of commenters, most full-time Tahoe residents who have been in the area anywhere from a couple of years to several decades, spoke up at the meeting, urging the board to take stronger action. Instead of granting more short-term rental permits, as the proposed ordinance would do, local residents pleaded with the board to reduce the number of permits, bring balance back to neighborhoods that are overwhelmed by vacationers and alleviate pressure on a housing crisis that is displacing the workforce, disrupting businesses and sinking the quality of life for local residents.
“I know so many contributors to this community — teachers, people who work in hospitals, people who work in utilities, people who work in restaurants — that are not able to either rent here or buy homes, and it is absolutely heartbreaking,” said Ellie Perry, a North Tahoe resident, at the meeting. “Every time one of those houses is turned into, essentially, another hotel, that’s one less home for somebody who’s actually contributing to this community.”
Lake Tahoe has been trying to regulate and enforce the proliferation of Airbnbs across the basin for years, and the rules are anything but consistent. There are five separate counties in the basin, each with their own jurisdiction and philosophies. Last year, the city of South Lake Tahoe prohibited short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods. The town of Truckee is also in the midst of its own moratorium and debate on how to reign in short-term rentals.
The stakes are high. The need to regulate short-term rentals began as a nuisance issue, responding to noise, parking and trash violations. Then the pandemic hit, and Lake Tahoe experienced a surge of visitors unlike anything else in its history, as people heeded doctors’ recommendations to go outdoors while COVID raged.
The fallout has transformed the way of life for most local residents, and it’s easy to see how that happened by looking at the real estate numbers. In April 2020, the median price of a single family home in North Tahoe was $660,000, according to a report compiled by Placer County staff. By November of 2021, that figure jumped 178% to a $1.175 million median sale price. Of all the homes sold in 2021, nearly 40% were cash offers, according to the Sierra Board of Realtors.
(from the article) “I know so many contributors to this community — teachers, people who work in hospitals, people who work in utilities, people who work in restaurants — that are not able to either rent here or buy homes, and it is absolutely heartbreaking,”
Well, heartbreaking or not, unless their wages go up substantially, none of those people mentioned are going to be able to afford to live anywhere that the median home price is well over a million dollars. So either their wages are going to have to double or triple, with comparable increases in the cost of services, or there will have to be subsidized housing provided, which merely spreads those extra costs among the entire tax paying population rather than just the people using the services.
Or, and this is by far the most likely outcome, people will simply have to commute to work from somewhere that they can afford to live. Shocking!
To my mind, the real takeaway from this piece is – vacation rental moratoriums did nothing to limit home price increases in Lake Tahoe… or here. And why would they? There are more people who want to buy than there are available properties; therefore the prices go up.
You may think that that is unfair but that is the way that a free market works. If you would prefer a different system, I suggest running for political office on a platform of nationalizing all housing and giving those homes to anyone that wants to live in the area. Let me know how that works out.
If, on the other hand, you live in the real world, maybe you want to consider supporting high speed passenger ferries from Bellingham and Anacortes so that working people can live where their income allows them to afford to rent or purchase. Will that make Orcas into a wealthy enclave divided into those with substantial money and those who ride the ferry to work here? Yep.
But take an honest look around and tell me it’s not already that way.
Mr. Wood should know there is no such thing as “The Free Market”
Regulatory capture by super-capital, in this case realtors, has ended that.
One only has to think back to the 2008 financial crisis to remember that people like Mitt Romney advocated letting the entire housing market crash so firms like his could buy up entire neighborhoods. Such is the state of capitalism in modern America.
When comparing Lake Tahoe to Orcas Island…
It would be nice if posts could include data on percentages of vacation rentals versus long-term homes in comparison as well. We know that the data for Orcas Island is a very low percentage vacation rental versus long-term home or part-time residency. I would like to see the data. Several of our long-term rentals have been sold for long-term or part-time homes in the past couple of years. in the same years – not nearly as many rental permits have been awarded. According to the data on Orcas (if I remember correctly) our vacation rentals are at less than 5% of all homes.
Again, I would like to see the data on these comparables for each destination town that we are compared to.
My vacation rental which I have had for years has only been used for two months a number of years ago… Yet it is my only real hope for income in the future to pay property taxes and to remain an islander. Perhaps a developer wishes to purchase my two vacant lots to build multifamily rentals? I am not against looking at the vacation rental situation – I do want all the facts.
This is about so much more than elusive concepts of “affordable housing.” Almost every week, at a time and place of their choosing, a new VR is entering somebody’s San Juan County neighborhood or next-door forestland, uninvited, unwanted, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. VRs look like family residences, but they are business enterprises, profitable and scalable like any other business. Whether it is one permit or one thousand permits, every one of them presents the same intrusive problem in our community. That is why we are seeking limits – reasonable guardrails to protect our chosen way of life. Tahoe and many, many other communities are doing the same. Thank you all for helping to make progress.
Mr. Woods is obviously a Vacation rental owner. Always blames the free market. Sad. Tax the heck out of them, I say. What are the names of the islands on the East Coast where all the workers ride a ferry to and from work every day? $120.00 in the winter. $200.00 in the summer. Love the pretending to care about the locals. Go Capitalism. San Juan County is being way to nice….so far. Increase worker wages is a fake answer. If that happens every restaurant will close and you will lose your fat hog. How about instead, drop the rental prices and open them up to locals. We pay too much for everything as it is. Tax vaca rentals just like hotels. All of them.
Wendy,
Here are the numbers and sources I was able to quickly find for data on Orcas vacation rentals.
1. From https://www.sanjuanco.com/DocumentCenter/View/20022/2020-01-25_PUB_Symons_HousingEl_HNA:
469 of 2811 Single Family Residence (SFR) parcels on Orcas have an approved SJC VR Permit; this is ~16% or 1 in 6 homes
2. I attempted to verify the 469 permits on Orcas, using the data set at: https://data2017-01-09t190539232z-sjcgis.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/vacation-rental-permits-2020-compliance/explore
I found 479 VR on Orcas Island. I suspect, but cannot say with certainty, that the difference of 10 units (469 vs 479) is simply a slightly later data set. However, assuming the 2811 number is accurate, that is less than 0.5% (17.0% vs 16.7%)
Not intended to express a point of view, but simply an attempt to provide data.
Thank you Ken Singh. Much appreciated
Toby Cooper makes a good point. VRs are commercial, not residential, enterprises — located in areas zoned as residential. It’s as simple as that. And when commercial enterprises begin to crowd out residences (now 17% according to Ken Singh’s comment), there’s no place for the necessary workers to live. Except in the woods, that is.