Call to action
— from The Vacation Rental Work Group —
An exceptional number of participants spoke at a Council meeting in Friday Harbor on November 5 during the public access period. You can learn more about this event here.
Read Matthew Gilbert’s Orcas Issues reporting on the Council proceedings.
Per the request of County Council, the Vacation Rental Working Group is drafting regulatory language to be presented to Council in January 2020 as part of the Council’s consideration of a moratorium.
There is no guarantee that the Council will consider either the regulatory language or a moratorium.
Additional public input requesting a moratorium is essential. Let your voice be counted.
Sign the petition to request that the San Juan County Council immediately pass a moratorium on the issuance of new Vacation Rental Permits
Lopez, San Juan Island, and outer island supporters: Please pass this notice to your contacts. Broad inter-island participation will demonstrate county-wide support for a moratorium.
MISSION
Mobilizing our community to regulate vacation rentals in a manner that protects our rural character, environment, and culture in the San Juan Islands.
The Vacation Rental Work Group vacationrentalsorcas.org.
As the Council members have observed each time this proposal has been presented (three times in the past year?), the County undertook new regulations governing vacation rentals in 2017 and it is about to mark its first year of operations under those regulations and have available a full year of data concerning the results. I’d prefer that Council have the planners and enforcement officer provide us information about the results of the new regulations, which resulted from a long, open process and made some dramatic changes in the vacation rental system.
The data cited in the first of the VRWG meetings predated the implementation of the new regulations, and many of the complainants there seemed unaware that a regulatory system for complaints even existed. Let’s analyze the issues with current data, educate the citizenry, and then address what problems remain.
The current regulations do not go far enough. 1 in 6 homes on Orcas Island is now a vacation rental and there are no limits. When is enough? “The growing presence of vacation rentals limits our community’s access to affordable housing; it taxes our critical infrastructures; degrades the natural environment; and threatens the very reasons why many of us choose to live here — why many of us made investment-backed expectations to live in a rural community that wasn’t a hotel room next door.” What kind of community do you want to live in?