The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors is about to plunge into the increasingly fraught issue of vacation rentals, a topic that has Trinidad and communities large and small across California, and the nation, tied up in knots (and, in many cases, lawsuits).
The Supes will consider a petition on whether and how to regulate vacation rentals at their meeting next week (Tuesday, Feb. 9) at 1:30 p.m., in Supervisors Chambers, 825 Fifth St. in Eureka.
The issue pits property owners who want to rent out their homes against neighborhood residents who complain about absentee landlords, noise and the loss of community. In California, the issue has been building in metros like Los Angeles and San Francisco and small towns and vacation areas alike from the coast to the Sierra.
Current Humboldt County regulations require rentals of at least 30 days, Steve Werner, a county planner, said Monday, which means that shorter term “vacation dwelling units” — houses or room rented out for fewer than 30 days — are illegal. “We’ve seen a rise in the number of these kinds of uses,” he said.
So far in Humboldt County, only tiny Trinidad has enacted local ordinances to regulate vacation rentals, so the rest of the county has some catching up to do (See our Dec. 10 cover story, “For Rent“). “It’s a complicated issue that’s hard to get your arms around,” Werner said, acknowledging that the supervisors are playing catch-up in trying to get a handle on the issue across a large and diverse county.
Shelter Cove was the first part of the county to broach the subject of vacation rentals to county planners, Werner said, and Willow Creek, Arcata and other cities have started thinking formally and informally about the issue.
It’s no secret that many unincorporated parts of the county, including Westhaven and Big Lagoon and other Trinidad outskirts in the north, down to Garberville and other parts of SoHum, have experienced growing tensions between rental managers, their property owner clients who use their homes to generate revenue, and fulltime residents who complain about “strangers who invade our neighborhoods and disrupt our lives with loud parties, trash, traffic, dogs pooping and cars parking on our properties,” as Westhaven resident Mara Parker put it in a recent letter to the Times Standard.
In trying to get ahead of the problem, Trinidad city officials devised and adopted a local ordinance on short-term rentals last year, only to place an “emergency moratorium” on rental licensing while city officials hold public hearings to expand the law to consider elements the original ordinance missed. Trinidad’s all-volunteer planning commission has been conducting a series of public meetings on matters including a cap limiting the number of rentals in town, code enforcement, rental density in residential neighborhoods, penalties for violations and other matters.
Werner said the short-term rental issue, like the question of marijuana cultivation, is something that has grown faster than county regulations could keep up with. He says county planners will be watching Trinidad’s progress closely on the vacation rental issue as the Supes decide how they want to address it.
This article appears in Get Out of Jail For a Fee.
https://www.change.org/p/humboldt-county-b…
The joke is that even though the City of Trinidad has enacted a VDU Ordinance, it is not enforcing any of the rules associated with the Ordinance. VDU Property Managers are fudging the rules and turning every available room into a bedroom. If you want to have a huge party, no problem, Property Managers will set you up with a king bed, queen bed, single bed, bunk bed, futon, fold-out couch, cot, you get the idea. VDUs in Trinidad have more amenities than a resort, offering pool tables, ping pong tables, dart boards, saunas, hot tubs, outdoor BBQs, fire pits, you name it. Oftentimes these VDUs block public hiking trails but, again, what is the big deal? The City of Trinidad knows this is going on, but they could care less because VDUs bring in a lot of TOTs (i.e., tourist taxes). Another big joke is that even though the City Council clearly stated that only ONE VDU is allowed PER PARCEL, Trinidad staff is doing everything it can to turn ONE VDU per parcel into 2 and 3 VDUs per parcel. If you want to turn your 4-plex into ONE VDU, just say you are renting it to one party and suddenly 4 separate units becomes 1 VDU. I went to college, but this sort of logic has me scratching my head–am I missing something??? 3 does not = 1, 2 does not = 1–the last I checked, 1 = 1! There is nothing ambiguous about the City Council’s direction for the definition of a VDU. It is Trinidad City staff that is working overtime (with Trinidad citizens paying the bill) to manipulate VDU Ordinance language so that Property Mangers can violate the rules. So, don’t kid yourself, while there is a semblance of legality to Trinidad’s VDUs, it really is a free for all because there is no enforcement by City staff or law enforcement. It is the citizen’s that have to deal with these problems and live with the reality of a town being sold to the highest bidder!
On the point of enforcement i totally understand why the county and towns don’t have the internal ressources to go after the illegal short-term rentals. That said they could outsource it to a service provider such as Host Compliance (www.hostcompliance.com) who given their technology and scale can do it much cheaper and more efficiently than our local government’s internal staff. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Follow the LAW. Enforce the Municipal Code in Trinidad. These Commercial businesses are NOT allowed. The County does NOT allow Short Term Rentals in residential neighborhoods! That is THE NO Brainer!
Stand up for the people, the community. Stop the TOT tax addiction!