For three years I have listened carefully to the residents in the Valley impacted by vacation rentals, and employers and employees seeking housing. I’ve sought the advice of responsible individual and professional vacation rental property owners. I’ve spoken with people from all sides of this issue, repeatedly. We directed complaints to PRMD, helped neighbors to understand the complaint process, and worked with owners to gain full compliance.
The comprehensive work of our PRMD, County Counsel and District 1 staff on this issue has been remarkable — holding public workshops all over the County, receiving an enormous volume of calls and correspondence from neighbors and property owners, thoughtfully outlining the background and policy recommendations. The Planning Commission spent an unusual amount of their volunteer time listening to community comments, reading voluminous reports, and deliberating for two months on valuable recommendations to the Board of Supervisors.
Yet all of that work and effort blew up during the last hour of discussion by the Board of Supervisors on January 26. It is an understatement to say that I am profoundly disappointed that the four other of board members do not appreciate that our tourism economy impacts our neighborhood compatibility and workforce housing.
Their repeated phrases “I need more data” and “less anecdotal accounts” was stunning, considering each Supervisor was given a huge binder of data, analysis, and yes, “anecdotal” evidence in the form of hundreds of pages of letters and emails.
The study was thorough and the problem obvious, even nearing ubiquitous, as hundreds of municipalities across the country decry the effects of the explosion of short-term rentals.
The Board regularly discusses the importance of housing and homelessness, but presented with the opportunity to make a difference in Sonoma Valley, they chose to reject many of the strongly worded recommendations of the Planning Commission.
We are fortunate to have a booming tourism economy, but we cannot and should not leave our residents behind in a short sighted attempt to fill county coffers at the expense of those who reside here, raise their families and operate businesses here.
My colleagues were not only unconvinced there was a problem, they went so far as to assert there has not been a marked increase in rentals post 2010. It is impossible to draw this conclusion when you look at the statistics.
The Supervisors simply have no understanding of the impacts in the Valley because their districts are significantly different. They don’t understand the challenges of strangers moving in and out of houses next door, or across the street. Their offices have not had to answer complaints about lack of sleep, backyard drinking and hot tub parties, and lack of owner/manager responsiveness.
At the end of the meeting, I was the lone dissenting vote. I could not support the watered down version of the vacation rental housing ordinance.
The option of an exclusion zone was recommended, rather than accepting the Planning Commission’s recommendation of banning further conversions of housing stock into vacation rentals in the R-1 zone, which is the zoning for most of The Springs, Glen Ellen and Kenwood.
An exclusion zone would grandfather in existing vacation rentals, while ceasing the issuance of permits in those areas until balance is achieved. This action will take several months of outreach to the various areas (boundaries to be identified), hearings at the Planning Commission, and action brought back to the board. We will need everyone with an interest to show up, speak up, and educate the board.
I requested an emergency measure of moratorium, requiring a four-vote majority. Why? Because in June of 2014, the number of permits in the district was 176. Today it is 448, with even more awaiting approval: a 60 percent increase overall in 19 months. My colleagues, save for Supervisor Gore, refused to support a temporary moratorium on vacation rental permits in District 1. They thought it was an over-reaction to a non-problem.
Some good recommendations and modifications were approved by the board, including allowing hosted rentals throughout the County, PRMD notification to the neighbors, a checklist of health and safety requirements for new permits, limits on capacity and advertising, requiring property managers/owners to reside within 30 miles, property manager certification, and strong enforcement tools.
But let me be clear, I am far from finished fighting for my district. I will strenuously advocate for exclusion overlay zones that will bring balance to our most affected areas. I will continue to praise and consult with those working hard to responsibly manage hosted and whole-house rentals. I will speak loudly for neighbors who continue to be challenged by late night parties and neighborhood compatibility.
I will stand up for those in The Springs who provide the labor for our economy, yet cannot find safe and affordable homes. I will advocate for those who live on tiny roads in Glen Ellen and Kenwood now populated by a revolving door of visiting vacationers. And I will do all this as I always have – by working with the neighbors, vacation rental owners, and professional managers.
Please share your thoughts with me and the rest of the Board of Supervisors:
District 1: Susan Gorin – Susan.Gorin@sonoma-county.org
District 2: David Rabbitt – David.Rabbitt@sonoma-county.org
District 3: Shirlee Zane -Shirlee.Zane@sonoma-county.org
District 4: James Gore – James.Gore@sonoma-county.org
District 5: Efren Carrillo – Efren.Carrillo@sonoma-county.org
Way to go Susan! Nice principled work on your part.
From where I stand, VRs are just one of a host of negative externalities of the wine-tourism-hospitality combine. I am glad some inroads are being made to call a spade a spade.
For anyone who wants the truth about this meeting go to: http://sonoma-county.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=579
Then go to item 36 starting at 3:06 PM, with the supervisors deliberation at the end after public comments. I warn you it will take some of your time. I was at the meeting for 5 hours and came home and saw the rest the next morning. I rewound the parts I needed hear over again. With all respect to Supervisor Gorin, what you have written is not factual. This piece and the one in the IT today, are misleading and this is what is truly disappointing to me, as this may be all the public hears about this meeting and what came out of it.
A reminder that this is an first-person account by Supervisor Gorin, not a news story.
It is a bit hard to tell this is a first person account and not considered a news story, as it is not in Supervisor Gorin’s blog, Boardwalk or in the opinion section.
Her name is in the byline: By Susan Gorin | District 1 Supervisor (and also the headline). Not sure what else we could have done to make that clear.
If you search for a definition of “byline”, I get:
“a printed line of text accompanying a news story, article, or the like, giving the author’s name”
So, how are we to know this is not a “news story”. We understand that it is written by Supervisor Gorin, but please let us know for future reference how to tell between a “first person account” and a “news story”.
She wrote it, it says she wrote it, and it’s in first-person, like your letter. Was anybody else confused by this?
I am fully with Susan Gorin on the need to limit the conversion of long term rentals to vacation rentals. Each one of those conversions has the name and face of a community member who will now have to look for alternative housing attached to it. In their place we get the out of town transient occupants. I prefer to know my neighbors.
In addition, the reduction in the supply of long term housing leads to rising rents. Because of this, there have been recent misguided suggestions that rent controls be imposed. This will only limit the incentive to build more rental housing.
To provide an incentive to build more affordable housing, the county could eliminate all fees associated with building second units, where allowed by current zoning. Such fees currently run as high as $20,000. A true disincentive to most of us.
A condition of each of these permits could be that the unit was rented long term.
Alas many years later this thing got moved from front page to Boardwalk. I think about this each year when I do my taxes and am happy we got to keep our permit. The $12,000 we clear each year from the rental, my flower business bit of money and Social Security allow us to remain living here in Sonoma. Now that there are no more vacation rental permits allowed in the valley, housing prices are still going up and rents are going up even faster. Vacation rentals have virtually no impact on housing in Sonoma Valley. With no new permits, prices and rents should have gone down. Fires and destruction of housing plays into the mix, so maybe we will never know the actual truth.