On July 27, the Placer County Board of Supervisors approved a 45-day moratorium on the issuance of new short-term rental (STR) permits which has since been extended until March 31, 2022. The Board is now evaluating how to modify the ordinance and whether to limit the number of STRs throughout North Lake Tahoe, and will be making their decision later this month.  

The Board of Realtors would like see the status quo continue so they can continue to sell homes with the promise of STR income and continue to drive up housing prices in our area for their own profit. This is unsustainable and short-sighted approach to a giant problem, driven purely by greed.

We have gone beyond the tipping point: 

• we have a housing crisis driven in large part because homes are being sold and converted from long-term to short-term rentals;
• the quality of life of our residential neighborhoods is severely degraded, as residents are forced to live next to or near these unregulated motels;
• the number of tourists here is far beyond capacity due in large part to the proliferation of STRs, while there are not enough people living here to even provide services for tourists; 
• we are constantly faced with very dangerous situations due to too many people coming here during natural and health emergencies - COVID, wildfires and major winter weather events.  

Last week - highways in and out of Lake Tahoe were closed, we had limited supplies of food and gas here, yet people poured into Lake Tahoe in unprecedented numbers because they booked an AirBnB ... and then many were stuck when it was time to leave. 

What's worse, is that the houses operate as unregulated motels in our residential neighborhoods- with new people, new cars, new dogs - arriving every single day, many of them making serious profits, but with none of the controls or regulations of commercial businesses.

The house next door to me is purely a business - the owners are realtors, have multiple STRs and have never stayed at this house. The house has been a danger to neighbors and guests since it was purchased and converted to an STR 2 years ago. It has violated every health and safety ordinance, without consequence. To name a few: It rented every day while STRs were banned during COVID, allowed guests to use fire pits on Red Flag days, and provides no snow removal services for guests so they are often stuck in the road blocking plow services for the rest of our road. 

The existing Ordinance not only needs to be strengthened to include requirements for bear boxes, snow removal contracts and compliance with fire safety rules-- and permits need to be rescinded more quickly for repeat violators -- but we also need to have limits on on the number and/or location of these motels. 

The good news is that there are fair and reasonable compromises that could preserve our housing stock for local residents and limit negative impacts on residential neighborhoods.  And these are solutions that have been implemented in just about every other Tourism destination in the country. 

For example, condos and townhouses that have always been vacation properties and are outside residential neighborhoods, such as commercially zoned condos in Northstar, could stay what they are. Also if the home is a primary residence or if someone is on-site to deal with nuisances in real time as they occur, these homes should be able to continue to rent as much as they want.

We do, however, need serious limits on the number of days a single-family, detached home in a residential neighborhood is being used as an STRs without someone present to mitigate the inevitable issues that arise. 

Homes without an on-site manager could be limited to renting, say, 30-60 nights per year. This would limit the impact on surrounding neighbors to a few peak months a year and would disincentivize investors and realtors from buying up our real estate stock purely for profit - but still allow homeowners to earn extra income by renting the house now and then when they are not there. Some portion of these STRs will convert back to long-term rentals, making a significant contribution towards solving our housing crisis. 

We also need to cap the total number of permits where they are (below 20% of our housing stock) so that homes are no longer being sold with the promise of becoming a profit-making commercial enterprise. And ideally, we should have a minimum distance requirement between homes because it is not fair to residents to be forced to live so close, and inevitably take on all the externalities, of what is essentially a commercial business in a residential neighborhood.  

Please think beyond profit for non-resident homeowners, and consider the broader impacts that STRs are having on the North Lake Tahoe community. We have an opportunity to create a sustainable future for North Lake Tahoe, by putting real limits on the number and location of STRs.