Limiting vacation rentals is a way to balance Yachats’ livability

To the editor:

The vacation rental issue is one that is touching every community these days. I thought I would chime in some thoughts that I have on it.

First, vacation rentals have been around for a very long time. They were never, as far as I can tell, an issue for communities until websites started proliferating offering them online. With that came the inevitable abuse of the concept.

Property ownership is wrapped within the zoning of areas. R-1 is residential, as is R-2, R-3 etc. That means people who purchase a residence or rent in a residentially zoned neighborhood believe they are going to be living in a residential neighborhood. Small hotels and event locations are not residential properties but businesses in residentially zoned neighborhoods.

The initial concept around the ability to obtain a vacation rental license was for people/families to be able to “share” their home in their residential neighborhood in order to help manage the costs of ownership. Sometimes, in very small communities, larger vacation rentals came about simply because the community was itself too small to warrant larger event centers or hotels.

These days part-time sharing of a home is not the only issue with vacation rentals.

What has happened is that the real estate market has created a monster with selling homes in beautiful locations as “investments” not as homes. People are buying homes all around the world purely as a way to make money. They have no involvement in the communities they buy into except to visit their investments once in a while, if that, and make sure it is still a good investment. They are buying multiple properties, sometimes within the same community, and renting them out as vacation rentals when in effect they are running a hotel that sits on multiple pieces of land which allows them to not have the overhead costs associated with a business.

With this development has come disenchantment with the whole vacation rental issue among community members who want to live in a community and not one large hotel complex.

No one, I believe, is completely against vacation rentals per se, they are against the abuse of the vacation rental market because it seems to be over-taking communities. It is pushing out residents who would like to be able to live in these beautiful locations affordably and in a way that conforms to why they chose to live in them in the first place — their beauty, quaintness, peacefulness wrapped in nature.

There are many different ways communities are trying to balance between sharing these places with people who want to visit and maintaining the essence of the places for those who live in them. The limit on the number vacation licenses is one that I believe is helping maintain that balance. Mandating that owners occupy their homes at least half of the year would be another.

Investing rather than sharing is the difference that is driving the current frustration within communities around the world.
 — Jacqueline Danos, Yachats