By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
A coalition of Lincoln County neighborhoods failed to collect enough signatures by Wednesday night to get an initiative on the November ballot that proposes phasing out vacation rentals in unincorporated areas.
Now, the newly formed group called “15Neighborhoods” will aim their measure for May 2021.
Monica Kirk, leader of the petition drive, said the group simply didn’t have enough time – just eight days – to collect more than 1,454 signatures of registered voters.
Lincoln County approved the signature gathering July 27; the group had until 5 p.m. Wednesday to collect enough signatures to get on the Nov. 3 ballot. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, signatures had to be collected electronically.
Kirk would only say her group, which now includes 26 neighborhoods, had collected “hundreds” of signatures.
“Given that we had just a few days to get signatures I think we accomplished a lot,” she said Wednesday. “There’s fury in unincorporated Lincoln County that this was allowed to happen.”
Kirk was referring to the large growth in the number of short-term rentals in county areas outside of its seven cities. The group says there were 430 rentals January 2019; now there are 600.
The group will now slow down, do more outreach and education and should easily get enough signatures by February to make the May 2021 ballot, Kirk said. Signatures collected the past week are valid for two years, according to the county elections division.
‘’We want people to get behind this effort and to get the answers they need to make an informed decision,” Kirk said.
While all voters in the county would get to decide the issue, the proposed initiative would apply only to unincorporated areas of Lincoln County outside the cities of Yachats, Waldport, Newport, Toledo, Siletz, Depoe Bay and Lincoln City. It proposed to:
- Prohibit short-term rentals of under 30 days in three types of residential zones: R1-A, R1 and R2;
- Phase out all short term rentals, with the exception of some hardship cases, within five years;
- Limit ownership to one short-term rental in those three zones;
- And, put more stringent limits on short-term rental occupancies.
Opponents object to the growing number of short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods, saying they often bring large, noisy, disrespectful groups, generate too much traffic, and detract from nearby single-family homes.
But they are becoming more popular as an alternative to motels because they can accommodate large families, several families or groups. Owners like them either to help pay mortgages on coastal property or as an investment.
A growing number of jurisdictions are trying to find ways to limit or regulate vacation rentals. Yachats has a license cap of 125; Newport adopted regulations last year limiting them in certain neighborhoods; Lincoln City and Depoe Bay have similar restrictions.
Lincoln County had been working on new regulations, software and license-tracking programs, and froze license applications this year before much of that work was put on hold because of COVID-19 outbreaks in the county since March. The hold on new licenses is set to expire Sept. 31.
A coalition of Lincoln County vacation rental owners and property managers, recently renamed as VIAOregon, has vowed to fight the initiative in court or at the ballot box.
“Oregon has a long tradition of our coast being open to the public, and vacation rentals in Lincoln County have a long tradition of providing affordable access to Oregon families,” said VIAOregon co-founder Lauri Hines of Waldport. “Trying to turn an entire segment of the coast into a gated community, after the fact, would be short sighted and would unfairly limit access to a few extremely wealthy families.”