By KENNETH LIPP/YachatsNews
WALDPORT – One apartment is occupied by a single mother with a 9-year-old. Another apartment is home to a disabled couple. A married couple with three children lived in the third.
They all rely on some sort of rent assistance to live in the modest four-unit apartment building on Southwest Corona Court. The three households shared the complex for five years, and two couples were there for at least a decade.
Now they’re all looking for new places to live in a coastal community where affordable housing is at a premium, or they’ve relocated to the valley.
The new owner of the four-unit apartment complex near the beach at the south end of Waldport has given the three families until April 16 to move out — four months as of the January notice — so the building can be converted into vacation rentals.
The tenants
It’s become a familiar sight — families scrambling to find a place to live after getting notice their homes will become vacation spots. But the change on Corona Court appears to be the first locally where an apartment complex – albeit small – has been taken off the residential market to serve tourists.
Kelly Pettyjohn, who has lived in unit three upstairs for five years, cleans vacation rentals for a living and relies on assistance through the Lincoln County Housing Authority to pay rent. She’s the guardian of a nine-year-old who attends Crestview Heights School. In a post to a community Facebook page that was later taken down by administrators, Pettyjohn went public with the impending tenant removal in early January.
She said the beginning of the end for the renters was when her longtime neighbor moved out last year for health reasons, and the apartment was periodically overtaken by squatters. The complex’s elderly owner grew weary of the hassle of forcibly removing the unlawful tenants, and decided to sell.
The new owner renovated the vacant unit and installed exterior cameras, Pettyjohn said.
Residents received two letters about the change.
The first informed them the complex was purchased in December by Cindy Rinella of Portland and instructed them to send rent checks to a new address.
The second letter, dated Jan. 12, was a termination notice. Tenants had to be out by April 16, the letter said, pointing to Oregon law that allows landlords to terminate a lease with 90 days notice without cause.
Rinella’s letter said she intended to convert the three apartments into short-term vacation rentals, and if tenants do not vacate by midnight April 16, Rinella will initiate eviction proceedings.
Pettyjohn said she pays $265 a month and the housing authority pays the balance of her $800 rent. She said she initially understood the renovated apartment would rent for $1,800 a month, but Rinella moved some things in and was living in it intermittently.
“I’ve paid my rent on time for the past five years. I’ve never had a complaint. I’ve never had a notice on my door,” she told YachatsNews in January. “I was crying all day yesterday. I didn’t know what to think or do.”
There was a possibility of looking in Newport to find housing, but that could mean having to pull her nine-year-old out of Crestview after she’d thrived during her first semester at the school.
“Her grades are going up. She’s playing sports. What’s going to happen to all that?” she said.
Pettyjohn said Friday she is still looking for housing, with little luck.
“I have a voucher good for $1,252, but everything is higher than that,” she said. “Not sure what the future holds for us.”
Chris and Mary Trost are Pettyjohn’s downstairs neighbors and have lived in the complex for 12 years. They’re both disabled.
“We’ve been looking for an apartment, a house, anything, and anything available is completely out of our price range,” Trost told YachatsNews about a week after learning they would have to move. “We don’t know where we’re going to go. We’re looking out of state. We’re looking at a U-haul to live in, or a hotel.”
Their closest family is their children in Colorado, he said.
After more than two months of looking, they’ve come up with no options.
Trost said their local housing assistance cap is about $900 — “I challenged the housing authority to find a place in this county for less than $1,000,” he said — so they looked in Benton County, where they are capped at $1,500.
They’ve got more than a decade of solid rental history. But they encountered the same barrier everywhere — property management companies demanding applicants have income two and a half or three times as much as the rent. That disqualified them from pretty much anything, Trost said.
The other downstairs tenants, a married couple with three children in Waldport schools who have lived in the apartment for 10 years, declined an interview with YachatsNews. They said they were looking for a place in the Corvallis area and will commute to Lincoln County if they can secure a lease in the valley.
That family moved to Benton County in early March.
The buyer
The Oregon Secretary of State’s office business registry shows Rinella incorporated a limited liability corporation called 1380 Carona (sic) Court in early December, about a week before she purchased the apartment building for $600,000.
Rinella is vice president of the well-known and long-time Rinella Produce Co. of Portland. She confirmed she planned to renovate the units for use as vacation rentals.
“I know some people are going to think it’s out-of-towners coming in and buying up homes,” Rinella said. “But I’m not an out-of-towner, I was raised in Lincoln County.”
She said she attended first through 12th grade in Lincoln County schools, and she and her husband hope to retire in the area, part of their motivation for acquiring the Waldport property.
Rinella said she planned to begin renovations as soon as they have control of all the units.
From the city
The city of Waldport does not currently have a limit on the number of vacation rentals in city limits, nor does it restrict rentals of less than 30 days to certain zones.
Waldport city manager Dann Cutter said the city regrets the loss of the long-term housing to tourist rental. But the property is located within a commercial zone, he said, so an even more restrictive city code than Waldport’s would generally allow operating vacation rentals there.
The Corona Court building is located about a block from the city limits, outside of which there is a new Lincoln County limit on vacation rental licenses that will prevent new vacation rentals from operating there for years.
Approximately 13 percent of housing units in Waldport city limits are vacant, and a substantial share of those are second or vacation homes, according to a housing capacity analysis completed for the city in December. The analysis estimated incorporated Waldport had about 200 vacancies — 1,430 housing units for the city’s 1,234 households and roughly 2,400 residents.
Cutter added that state land use laws designed to limit growth in the Willamette Valley created a challenging situation in places like the coast, where buildable land is more scarce.
“One of the most challenging aspects in dealing with the housing crisis is fairly acknowledging property owners’ rights,” Cutter said. “Problems are not often solved by taking away those rights. We, like so many communities, continue to search for a better solution to this issue.”
- Kenneth Lipp is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at KenLipp@YachatsNews.com
Attending school a long time ago doesn’t qualify a local for life. This really is the definition of an out of town buying up livable spaces and renting them out to tourists. Last time i checked there were more than plenty of vacation rentals for them to stay in. I lived here most of my life (since early 90’s) and this trend has devastated the area, but it’s easy not to notice when making money from afar. Why do we continue to turn a blind eye to this stuff. These are the things that actually matter.
Absolutely correct. New owner may be in for a shock if this new bill in the house passes. Eviction won’t be so easy and may be why she is trying to rush it. Doesn’t help the people in the position of trying to find housing now
I completely agree with your comment. This is, spot on, a perfect example of an out of towner purchasing a local residential dwelling for profit and rendering locals homeless. Something needs to be done so that these types of traumatic events do not continue to happen.
This continued practice of kicking out lower priced tenants in favor of STR’s has reached intolerable proportions out here. I think these owners will not be very welcome by anyone here.
This is outrageous.
The new owner clearly thinks her time long ago in Lincoln County gives her vacation rental grab that has, and will, displace vulnerable low income and disabled tenants from their homes a pass. It doesn’t. You’d also think coming from Oregon’s homeless capital (Portland), and being vice president of a well known Portland company she would find kicking out vulnerable low income and disabled tenants from their homes to provide tourism housing extremely distasteful and very bad PR. She doesn’t.
I understand this apartment complex is in an STR zone, but maybe if this story read that the owner offered some sort of relocation assistance or extended time in order for these tenants to find new housing she would not seem so indifferent to a situation she is most certainly aware of.
Sounds like the new owner had solid, long term tenants, paying market value rent, who have functioned together well through the years. How selfish to displace this many people, to make room for the vacationers. The owner will probably have a hard time finding someone to clean them. Maybe she will get some vacation rental squatters…the ones who come, then over stay, and don’t pay. It happens.
Let’s get together and stand up for these people then not just leave comment. Let all of Oregon know how these folks just got treated by this woman and maybe if it starts affecting her business and ability to provide for her own family she may then get brought to understand how she is affecting how the real world has to live and the worries we face.
Everyone should be writing to the governor’s office about this and the need to take the position that all homes in our state should be for housing first and foremost not investments to make money. Take the profit out of vacation rentals. Start taxing these properties that do not provide long- term housing triple in property taxes while allowing lower rates to those property owners who do provide long-term housing. Help keep vulnerable seniors and disabled in owner occupied housing by having homestead exemptions on ever rising property taxes. When that happens there will be more housing available to people and more people will remain secure in their homes.
I would write the governors office, but I have so much doubt that it would be even read let alone cared about. It’s easy to dismiss faceless words on paper. I think there should be a more assured effective way. This needs to stop.
This was written as a very sad story but those rents are far below market these days so I don’t see how anyone can blame the new owners.
Actually, the rent rates on these units are slightly above fair market rent prices of Lincoln county. As a whole, the amount is higher than local rental average.
A corner stone of our Constitution is the rights that come from owning property. The truth is that the owners of this property have the right to use this property as they see fit. The county or state should purchase and set aside housing for those who are already renting where a portion of their rent is paid by the housing authority. And when the demand outstrips the supply, as it will, they can file for bankruptcy. Welcome to Oregon another Left Coast utopian destination.
Yes they could do that, of course another cornerstone is the power to levy and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises for the general welfare of the community on vacation rental properties.
Yes.
Agree with you 100%ML
I’m so sorry this is not fair. break my
heart ❤️. I hope everything change for good
This should not be happening at all. Her living here a long time ago does not make her a local.
This is capitalism folks. We all have the right to purchase an investment and manage that investment however we see fit (within the law, of course). Don’t hate the player, hate the game
Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a crazy time where the law sure seems to matter a lot less than it used to. When the laws no longer serve the people but benefits those with the majority of the money — then there will be those that ignore said laws and take matters into there own hands. I’m not condoning those actions, but merely acknowledging the obvious. I hope everything works out well for the new owners.
I’m kinda on the fence here as I feel terrible for the vulnerable renters but at the same time I don’t feel it’s right to tell people what they can and can’t do with property the new owners purchased unless there is a law in place against what they are going to do with said property. It’s a Catch 22. People are going to be unhappy on either end of the outcome.