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STINSON BEACH – On Tuesday, the Marin County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a moratorium on short-term rentals in the county’s western communities.
Online booking applications such as Airbnb and VRBO have made it easy to find a place to stay for a weekend getaway in small towns like Stinson Beach. But some said it has gotten too easy, and now the county has put the brakes on.
In coastal communities like Stinson, there have always been people who rent out their vacation homes when they weren’t there, and the community has benefited from tourism. With the apps, even modest cottages can be priced much higher than if they were rented to full-time residents, so many of them are empty waiting for weekend guests.
This has caught the attention of the Board of Supervisors.
“The shortage of long-term housing, especially on the coast, has reached a critical point. More and more working families are being displaced,” Supervisor Dennis Rodoni told Tuesday’s meeting. “This, over time, leads to the emptying of our coastal villages.”
Some neighbors said this has already happened.
Margaret Clayton runs the Redwoods Haus Bed and Breakfast. It only has three rooms, so it doesn’t have much trouble filling the place, but Clayton said it’s the same city that’s being affected.
“Now there’s only one school, they don’t have both schools. They no longer have the residents who live here full time,” Clayton said. “It changes it, so it’s no longer really a village, where people live and have things going on. It’s more like … rent, inside and out.”
In Stinson Beach, 20% of all homes are listed as short-term rental properties.
It is making it almost impossible for people working in Stinson Beach to find a place to live, from restaurant service workers to first responders. Therefore, the county enacted a moratorium on new short-term rental licenses, effective immediately, while developing new regulations.
But they sent a notice to the landlords, and local rental agent Linda Campbell said there had been a lot of license applications in the past two weeks.
“And even two or three people I know, who own property here and have no intention of renting it, went ahead and got the licenses anyway, just in case. Because who knows how long we’ll be closed? ” said Campbell.
The problem is to confront the city with the owners and the passions are intensifying.
Full-time resident John Posadas says it’s more basic than that.
“It’s not a matter of passion, it’s a matter of survival,” he said. “If you want to survive, you want to live in a community that has people living there.”
John Ramos