Editor:
I am dismayed by the attitude of Lagunans, who want an outright ban on all short-term rentals, home-sharing, and home exchanges. They seem to be painting anyone who supports these rentals as approving of absentee landlords and greedy people who don’t care about their neighbors or the neighborhood. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
It is laughable to assume that we think it’s a good thing to have loud parties until 2 a.m. Or that it’s okay to take people’s parking spots, or that we don’t want someone accountable within a 15 minute response time. We’re absolutely not for that.
We are for allowing homeowners – all of you who live in our town to do home exchanges, to allow guests to stay when you go on vacations (for a limit of eight weeks per year) and for all of us to homeshare – owners stay present when visitors come.
We do not endorse permits for absentee owners; people who bought a property and don’t stay there and want to just rent to whomever will come. We are for using the new $90,000 a year enforcement officer to enforce the laws that are already on the books and for police to respond to calls with “teeth” to deal with the violators.
If you are a repeat offender then your permit gets cancelled. Once you ban something outright you lose the ability to regulate it. And the rentals continue.
Let’s take a deep breath and realize that the proponents of short-term rentals are respectful neighbors who live in these neighborhoods and don’t think renting to a bunch of rowdy weekenders (like last week’s cartoon implied) is a good idea. No one wants that. The way to ensure it is to be able to enforce the laws, control the process with permits, and prevent absentee owners from getting permits.
Did I mention that owners would be required to collect bed taxes so that Laguna will, at last, get money from the people who are forced to do rentals now under the table due to not being able to get a permit?
This is a win/win if only the ban proponents would realize that we both want the same thing – good neighbors, sanctity of your home and a peaceful beautiful Laguna in which to live.
Jane Burzell, Laguna Beach
AirBandBS – The New Scamming Economy
In the ‘60’s, they were crash pads and even earlier, flop houses. Cheap, quick places to pile up transients on floor mats and bunk beds while boosting the wealth of out of town slumlords.
But the clever, hip, disruptive on-line sharing economy has changed all of that…or has it?
Laguna Beach City Council remains bewildered and flip-flopping each time another group floods Council Chambers with plaintive screams of injustice masking personal greed. Certainly, there are residents that have poorly managed their finances and used their homes as an ATM money machine to pay for a bad mortgage or extravagant lifestyle. They perceive their house as an investment to be leveraged rather than a home for life. Sad, but hardly justification for abandoning decades of laws, zoning regulations and hundreds of thousands of hours of citizen participation to create the town we love and remains cherished by millions of visitors.
When a house is just an investment, where is your home? Where is your community? Who are your neighbors and friends when you grind more profit from your neighborhood to bring even more overnight tourists? Why must the City Council cave in to “mob-ocracy” at each meeting to bailout a few residents with failed financial plans? Is a Laguna Beach community of neighborhoods or simply another profit center for greedy investors and corporations?
Rules for on site owners will not work. “On-site” short term homeowners will abandon their “owner occupied home” to accommodate more overnight tourists for more short term profits.
Alternatives for homeowners to gain income exist. The big family house with only one or two remaining residents can offer a rented room to a local artist, college student, senior, veteran or other nice person in critical need of housing. New roommates can help overcome loneliness while helping out with many household chores, dog walking and even basic landscaping or gardening. A new roommate might even enlighten and stimulate an otherwise routine, boring, isolated lifestyle. Lonely singles in a big house can find a new friend and reliable source of monthly income.
In May, a bold effort by the City, Chamber of Commerce and local foundations to promote citizen involvement will be launched. Hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars will be spent to induce more public participation. Yet the best incentive for achieving this goal is to respect the generations of work to create Laguna as a place worth living and calling a home. Abandoning basic residential zoning and laws mandating affordable housing because AirBandBS is a mysterious billion dollar juggernaut with no actual real assets is not compromise as much as it is a sign of weak leadership, appeasement and a lack of commitment to honor the many contributions of citizens to make Laguna truly liveable and the envy of other communities. Why participate when our rules and regulations are worthless?
The latest on-line business of the “sharing economy” is simply another scam by a handful of financially challenged locals and an army of outside carpetbaggers. Laguna Beach is foolish to succumb to slick AirBandBS advertisements and the drum beat promoting a Scamming Economy uber alles.
Mike Beanan
South Laguna