Editor,
This letter was also addressed to the City Council.
Please respect the city’s general plan and residential zoning restrictions to limit short term lodging to areas zoned for commercial activities.
Illegal commercial rentals in residential zones require effective city enforcement and fines sufficient to cover enforcement costs even in the face of widespread, unpermitted STL rentals. Accommodating illegal rentals due to inadequate enforcement or to bailout a poorly financed property only encourages more violations and may reveal a larger issue, i.e., the inability of the city to manage basic laws and regulations.
In Laguna Beach, we all enjoy a certain relaxed, flexible lifestyle. However, when the basic threshold of respect for our general plan and neighborhood integrity is sacrificed for a few dozen illegal rentals, we need to return to the language and intent of the general plan – the product of hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff time and decades of community resources.
Tourists don’t vote or have a long-term stake in the health and welfare of Laguna Beach. Residents are the ones who suffer when opportunists seek to exploit our town with rotating illegal short-term rentals. There is nothing charming about round the clock arrivals and departures from tourists nor the loss of affordable rentals for resident artists and others.
Please follow the rules clearly set forth in the general plan or revise the plan with an appropriate, comprehensive CEQA review to determine the full impacts of STL or “peripheral lodging” outside of commercial zones to Laguna Beach.
Thank you for respecting the integrity of our general plan and neighborhoods.
Mike Beanan, Laguna Beach
