Here in Joshua Tree the County is gearing up to require permits along with a fair amount of red tape. We're luckier than Palm Springs where they just up and banned BnBs.
I've drafted an op-ed about it that I may send to local newspapers.
Here it is. Any comments anyone?
Understanding BNB's in Joshua Tree -
Will the proposed ordinance work?
Tourism in Joshua Tree has exploded in the last five years, with a doubling in annual visitors to the National Park from 1.5 million to nearly 3 million.
At over 400 times the village population of 7,400 at last count, 3 million guests is a huge number to accommodate. There would be nowhere for them to stay without the hundreds of BNB's that have mushroomed overnight. One could even say that the recent soaring of tourism and trending of Joshua Tree itself were directly fueled by the BNB phenomenon.
Some say that BNB's are the best thing that ever happened to the Joshua Tree economy -- if one could even consider the depressed state here ten years ago as an economy at all. Like all blessings, this one is mixed, as are the reactions to it. BNB's are blamed for noise, rude tourists, rising rents and a housing shortage.
The complaints boil down to two main issues: noise and rents. Opposing voices outnumber more optimistic comments like this one on Nextdoor: "Airbnb has been a blessing to JT. So many blighted properties fixed. So much $$ pumped into the economy. Much better quality of humans around now too."
The County has set itself the task of drafting an ordinance to address the complaints. The existing draft focuses on restrictions to curb abuses, but without regard for the economic dimension. This is a flawed approach. Problems like noise occur in a minority of cases, and are not unique to this type of housing.
Rather than imposing detailed restrictions on the entire BNB community, the County can employ two powerful tools to resolve problems as they arise: the ability to cancel permits, and the vacation rental complaint line.
Some of the restrictions proposed have been contradictory. For instance, it has been proposed that no more than one unit should be allowed per parcel, that the owner must live on the property, and that renting out a portion of a home should not be allowed. Owners would only be able to rent out the place to themselves…
Complexity and clarity are not friends. Authorities seem to be flailing about, trying too many new rules to solve "the problem" and mollify disgruntled residents.
The current draft includes many provisions that will aggravate rather than mitigate the impact on housing availability. The ordinance works on the micro NIMBY level, to reduce the impact of BNBs on neighbors, by limiting the number of guests, or number of units per parcel. But the real problem is where to house 3 million guests in a small village, without using up all the real estate. Limitations like this mean more, not fewer properties will be needed to absorb the influx of tourists! Banning absentee landlords may sound wonderful – but keeping them in town means they'll need to occupy more scarce housing.
Setting limits on the number of guests according to the size of the parcel does make sense -- if the real plan is to transition Joshua Tree into a more upscale community, rather than a low-rent, cheap vacation location. It's hard to have it both ways.
So does the draft ordinance effectively address the problems raised by residents? Those who complained about rising rents will find that the new rules backfire on them. And the noise issue would be more effectively addressed directly, by a strict noise restriction ordinance and complaint hotline. It so happens that my own home is surrounded by noisy neighbors, with barking dogs and so on. They are all homeowners, and there is not a thing we can do about it.
It is a mistake to act as if all noise and rental cost problems are due to BNBs, and to try to solve them by cracking down on them. Affordable rentals are a nationwide problem. Home prices have been soaring all over the state of California, and prices in Joshua Tree shot up to today's levels during the 2006 price bubble, too, when BNBs were unheard of.
Such detailed restrictions could just as well be curtailed or scrapped. Just start issuing permits for now -- and taking them away from the few bad apples out there. That will bring owners into line like nothing else. It will make it clearer what rules are really needed.
Fixing only what's broken is the way to optimize the two main, but conflicting demands of residents: to cut down on abuses, and to minimize the impact on housing. It won't optimize anything to make all owners suffer alike for the abuses of a few.
With permits, at least the County can start collecting funds. This may cause some marginal short-term rental (STR) operators to drop out of the business by themselves. Being a BNB host is not as lucrative as people imagine. They see a nightly rate of $100 and multiply by 30 and think, how grand, $3000 a month for a house. They don't see that most of the time it's rented only on the weekends, and hardly at all during the long, hot summer. The high vacancies bring you pretty close to the rate for a long-term rental. In many cases homeowners are doing it not to get rich, but to avoid hassles with long-term tenants, sad to say. STR's will not grow at recent rates indefinitely, displacing all residential housing.
The other bad thing about the draft STR ordinance is that it reflects emotions voiced by those hostile to BNBs, which doesn't lead to a balanced policy. There are provisions that seem intent on penalizing or criminalizing BNBs. The requirement to record details of vehicles equates a stay in a BNB to a crime scene. This was dropped, but has been replaced with a Nanny State provision requiring owners to sit down with renters and get their signature on a copy of the regulations, with a notification of penalties. The draft ordinance runs about 30 pages. Who is going to read this? This rule is a non-productive burden of busy work on the County, on homeowners and on vacationers. Keep it simple!
The draft ordinance would prohibit AirBnb bookings made before the permit requirement goes into effect. There is no allowance for a transition period to avoid business interruption while inspections are completed and permits are issued. The county could start asking for permit applications with the quarterly TOT forms over a period of time, for a smoother workload
Restrictions are imposed on BNBs that are not applied to any other type of housing. The ordinance provides that BNBs can not host even one single day guest. Does this exist in anywhere else, outside of the prison system? Would you tell your kids they can't have a friend over, or your friends that you can't invite them for lunch?
Such is the mentality of this ordinance, and to my mind, it needs a fresh start.
* The County should draft a noise ordinance, to get at the actual problem that residents are suffering from most.
* Before issuing any restrictive STR ordinance, they should make it clear to the community that the proposed rules will not ease the housing shortage -- on the contrary.
Joshua Tree is finally coming into its own. Until a few years ago, homes here were going for around $70 a square foot, about one-third of what they cost to build. This made it a refuge from high housing costs -- my family bought our first lot here back in 1960 -- but there was no jobs base. That is changing rapidly, bringing growing pains. It takes time to adjust. Eventually, in large part thanks to the assets of the National Park as well as the vacation rental industry, Joshua Tree can become a bright spot in the economic landscape of San Bernardino County.
