Following the fascinating “Wetlands” presentation by the local Audubon Society club on February 27 at the Pagosa Springs Town Council work session (which I hope to write about in a future editorial) Mayor Don Volger thanked the club members for their willingness to share information with the Council… and then introduced the next work session topic:
Short Term Rentals. STRs. Vacation rentals.
This topic has been batted around in the halls of local government for many years now, but while other communities have taken sometimes dramatic action to control the conversion of their neighborhoods into motel districts, the Town Council and the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners have done very little to stem the tide, other than require STR operators to pay a modest annual registration fee.
The Council member who seems, to me, most concerned about where this new industry is taking our town is Council member Mat deGraaf, and I believe the February 27 work session discussion took place at his request. We might note that Mr. deGraaf is running for re-election to the Council in the upcoming April election.
Town Manager Andrea Phillips kicked things off by distributing a one-page summary of “Arguments for/against Allowing and/or Regulation of Vacation Rentals”. Many of the main arguments — for and against — we’ve heard at various Town and County discussions over the past several years were concisely summarized in Ms. Phillip’s handout.
A short excerpt:
Arguments for Vacation Rentals (No/Limited Regulation)
- Provides job opportunities/positive financial impact locally (property managers, property owners, realtors, cleaning companies, construction/rehab of units to turn into rentals)…
- Provides alternative stay option to hotels and bed & breakfasts. It is a trend that visitors enjoy…
- Private property rights should permit people to do what they want with their properties…
- People are buying up older homes/units to rehab them ad fix them up to make into vacation rentals, thus improving the stock…
- Vacation rentals create a stronger market with higher prices resulting at the time of sale, which can be a help to locals selling their homes…
- Like hotels and other lodging establishments, vacation rentals provide an opportunity for people to see and experience Pagosa Springs…
These are all valid “for” arguments. STRs do indeed create job opportunities. They do indeed provide lodging options, and are indeed a trend, internationally. Americans do indeed value property rights — in some situations.
The STR industry has certainly helped to bring about higher home prices in Archuleta County, according to everything I’ve heard from local realtors. And it’s also true that a tourist economy functions to attract and serve tourists. But every argument has at least two sides. The job of our elected leaders is to weigh each argument and make a decision that will help achieve the community’s long-term goals.
Isn’t that their job?
For example:
- Provides job opportunities/positive financial impact locally (property managers, property owners, realtors, cleaning companies, construction/rehab of units to turn into rentals)…
Any business at all “provides job opportunities.” That’s the very definition of a business. But some businesses destroy the community they move into, and some enhance the community. If the owner of a vacation rental is not a local resident, then their profits from that business do not, in fact, provide a “positive financial impact locally.” Their profits leave the community, creating a negative financial impact locally. Only when the owner of a business establishment lives within the community they serve, do the profits flow back into that community.
- People are buying up older homes/units to rehab them and fix them up to make into vacation rentals, thus improving the stock…
I have seen, in my own neighborhood, the positive impact of the ‘rehab’ industry. Investors buy up run-down residential homes (we have a few of those in Archuleta County) and fix them up, and then rent them out as vacation rentals. Neighborhoods are thereby “upgraded.”
Everyone’s property values increase. And that can be a wonderful thing… if you are planning to sell your house. Or if you are a realtor.
- Vacation rentals create a stronger market with higher prices resulting at the time of sale, which can be a help to locals selling their homes…
But it also means, a newly-hired nurse or teacher or police officer now has to pay thousands of dollars more to buy a house… if they can even find one in their price range. Each “run-down” house that gets ‘upgraded’ and then removed from the available residential stock, helps to drive up rental rates.
There’s a price the entire community pays — in property taxes, and even more importantly, in a shortage of housing — when a community is ‘artificially’ upgraded.
According to the Council discussion, there are about 80 STRs registered now within the Town limits. The County government, meanwhile, has been struggling to register the hundreds of STRs located outside the Town limits. 800 vacation rentals? 1,000 vacation rentals?
How many vacation rentals, total, in our community in 2020?
1,893?
That’s the number of vacation rentals listed last month on Tripping.com, if you searched ‘Pagosa Springs’.
Private property rights should permit people to do what they want with their properties…
Do I really have the “right” to do anything I want with my residential property? Or more importantly, do I really want my neighbor to have the right to do anything they want with their property? In recent history, we’ve seen property owners do some pretty horrible things to their communities, in the name of ‘private property rights’. Toxic dumping. Gravel crushing machinery. Factory farming. Pulp mills. Junk yards.
That’s the reason the Town of Pagosa Springs has been compiling its Land Use and Development Code (LUDC) over the past several decades. We don’t have any pulp mills or massive cattle or pig farms within the town limits, but we do have plenty of regulations concerning the use of your private residential property.
You can view the LUDC here.
You cannot, for example, build a three-story building in many areas of town. This law has nothing to do with the safety of a three-story building, or its possible financial benefits; it’s meant to protect your next door neightbor, who typically lives in a single-story house, and doesn’t want a three-story structure on the neighboring lot, for aesthetic reasons.
But right now, everywhere in Archuleta County, you can pay a modest fee and start converting a quiet residential neighborhood into a hotel district.
Whose rights do our elected leaders want to protect?
Read Part Six, tomorrow…
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.