Yesterday, the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners posted their agenda for today’s Tuesday work session at teh Administration Building on Lewis Street. They are inviting the general public to comment on an ongoing controversy caused by an unchecked number of vacation rentals operating in the community.
We note item “4” on the published agenda:
Work Session for Tuesday, February 23, 2021 at 8:30am
The public is highly encouraged to join via ZOOM conference call as space is limited in the meeting room.
Join Zoom Meeting at https://zoom.us/j/94454714425?pwd=ck1SSnM5bkovWU5NM0lENE9td0NYdz09
Meeting ID: 944 5471 4425
Passcode: 022321
1. Upper San Juan Watershed Enhancement Partnership Funding Request – Al Pfister
2. Potential Changes And Future Projects Of Transportation Dept. – Laura Vanoni And Matt Archuleta
3. Short Term Rentals — Lodgers’ Perspective
4. Short Term Rentals — Open Public Comment (Limit To 3 Minutes Per Person)
5. Admin Report
6. Other Items Of Mutual Interest
If any of our Daily Post readers are planning to offer comments, I would recommend logging into this Zoom meeting by 9am. (I assume the other agenda items might run 30 minutes or so.)
Yesterday, in Part Three, I shared a Daily Post article from 2016. We were well aware, five years ago, that unchecked development of vacations rentals was threatening to make a bad situation much worst — in terms of affordable housing opinions for our community’s workforce.
Since that article was published, the Board of County Commissioners have made a few changes in the way County government regulates vacation rentals, also known as “STRs”. Short Term Rentals.
For one thing, vacation rentals are required to purchase an annual license before accepting guests. The County maintains a list of the registered rentals, which you can download here. (Last updated on December 4, 2020.)
The County also charges an annual fee, and earlier this month, the commissioners were considering an increase in the annual fee, as part of revisions to the overall County fee schedule. But at the last minute, the commissioners — three Republicans; Alvin Schaaf, Ronnie Maez and Warren Brown — tabled the decision to increase the vacation rental fees. (They approved the rest of the fee schedule, however.)
The current annual fee for all vacation rentals is $400. The proposed changes draw a distinction between “Owner Occupied Short-term rentals” and “Non-Owner Occupied STRs”. Communities like Denver and Boulder now require all STRs to be “Owner Occupied” units; the Archuleta County proposal would still allow “Non-Owner Occupied” units, but would double the “base rate” for those units … with further increases if the owner rents out multiple “Non-Owner Occupied” units in the community.
Here’s one section of the possible fee schedule, as it looked on February 16. More than 90 people logged in to the BOCC’s Zoom meeting, but the public was not allowed to offer testimony at that meeting.
These revised fees are set to be considered at the next regular BOCC meeting, scheduled for March 2, at 1:30pm.
The changes since 2016 have presumably brought in some fee income to the County government to help pay for the enforcement of the recent STR regulations. But they seem to have done little to stop the conversion of our community’s limited supply of residential homes into mini-motels for tourists.
I received an email from a Daily Post reader the other day, suggesting that a residential house in their had been used as a vacation rental for the past three years, but still does not appear on the County’s list of registered STRs.
The property is located at 2497 Park Avenue. It is listed in the VRBO.com website as property ID 780650 which you can enter in their search box. The property is not listed on the Archuleta County website for vacation rentals (last updated 12/04/20), but do know that it has been used as a STR for about three years now.
I double-checked the County’s list of registered STRs, and confirmed that 2497 Park Avenue is not one of the 400-odd addresses listed.
We might wonder how many illegal STRs are operating in the community, and whether the County has an effective mechanism to identify them?
We also might wonder whether charging an $800 fee (plus $100 for each bedroom) would have any effect whatsoever on the disappearance of our community’s residential housing. We discussed, back in Part One, a Daily Post email from a vacation rental owner who apparently charges $350 per night for his STR in the Meadows area.
Please take a minute to hear my story: As a 28yr retired military veteran I traveled the world and dreamed of someday buying a home in a beautiful Colorado mountain town. When my wife and I first visited here five years ago, we fell in love with Pagosa. But how could we afford it? Only with the help from some short term rental income could this dream ever come true.
We found a beautiful house with great bones but was somewhat neglected and in need of love and attention. Directly through short term rental revenue we’ve made well over $100,000 in improvements and repairs. Like most other vacation rentals, we’ve spent countless hours and pumped all rental proceeds back into the property. These projects have employed dozens of local craftsman, beautified our street, and increased the entire neighborhood’s property value. Like most homeowners these contributions absolutely would not have been possible without vacation rentals. Our scenario is not unique.
I assume this testimony is truthful and accurate. When I moved to Pagosa in 1993 with my family — hoping to create a successful business here — we likewise shopped for a house, and found many of the homes in our price range to be in terrible shape. The ones in the downtown area generally dated from the first half of the 20th century, and most were suffering from a lack of proper maintenance. The homes in the Pagosa Lakes area dated from the 1970s and 1980s, and some of them had been built rather cheaply.
When we settled on a downtown house priced at $52,000, we then sunk $40,000 into repairs and upgrades. However, unlike our friend with the vacation rental, quoted above, we did not convert the house into a mini-hotel and remove it from the limited supply of Pagosa area homes.
We learned, in 1993, that Pagosa Springs — unlike other Colorado mountain towns like Telluride, Aspen, Breckenridge and Vail — had never been overrun by wealthy second-home owners. You could still live here — you could still move here — even if you worked for a living.