One of the recent positive moves made by the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners, in terms of aiming some of the County’s financial resources at the local housing crisis, was the creation, on March 2, of the Archuleta County Workforce Development Fund. That fund will (theoretically) direct some of the fees paid by registered vacation rental businesses — those located outside of the Town limits, in the unincorporated county — towards workforce housing. The BOCC’s intended methods for promoting housing are not yet clear.
The BOCC recently increased the fees charged to registered vacation rentals, to pay for enhanced approval and enforcement activities (that is, staff time) to ensure that these mini-motels are correctly abiding by recent County land use regulations regarding vacation rentals.
There’s little point in having government regulations if the County has insufficient staff to enforce those rules. In my humble opinion. And we’re not talking about a minor industry here. The County talks about 600 vacation rentals in operation within the County’s jurisdiction. My own research suggests it might be closer to 1,000. The AirDNA website calculates 1,140 mini-motels within the 81147 zip code; some of those are located within the Town of Pagosa Springs and are not subject to County regulations or fees.
(The Town Council will be discussing vacation rentals at a work session on April 29.)
With a promise, now, of enhanced funding for administration and enforcement, Archuleta County vacation rental regulations were reviewed by the County Development office and by the County Planning Commission, and suggested updates, clarifications and amendments were provided to the BOCC on April 13 for further consideration. The proposed amendments were discussed at two public Planning Commission meetings.
One amendment would make it easier for the Planning Department to issue a “cease and desist” order, to address vacation rental operations that are violating County regulations.
Another amendment would address the fact that vacation rentals are required to have a ‘local contact’ (within 60 miles of the mini-motel) but does not specify that the same ‘local contact’ is directly responsible for addressing complaints and other issues at the subject property.
A new rule would require the vacation rental owner to upload a recorded property deed to the County Planning website, so that, in the words of Interim Development Director Pamela Flowers, “we can see the exact ownership of the home . And if the owner is a trust or LLC, that they upload documents that tell us, who are the individuals associated with that trust or LLC. So that we can track those individuals, if we complaints, concerns, we’ll be able to track down those people a little better…”
Vacation rental operators are already required to notify the surrounding neighbors via US mail, letting the neighbors know that the property is being used as a vacation rental.
Ms. Flowers explained:
“We’ve had lots of complaints from lots of neighbors, ‘Nobody ever told me they were going to be a vacation rental…’ So we now require, just like other permits in the code already, that you have to notify people via a mailing, and prove that, through a ‘certificate of mailing’…”
Ms. Flowers said a USPS ‘certificate of mailing’ costs $1.50 per letter.
Another amendment would require the property sketch that accompanies the permit application to meet a certain level of accuracy, and be based upon a Google map image or similar accurate property rendering.
Ms. Flowers continued:
“The advertising and ‘rules for renters’ is something we didn’t require them to show us, in the past. We’ve found that we find a lot of very interesting details in ads. When you look at ads, you can see pictures of the configurations of the rooms, and see right away where they often have violations of too many beds, or ‘triple bunk beds’ or things that aren’t really allowed. Rooms without windows, that have beds…”
Rental owners are required to provide written ‘rules’ for their tenants, to ensure that the tourists understand County rules and regulations. And for safety reasons, each bedroom is required to have a window of sufficient size, to provide for emergency egress in case of fire.
One of the problems plaguing neighbors as well as local governments is a tendency, by the tourists who rent vacation rentals, to try and fit 20 people into, say, a two bedroom house for the weekend. In many cases, the property owner lives in Arkansas or Arizona, so no one is actually monitoring the number of people crammed into these mini-motels.
Property owners sometimes encourage this type of over-occupancy by providing one or more sleeper sofas or inflatable air mattresses hidden in closets, or, as Ms. Flowers noted, “triple bunk beds”. Over-occupancy — which is a violation of current County vacation rental regulations — not only affects the neighborhood’s character, but can result in overflowing garbage cans (leading to unwanted visits by local bears)… and overflowing septic systems (believe me, you don’t want to live next door to an overflowing septic system)… or even abuse of our Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) water and sewer systems.
Current County rules provide for a property inspection by County staff upon the initial permit application. Ms. Flowers outlined an expansion of that process.
“Thanks to the fact that we’re now going to have a code enforcement staff, we’re going to make sure we do an inspection upon initial issuance of the permit, as well as on the [annual] renewal, as well as — if we get complaints about a property — we’re going to go out and do another inspection and do our best to address whatever the issue was…”
If anyone is feeling, at this point in our editorial, like the County government is becoming a baby sitter for the community’s vacation rental industry, you are correct. When a government allows an entire, 1,000-rental-unit industry to operate without any required onsite supervision — based simply upon tourist guest self-accountability — the government becomes the baby sitter, and enforcement agency. Constantly on call.
This significant lack of owner responsibility is not practiced in any other type of commercial business, that I know of, in Archuleta County. Except maybe the car rental business?
Other communities in Colorado have dealt very differently with this problem — by prohibiting vacation rentals unless the owner lives full-time on the same parcel. Archuleta County has not yet understood the wisdom of this type of rule, and apparently prefers to become the nanny for an essentially negligent (but therefore, very profitable) industry. Will that change?