The Town of Pagosa Springs will convene a work session of its Town Council today at 5pm. The Town Council is now meeting in a “hybrid” fashion, with some Council members attending in-person, seated in the Council Chambers at Town Hall, and others attending via Zoom, with their faces and voices delivered through the internet, projected on multiple large screens in the meeting room.
If I hadn’t read George Orwell’s unsettling 1949 novel, Nineteen Eight-four, when I was in college, I probably wouldn’t find this use of “telescreens” quite as unnerving.
Like the recent April 20 meeting of the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners… and like the April 26 joint meeting between the Pagosa Chamber of Commerce and the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board… today’s Town Council work session will focus on one of the community’s most lively controversies: the disappearance of affordable housing options in Pagosa Springs, and the unchecked conversion of residential homes into mini-motels, AKA vacation rentals, AKA short-term rentals, AKA STRs.
Unlike the April 20 BOCC meeting, however, where we had a chance to hear from a dozen entitled vacation rental owners and from some of the real estate agents and property managers who serve them, tonight’s work session will probably not allow for public comment. On the other hand, the public is welcome to listen to the discussion, in-person or via this Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/96158551108
Here’s the summary of the topics under consideration, as posted by Town Manager Andrea Phillips:
MEETING: Town Council Work Session – 29 Apr 2021
FROM: Andrea Phillips, Town Manager PROJECT: Discussion on Vacation Rentals
ACTION: Council information
PURPOSE/BACKGROUND
Council requested that this work session be devoted to discussion of vacation rentals and related concerns. Staff is preparing information on current licenses for discussion in the meeting.
The definition in the municipal code (Chapter 21) is: The renting out of a furnished dwelling unit, or a portion thereof, for less than thirty (30) consecutive days per rental. Meals are not provided, although guests may have full access to kitchen facilities. Hotel, motel, or lodge rooms, B&B or inns are not considered a vacation rental. As of this writing, there are 116 licenses issued in town limits, with another 13 under review.
The Town began requiring an annual vacation rental license for 2019 (with regulations adopted in fall of 2018), rather than a business license as was the case prior to the changes. Current application fees are a total of $500 for the first year of the application ($250 for application fee and $250 for workforce housing surcharge) and each successive renewal is $400 ($200 for renewal license and $200 surcharge). Half of the initial application and half of the renewal is allocated to workforce housing in a restricted line item (this is in addition to the general fund budget for workforce housing). A one time fee of $100 is for a conditional use permit, which are administratively issued through the Planning Department. Vacation rentals are a permitted use in commercial zoning districts and are a conditional use in residential districts. There are no limitations on the number or density of vacation rentals. The Town inspects them on an annual basis.
The Town of Pagosa Springs encompasses about three square miles of mostly residential neighborhoods… (or, at least, they once were residential…) and about 15% of Archuleta County’s full-time population. The numbers in Ms. Phillip’s agenda brief suggest that the Town will soon have about 130 licensed vacation rentals. According to my pocket calculator, that would put the proportion of once-residential homes within the downtown area, now converted into mini-motels, at about 15%.
Certain supporters of the vacation rental industry has put forward the claim that the types of homes being converted to vacation rentals in Pagosa Springs are high-end homes unsuitable for working families or individuals earning $25,000-$50,000 per year. We cannot doubt that a number of area homes, priced at or above $400,000, have indeed been converted into vacation rentals over the past five years or so. I would argue, however, that all of the homes in my own downtown neighborhood — I live within the town limits — all of the homes now rented out to visiting tourists were very recently, just a few years ago, serving as homes for full-time residents, and could easily be converted back into residential homes.
Folks interested in how 20 years of intense, locally-funded tourism marketing — coupled with the arrival of AirBNB, VRBO.com, and other online STR booking sites — have affected the Pagosa Springs community might want to listen in on the Town Council work session this evening.
A friend wrote me yesterday, posing an interesting question. He noted that I’ve been using the term “selfish entitlement” in this editorial series, and wondered how that phrase relates to ordinary people who are doing what investors have been doing for at least the past couple of centuries in America: buying up available real estate with the intention of extracting money from other ordinary folks in need of housing or lodging.
It’s a time-honored practice. Hardly anyone I know would classify a “landlord” as “selfishly entitled” simply on the basis of that person being a landlord.
I have myself been a landlord. Once upon a time.
I certainly didn’t think of myself as “selfishly entitled” in that situation. But, the truth of the matter is: I was acting selfishly entitled, then. I am still selfishly entitled, in some ways. I hate to admit it, and I don’t really want to spend much time thinking about it.
Probably, no one wants to spend much time thinking about their own entitlements. We’re taught, on one level, that selfishness is a negative trait. But our society tends to reward people, with various types of entitlements… tends to pat us on the back and say, “Selfishness is a good thing.”
But we also care about one another. How much do we care?
It’s complicated.
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.