On April 20, the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners listened for 1 hour and 50 minutes to testimony from the public, nearly all of it coming from vacation rental owners and realtors, regarding vacation rental regulations.
Here is a sampling of what the commissioners heard, in-person and through the Zoom connection.
From a California physician, whose wife is also a physician, via Zoom:
“I’m in the process of buying a house there [in Pagosa Springs] and I’d like to bring my family there, my wife and children, and spend a few weeks there each year. I can’t afford to buy a house and not have it in the short-term rental market. If I buy a house and rent it long term, that doesn’t do me any good for visiting. I am in favor of the short-term rental market, for people like me, to retire there, or spend more time there…”
A woman attending by Zoom, from New Jersey:
“I’m opposed to the 5% cap, and my reason is, right now we own a house [in Pagosa] that we use as a short-term rental, but eventually, in about five years, we’re going to retire permanently in Pagosa Springs, and we’ll sell the house that we own now, because it’s a little bigger than we need. But what will we do, if we can’t find anyone to buy our house? It’s 15 minutes from Wolf Creek, which is perfect for a vacation rental. But we will want to buy something else in Pagosa, that we’re not going to rent out. So what are we going to do,z if you make it hard to sell vacation rentals? We’ll be stuck with a three-story house…”
A Pagosa realtor:
“I was at all of those meetings last year. If we didn’t have a short-term rental industry here, all of the people who work in that industry wouldn’t have jobs, and they wouldn’t go to restaurants, and then we wouldn’t have any need for restaurants. And on and on. I don’t see that it’s fair that we would limit… um, some people could do it and some people couldn’t do it. I don’t think people should have their rights infringed upon…I’m not in favor of the 5% cap…”
A gentleman who owns “a couple of vacation rentals” here in Pagosa:
“We’ve done long-term rentals, a few years back, and we just decided that it was taking too much of my time, and a much larger investment in the long term, to deal with the repairs, and the court dates. It’s a lot different business from [vacation rentals]… the upside to living next to a [noisy] short-term rental is they’re always gone in a few days. The upside to living next to a long-term rental, that you don’t like, is none. Alright?”
Another Pagosa realtor:
“There are a lot of clients who come into town, and like people have mentioned, they want to end up retiring here, they want a second home, but it’s hard for them to afford a second home without the ability to rent out to tourists. I also work in Durango as well, where I have a lot of clients who are buying in Pagosa because of that short-term rental issue. With the limits on vacation rentals in Durango, people are seeing that Pagosa has the ability to give them what they want…”
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a physician in California, who would like to visit Pagosa for a couple of weeks every year. (Because you have little interest in actually serving the Pagosa community, as a physician, perhaps?)
Or imagine you are the owner of a three-story house near Wolf Creek, feeling frantic about your ability to sell it in the future, because the only people capable of buying your house are investors.
Or imagine you are a realtor, bringing clients from Durango over to Pagosa, to snap up whatever homes are available, because Durango has (sensibly?) placed a cap on short-term rentals.
Imagine, if you will, sitting as a County commissioner and listening to these voices talk on and on… for nearly two hours… and not a single vacation rental owner or realtor expressing serious concerns for the working families in Pagosa Springs, but concerned only with their ability to “afford” a second home in a community suffering from a severe housing crisis… or concerned only with their ability, as realtors, to successfully sell to such people.
Or imagine, if you will, Commissioner Warren Brown, giving a 10-minute speech during a legally-required public hearing, explaining clearly how he intends to vote on the proposed changes to the Land Use Regulations, Section 5, and why… knowing that he is charged, under Colorado law, to thoughtfully consider the input he hears from the public.
But… he delivers his speech prior to hearing from a single member of the public on the proposed changes.
Just to be clear about my perspective on this issue, I view the vacation rental owners who are converting our residential homes into mini-motels to be ordinary Americans, who are simply pursuing their vision of what it means to be “successful.”
To some, success is a second home you visit a few weeks of the year. To some, success is a three-story house you can sell at a profit someday. To some, success is connecting wealthy Durango buyers to the very limited stock of available homes in Pagosa Springs.
These people are not monsters. They’re just ordinary folks, looking out for their entitled lifestyles.
The Board of County Commissioners are also ordinary folks, but we expect them to go beyond selfish entitlement, and spend our tax money wisely, and make meaningful regulations to enhance the welfare of the people who elected them.
Given a choice between serving second-home owners from California and New Jersey on one hand… and working Pagosans struggling to find housing in this mountain town, on the other hand… we might expect our commissioners to think, first, about the people who live here. The people who elected them.
Unfortunately, that’s not how it works, sometimes.