Wish you were here

It’s exciting to see county planning commissioners stepping up to the plate this week to address the county’s booming vacation rental market.
As many of us know, vacation rentals in Sonoma County are changing the landscape in not-so-subtle ways, such as jacking up rents, wiping affordable housing rentals off the map and making once-quiet residential neighborhoods noisy with commercial party houses.
So our planning commissioners are rising to the occasion by declaring that the vacation rental juggernaut steamrolling its way across Sonoma County (and to some extent the entire planet) is locally having “no significant impact on the environment.”  
Right. This is so obvious it makes you wonder why we even need a county planning department.
You want to talk about significant impacts? What about vacation renters making non-vacationing residents miserable? Are all us non-vacationers supposed to take vacations too? Where the hell can you go nowadays to get away from vacationers?
I know that vacation rentals are a fast-growing multi-billion dollar global industry and everyone wants a piece of the action. Maybe what we should ask is why stand in the way? Let’s make every house a vacation rental, collect millions of Transient Occupancy Taxes (TOT) and use the money to house the homeless.
Instead of neighbors, we’d just have vacationers, arguably a lower form of life, a subgroup of idiots who seem lost, don’t know where to park and leave their dogs alone to bark while they’re off tasting wine.
It’s an attitude that seems to say: “None of the rules apply to us. We don’t observe any of the usual civil considerations, such as being quiet at night, because we’re on vacation. In a few days we’ll be gone and you’ll never see us again.”
So we should remember there’s a sense of freedom and liberation that goes along with being on vacation. We should all be so lucky.
I’m fortunate enough to live in a neighborhood (Guernewood Park) where even former meth labs on the street are now advertised as furnished rustic hideaways available for rent on Airbnb. Everything’s a vacation rental now. You can pitch a tent in your front yard and rent it on the Internet as a “Cozy campsite, affordable and close to everything.”
I’ve been keeping a list of the pros and cons of being surrounded by vacation rentals. I have a “plus” column for the good things and a “minus” column for the bad things.
On the plus side, vacation homes can be nice because they’re well-kept, often vacant and they drive out the tweakers. Vacation tenants are often friendly, neat (sometimes) and there’s peace of mind knowing they’ll be leaving soon. You often hear laughter coming from vacation rentals, although it may be the drunken laughter of real estate speculators.
My list of minuses is a little longer. The complaints include not knowing who’s there, what planet they’re from and how to ask them not to park in our parking space. It’s never really quiet anymore and our former residential neighborhood is not really a neighborhood. It’s more like our house is just one of the cabins at a resort motel.
When vacationers arrive I watch to see how old they are. The older the better, I think. The old ones will be quieter compared with the younger ones who drink more, sleep less and bring feral children.
One modest house down the street, once a quiet man’s home, is now a vacation rental advertised for rent at more than $400 a night. “Sleeps eight,” says the Internet ad, and you have to pay extra ($50 each) for added guests. There’s no county permit for this place, which means we don’t have a number to call to complain when there are 20 people there some nights singing and dancing out on the deck.
“Lots of space for entertaining,” says the description of this house on Airbnb. “The neighborhood is peaceful and tranquil.”
That’s still true, sometimes. Usually it’s when the vacation renters have gone home.
Editor’s note: The Sonoma County Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on the county’s vacation rental ordinance this Thursday, Nov. 19, starting at 5:30 p.m. in the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors’ chambers.