A summer place

You could hear some jeers over the polite applause last week when Sonoma County banned new vacation rentals in established residential neighborhoods.
Sonoma County is not the first place to ban vacation rentals on otherwise quiet streets and it probably won’t be the last. They’re against the law in Healdsburg, for God’s sake, even though (or maybe because) Healdsburg is now such a big tourist draw.
The city of Santa Monica recently banned them too. Vacation rentals there, with neighborhood strangers coming and going at all hours, “aren’t good for this city,” said Santa Monica’s mayor. And that’s in a beach town where everyone goes to lie around on the sand all day.
Local neighborhood associations such as the one in Monte Rio’s Northwood Golf Course area are also saying no to these commercial party houses, although the legality of the Northwood ban is still being argued in court.
At recent public hearings to discuss this clash, one often-heard argument against a ban was that places such as Healdsburg’s rustic Fitch Mountain neighborhood have always been vacation destinations where people own second homes, summer cabins and weekend getaways. How can we justify outlawing an activity that’s been going on for generations?
That argument doesn’t make any distinction between a vacation home and a vacation rental. The difference is huge and it’s why there’s such a furor right now. The county knows it has to do something to protect residential neighborhood zoning where the vacation rental invasion threatens everyone else’s expectations of quiet enjoyment.
A vacation home where family and friends gather for fun is one thing; a commercial party house advertised worldwide on internet sites like Airbnb is a different breed of cat.
The new vacation houses are not the same as the old ones. That’s one of the reasons why recent hearings have drawn such large and vociferous crowds. What’s been apparent about many of the new vacation rental advocates – the owners and managers opposed to a ban – is that they don’t seem to have ever had to live next door to the places making the neighbors crazy.
It seems a little surprising that the epidemic of west county residents being driven mad by the booming vacation rental market hasn’t been much of an issue thus far in the Fifth District County Supervisor’s race. The candidates talk about bad roads, the housing crunch and other social imperatives, but we don’t hear much about the suffering neighbors of vacation rental houses.
It’s only June, too, so vacation rental angst is just beginning to bloom. By the time the November general election rolls around we could see bands of roving vigilantes rescuing vacationing dogs left alone in strange yards to bark.
The county’s new X Zone designation where future vacation rentals are now outlawed won’t be applied to the lower Russian River. The county has made that clear. We’re too far gone out here. Even the residents of Fitch Mountain said, “We’re not like Guerneville.”
It’s true. There’s no Village of Fitch Mountain that needs a zillion visitors a year to make ends meet.
The mystery of how many people in town aren’t on vacation at any given moment will always change with the seasons, and even then it’s not always clear who’s on vacation and who’s not. Are the hordes of tattooed people in tank tops these days taking a break from their hectic tech jobs in Silicon Valley? Or are they just locals on permanent hiatus from anything resembling work?
Sonoma County wants to “mitigate the impact” of vacation renters in residential neighborhoods. Where I live, instead of an outright ban, we impose a limit on how many people may party all at once. Who will enforce the limit is still being worked out.
I have an idea – maybe as mitigation the county could offer free anger management classes to full-time residents who live next to vacation rental houses. At least it would be a start. It seems way overdue.
— Frank Robertson is a journalist with Sonoma West Publishers