In West Marin, where vacation rentals have doubled in recent years and roughly two thirds of dwellings are second homes, new rules for short-term rentals will soon be on the books.
After more than a year of exhaustive debate, Marin County’s polarizing proposal to regulate Airbnbs and other S.T.R.s gained unanimous approval from the California Coastal Commission last week. The vote allows the county just enough time to enact the rules before a moratorium on new licenses for short-term rentals expires in May.
The coastal commission agreed that the proposed regulations would maintain visitor access to the coast while preventing the further erosion of West Marin’s year-round supply of rental housing, which has diminished since the rise of online platforms like Airbnb.
The regulations impose caps that vary from village to village, resulting in modest, eventual drops in the number of S.T.R.s in most West Marin communities. Cuts in the number of S.T.R.s would range from 4 percent in Marshall to 14 percent in Bolinas. But an increase in the limit for Dillon Beach would lead to an overall rise in the percentage of West Marin homes used as Airbnbs from 16 percent to 18 percent.
Licenses would be limited to one per property owner to discourage corporations from buying up houses and dominating the marketplace.
Coastal commissioner and Marin County supervisor Katie Rice said the county had come up with a balanced approach to a challenging problem.
“We’re seeing housing stock disappear or erode,” she said. “We’re trying to figure out what is the best tool to regulate these vacation rentals so that they’re contributing to a community’s overall viability, not cannibalizing it. Kudos to my county for navigating this.”
Commissioners largely approved the rules that county supervisors passed in January, but in a last-minute amendment, they established just one cap for Stinson Beach and Seadrift, rather than separating the two areas. The new limit keeps the number of S.T.R.s there at current levels.
Marin’s proposal had allowed for a doubling of S.T.R.s in the gated enclave of Seadrift, while reducing them in the rest of Stinson Beach, where people are more likely to live year-round. The draft rules had also allowed for a 63 percent increase in the vacation community of Dillon Beach, which the commissioners agreed to.
Coastal commissioners approved the revised caps after hearing a plea from Stinson Beach residents who live on the east side of town, where S.T.R.s are less expensive and a larger proportion of operators depend on the income they generate. Like their counterparts in Dillon Beach, Stinson Beach residents hired former Marin County supervisor Steve Kinsey to advocate on their behalf.
“Stinson Beach is one town with one history, yet this ordinance divides Seadrift and the rest of Stinson Beach, unfairly creating haves and have-nots,” Mr. Kinsey told the commission last Thursday.
He suggested combining the high Seadrift cap and the lower Stinson Beach cap and spreading the total across the town—an expansion commissioners rejected.
“That simple change will protect the town’s more affordable coastal access and derail a source of divisive discord among neighbors,” he said. “One town, one cap.”
The commissioners also heard a plea from West Marin residents who argued that the county’s proposed rules were not stringent enough. They called on commissioners to approve the lower caps previously approved by the Marin County Planning Commission, which endorsed S.T.R. limits at the level where they stood in 2018 everywhere except Dillon Beach and Seadrift.
Since 2018, the number of S.T.R.s in West Marin has roughly doubled. That year, the county also passed good-neighbor rules for S.T.R.s that govern matters such as noise and trash disposal.
Harriet Moss, a Stinson Beach resident and member of the group West Marin Residents for Housing, said a “tsunami” of short-term rental conversions has been decimating coastal communities. Since she moved to town, the number of year-round residents has dropped by half, she said.
“Our medical clinic has gone, our art gallery is now a short-term rental and our formerly volunteer fire department, which had one paid firefighter, now has six paid firefighters, one of whom flies in from Stockton for his shift,” Ms. Moss said. “Every week we hear of workers, friends and neighbors having to move because they lost their housing.”
As they have all year, opponents of caps argued that the county has no data to justify them.
Roughly two-thirds of the dwellings in West Marin are second homes. Several speakers said they depend on income from short-term rentals to pay their mortgages but would not rent them as long-term rentals. Some said they would be forced to leave if the new regulations were imposed.
Rachel Dino Taylor of Inverness, who founded the West Marin Access Coalition to fight against the new S.T.R. rules, described the proposed regulations as “exclusionary.” Hotel rooms in West Marin are scarce, she said, and short-term rentals provide an important source of additional housing for overnight visitors to the Point Reyes National Seashore. “Do not turn a region dense in coastal public recreational lands into an exclusionary playground that only the elite can access,” she said.
The coastal commission’s mandate calls for both protecting the coastal environment and ensuring that visitors have access to the coast. But the commissioners have also recognized the need for workforce housing in a region where housing is scarce and already steep home prices have skyrocketed. According to the county, 79 percent of West Marin workers commute from outside the county, compared to 63 percent elsewhere in Marin.
Commission staff said the proposed regulations would strike an appropriate balance between goals that are in tension.
“The balance achieved through this proposal strikes a bargain between two very important and critical objectives in the coastal zone, namely providing unique and important visitor-serving accommodations, especially for larger families and groups, while recognizing a need to protect housing stock,” said Stephanie Rexing, the commission staffer who reviewed the proposal.
Agreeing on a policy had proved challenging, Supervisor Dennis Rodoni told the commissioners. He urged them to approve the proposed regulations.
“I have learned through this process that there is no silver bullet in this discussion,” Mr. Rodoni said.
To the disappointment of many on both sides, the regulations include caps for both unhosted rentals and hosted rentals—often single rooms rented by a homeowner who remains on site while visitors are present. These provide homeowners opportunities for extra income without removing long-term housing from the market.
County planners concluded that allowing unlimited hosted rentals would raise enforcement problems and open what was described as an “huge loophole” by Sarah Jones, the director of Marin’s Community Development Agency. The county does not have sufficient staffing to determine whether hosts are actually on site, she said.
“We don’t want to become the bedroom police,” Ms. Jones told the commission.
The regulations now go back to the Board of Supervisors, which will take them up at a May 7 meeting. The county is rushing to get them on the books by May 23, when Marin’s two-year moratorium on new S.T.R. licenses expires. Reaching that date without new rules could result in a rush of new registrations if updated rules are not enacted.
The supervisors will have to invoke special procedures to complete the regulations on time. Typically, new rules don’t take effect until 30 days after they are approved. But supervisors intend to approve the rules as an emergency ordinance, which would bypass the 30-day waiting period.
“The coastal commission vote was an important step,” Ms. Jones said after the meeting. “We’re just about there.”