West Marin’s short-term rental operators are looking to make their dissatisfaction heard with a website that will debut as the county prepares to regulate the industry.
After a series of public meetings, Marin’s Community Development Agency plans to publish a draft ordinance with new rules for vacation rental owners in the spring. Joining scores of local governments in California, Marin is responding to concerns from tenants, affordable housing advocates and full-time locals that Airbnbs are taking units away from the already meager supply of reasonably priced rentals.
Many vacation rental operators were caught off guard when Marin froze new short-term rental licenses last June. But this time around, as the county moves forward with a permanent ordinance, the group is prepared and organizing as the West Marin Access Coalition. Its website, though not yet ready, will serve as a voice for the Airbnb hosts pushing back on any new regulations.
One key talking point: regulating Airbnbs will not necessarily ameliorate the affordable housing shortage. In fact, the hosts argue, the two issues may not even be related.
“The idea that it’s all about the second homeowners is a myth,” said Rachel Dinno Taylor, an Airbnb host in Inverness. “No one’s showed me any data that says they’re connected. There’s a lot of blaming without people thinking really hard about the real problem.”
Ms. Dinno Taylor, who spent much of her career working at conservation nonprofits and moved to Inverness in 2016, opens her entire home as a vacation rental about 50 days out of the year, charging between $1,275 and $1,675 per night. Her spacious three-bedroom summer home perched on the Inverness Ridge is not a likely candidate for affordable housing, she said.
More to the point, though she and her husband technically reside in San Francisco, they spend the majority of the year in the village. Even if the county disincentives short-term rentals with its ordinance, she argued, operators like her would be unlikely to convert their homes into long-term rentals.
Yet it is unambiguous to some affordable housing advocates that Airbnbs pose a threat to the long-term housing supply. If homeowners can take in more than $8,000 a month for a short-term rental in a coastal Marin village, why should they choose instead to rent to a long-term tenant who can pay only a fraction of that?
Analyzing data from the industry website AirDNA, the Bolinas Community Land Trust found that several of the homes listed on Airbnb in the town had previously been long-term rentals, and most were not operated by full-time residents. The trust singled out those who don’t reside in West Marin as the key contributors to the problem, but it said in a statement last week that the B.C.L.T board does “not condone shaming of any kind in relation to S.T.R.s.” Incentives to encourage long-term rentals, the trust said, are the best solution.
At community meetings, Airbnb hosts have contested AirDNA data presented by the county, pointing to a variety of inaccuracies. County planner Kathleen Kilgariff acknowledged that the Community Development Agency has work to do on the data front and will move away from AirDNA as a source. The agency is working with the Department of Finance to establish more reliable data based on transient occupancy tax certificates and business licenses. Ms. Kilgariff said the county should use data to establish a firmer connection between affordable housing scarcity and vacation rentals.
“If we’re going to say that that’s what this ordinance is for, then ultimately we have to be able to support that with information,” Ms. Kilgariff said.
The pending ordinance, which Ms. Kilgariff said will keep Airbnbs from running wild in West Marin, is just one front in the county’s work to build and maintain its housing stock. “We have to take a broad approach,” she said. “One thing isn’t going to fix this, and so we have to think creatively.”
Another argument from the coalition goes to the core of West Marin’s identity and history as a vacation destination. Ms. Dinno Taylor said the coast suffers not only from a shortage of affordable housing, but also from a shortage of short-term lodging. She feels villages like Inverness have a duty to accommodate visitors to the Point Reyes National Seashore, and very few residents would prefer new large hotels over Airbnbs.
Rentals like hers, she said, are a key part of keeping the community alive through tourism. Through the West Marin transient occupancy tax, these rentals provide millions in revenue meant specifically for community housing and emergency response, Ms. Dinno Taylor pointed out. And rental guests contribute significantly to the local economy. “You take away the visitors and we lose our grocery store,” she said.
Some rental operators have deep ties to West Marin and want to make clear that Airbnb is their way of staying here. Sean Callagy had been spending summers, weekends and holidays in Inverness his entire life until he bought a home a few doors down from his parents’ house in Seahaven in 2019. Shortly before the moratorium passed, he and his wife spent about $10,000 getting the house ready for renters and secured a vacation rental license, to help cover the costs of ownership. They charge between $200 and $275 per night for the two-bedroom home when they are spending time at their primary residence in San Rafael.
Mr. Callagy has watched the county’s steps toward a new ordinance warily, joining community meetings and the email thread of concerned homeowners planning to launch the coalition’s website. “I’m not anti-housing,” he said. “I am nervous about this thing that we’ve invested a lot in. It makes me a little anxious.” However, he added: “I don’t expect people to feel a ton of sympathy for me and my situation.”
On Jan. 25, the county will host a Zoom forum on the short-term rental moratorium, which is set to continue until mid-2024 or until a new ordinance supersedes it.