We’ve all seen it happen or heard the grim stories: blocks of empty homes, rentals hard to find at any price, families moving away for lack of housing. Our coastal communities are in big trouble as victims of their own desirability. Everyone wants to visit beautiful West Marin and is willing to pay a premium for a vacation rental or a second home.
There are many factors driving up rents and home prices here, but short-term renting to vacationers is a big one. That extra income is hard for a homeowner to turn down. Do I want to retain the family now leasing my property for the $3,600 that’s typical today for a West Marin two-bedroom? Or do I want to post it online as a short-term rental that would net me at least $300 a night after taxes and fees? At the year-round average of 20 days per month one can expect to have an S.T.R. occupied, that’s $6,000 a month—almost twice what the long-term family has been paying, plus I get to use the place anytime I want. Hard to say no to such a deal!
Or do I want to just sell the place and be done with tenants? At today’s $1.6 million typical for a two-bedroom home in West Marin per Zillow data, I could put the proceeds in a C.D. at 5 percent and be earning $6,300 a month—even better than the S.T.R. income.
Now let’s say there are two bidders on that house, both able to put $300,000 down. One is a local family that’s been renting and wants to plant a stake in the community and build equity. At today’s 7 percent interest on a fixed 30-year mortgage, they’re going to have to come up with $10,300 a month for the mortgage and property taxes. Ouch! Even if the bank will let them spend 40 percent of their income on housing, they’d have to be making over $300,000 a year to get financing. This is why families leave town when they lose their rental.
Consider the second bidder on that same house. He or she lives elsewhere and wants a second home on the coast, or wants to “park” money there as an investment (yes, this is happening). They can S.T.R. that house, earn $6,000 a month and still occupy it whenever they want, if they want. With S.T.R. income paying over half of their $10,300 monthly expenses, they can far outbid the local who wants to live in the house. Hopeful homebuyers who will actually live here don’t stand a chance.
The S.T.R. bonanza brought in a big wave of new second-home buyers and investors who’d never have been able to afford to buy otherwise. The second-homers themselves validated this point in county listening sessions on S.T.R. regulations by complaining that the current moratorium was preventing them from being able to sell those homes. Well, yes: at the inflated value that S.T.R.s generate.
Let’s face the fact that profit, not an urge to provide visitor access, is driving the boom in S.T.R.s. This is why we see aggressive marketing by online hosting platforms and commercial investor groups. This is why there are now almost twice as many—870—S.T.R.s in unincorporated Marin as there were in 2018, when there were 480. This rise explains why home prices have soared much more—68 percent from 2013 to 2020—in S.T.R.-laden West Marin than countywide, where home prices rose 42 percent in that time period. The situation is completely out of hand. And there is no end in sight.
In 2015, I joined a group of West Marin residents who saw the escalation of S.T.R. activity and urged the county to regulate it. Marin’s response was to implement a “good neighbor” policy in 2018 that may have cut back on huge parties but did nothing to curb growth. Now here we are with 16 percent of West Marin’s housing stock in S.T.R.s—much higher than caps already enacted by many other coastal jurisdictions to restore their lost housing.
The California Coastal Commission is generally approving low S.T.R. caps set by coastal communities, recognizing that preserving workforce housing and community vitality is as important as visitor access—indeed, they enhance the experience of those visitors. Courts have backed these restrictions. In June, a federal judge dismissed all claims challenging San Diego’s S.T.R. ordinance that reduces unhosted S.T.R.s by 50 percent everywhere except in Mission Beach. “A government regulation that merely prohibits…certain private uses…does not constitute a categorical taking,” the judge said, adding that “preservation of housing stock is a proper exercise of the City’s police power.”
Despite all these grim statistics, Marin County has drafted an S.T.R. ordinance that ends up adding 108 houses to the current count, asserting up front that the proposal “is enacted to ensure that STR activity….preserves existing housing and communities while balancing the protection of private property rights.” The draft ordinance does not call for either restoring housing lost since 2018 or preventing commercial entities from buying up residential housing for boutique hotels or money parks. It directly conflicts with Marin’s state-mandated Housing Element and the county’s Local Coastal Program, which do address our housing crisis.
Please write to [email protected] well before the Planning Commission’s Oct. 23 hearing and urge them to direct county staff to set a cap on unhosted S.T.R.s that is half of the current number—just below the 2018 level.
Don Smith moved to Bolinas in 1999, built a house, served on the community’s utility district board for 19 years, and is a longtime active member of the community center and land trust. He is now building an ADU to house a low-income family.