San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Tahoe vacation divide
Widely contested shortterm rental rules move ahead in Incline Village
Art Cross was getting ready to sue his neighbor across the street. A constant stream of tourists seemed to spill out of the neighbor’s house every weekend, disrupting the peace and quiet on his block in Incline Village, a small, upscale Nevada mountain town in the isolated northeast corner of Lake Tahoe.
“I looked at retaining a lawyer to take legal action against him by the end,” said Cross, a 28year resident of Incline. In December, the neighbor sold to a new owner who Cross said is more diligent about managing the property. But it still functions as one of a growing number of shortterm rentals creeping into the neighborhood.
“It’s changed the place we live,” Cross said. “It’s unknown and it’s everchanging.”
This is life for many in Incline, whose 8,700 residents are divided by the question of how to manage the proliferation of shortterm rentals in their remote community — and the endless stream of visitors they support.
Tahoe has always been a hot vacation
destination. But natural distinctions between residential neighborhoods and tourist areas have been blurred as thousands of homes are offered up as shortterm rentals — known as STRs — on booking websites like Airbnb and Vrbo. The ongoing flow of visitors creates a party atmosphere in otherwise laidback communities. And many locals resent it.
Tahoe’s other towns have recently set about restricting or at least tracking STRs, leaving Washoe County, where unincorporated Incline Village is located, as the lake’s last holdout. That’s about to change. Washoe is on the verge of approving its first STR regulations after two years of study and discussion. An ordinance expected to win approval from the county commission Tuesday sets occupancy limits and quiet hours for rentals and attempts to curb the loud parties, parking violations and litter that often accompany them. It would also create a permit system and require fire safety inspections.
“This should have been done a very long time ago,” said Washoe County commissioner Alexis Hill, who represents the Incline VillageCrystal Bay area.
But many locals are enraged by the county’s slow response and say the ordinance attempts to treat the symptoms of a soupedup tourist market while ignoring the root causes and their longterm consequences. They want a hard cap on the number of STRs, fewer rentals in residential neighborhoods, a requirement that rentals are owneroccupied for at least six months a year and stricter punishment of violations.
Though Incline accounts for only about 5% of Washoe County’s population, it is home to more than 90% of STRs in county jurisdictions. Of the town’s approximately 4,000 homes, 1,065 are rented out via Airbnb, Vrbo and local property managers. Many residents say there’s an imbalance that is the changing character of their community and, one says, threatens to transform the mountain town into a “transient tourism mecca.”
“We’re seeing the hotelification of our community in real time,” said Incline resident Pamela Tsigdinos.
The pandemic has strained longstanding tensions between Tahoe locals and tourists as people from urban areas seek refuge from contagion in the mountains.
“With everyone not being able to travel internationally, Tahoe is carrying an increased burden of tourism,” Cross said. “It has gone through the roof with COVID.” Overwhelmed by complaints, Tahoe’s other destinations have set new rules on STRs in recent months or are in the process of curtailing their spread.
Truckee and Placer County launched permitting programs and beefed up enforcement efforts last year. In South Lake Tahoe, the number of STRs will be reduced from 1,400 in January to 400 by year’s end. El Dorado County recently imposed a limit on the number of allowable STRs in the southwest corner of the Tahoe basin.
In February, Washoe County’s neighbor, Douglas County, which encompasses the cluster of casinos across the border from South Lake Tahoe, moved to temporarily suspend new STR permits and issue $20,000 fines to hosts who rent without a permit.
“The big fear we have is, as every single community around Lake Tahoe puts in stricter oversight and tighter restrictions, it’s going to push more tourists into Incline,” Tsigdinos said. Already, visitors can cause Incline’s population to more than double on popular weekends.
Some in Incline say the problem has been allowed to fester because their town is relatively small and isolated from the bulk of Washoe residents outside the Tahoe basin. Plus, none of the county commissioners live there.
Also, they say, the county is reluctant to limit the number of STRs because it could jeopardize the flow of lodging taxes from Incline. Airbnb, for example, has helped Washoe County collect $4.9 million in taxes in the past five years, according to a statement from the company.
“We are essentially being used as a pawn to derive income for the county and for Airbnb,”
Tsigdinos said. “Yet we are the ones who have to endure the thousands of people who flood into our community.”
Incline residents’ frustration was on display at a public reading of the ordinance in February. Dozens of locals queued up on a Zoom call to urge commissioners to set a quota on STRs. About 600 people submitted written comments online.
“This might be the most robust public engagement process that Washoe County has ever undertaken,” one commissioner said during the reading.
Several residents claimed that homes are being purchased by outoftown investors and converted into fulltime STRs at an alarming rate. Some say they feel surrounded by houses that operate more like motels.
“I’d like to ask you, does hosting 15 to 20 transient people on your same block ... does that sound like a balance of competing interests?” Incline resident Steven Berg asked commissioners during the call. “That’s not the reason we bought a house in a singlefamily neighborhood.”
A small number of rental advocates weighed in, including a representative from Airbnb, who asked the county to reconsider a provision requiring inperson property inspections and permit registration forms and fees. In a statement to The Chronicle, Expedia Group, which owns Vrbo, said the Washoe “compromise strikes the right balance for the vacation rental community and local neighbors.”
A man who identified himself as a recently divorced airline pilot named Art spoke up in defense of rentals. He said income from renting out his house helps him pay for his children’s college education.
“Not everybody is living in San Francisco and owning an Airbnb in Incline,” he said. Though many U.S. cities have severely restricted or banned STRs in recent years, Washoe
“The way I know we’ve hit the middle with this ordinance is that nobody’s happy right now.” Mojra Hauenstein, director of planning and building for Washoe’s Community Services Department
County leaders say stricter measures could expose the county to litigation from homeowners. The outcomes of property rights battles over STRs elsewhere could serve to inform Washoe County’s regulations, Hill said.
“It’ll be interesting to see what happens with other communities that have put through stricter rules,” she said.
Assuming the ordinance passes on Tuesday, rental hosts will have until May to register their properties with the county, and the program will take effect in August. Washoe commissioners say they intend to revisit the ordinance in November to deal with unanticipated issues.
“We’re asking the residents to just try this,” said Mojra Hauenstein, director of planning and building for Washoe’s Community Services Department. “Then we’ll come back with empirical data to show what has worked and what hasn’t worked.
“We’re trying to balance both sides,” she added. “The way I know we’ve hit the middle with this ordinance is that nobody’s happy right now. We don’t have Airbnb happy, the Realtors happy or the community happy. So we must be on the right track.”