County STR Rules Postponed to February 19th

Thank you to everyone who helped pack the room for January 22nd’s Board of Commissioners hearing on changes to the County’s rules for Short Term Rentals.

We told you it would be the last time. Err, well . . . . we were wrong about that. The County’s process for passing regulations does not allow the Commission to modify and adopt new rules in the same hearing. So, the Short Term Rental hearing has been continued to Tuesday February 19th, 6 pm, County Administration Building, 601 State St.

While we are pleased that the Board will require STR operators to be real residents of the STR property, we were disappointed that the Commissioners made choices to weaken the regulations to the detriment of STR neighbors. We had suggested a number of “good neighbor” changes that the Board did not adopt.

Grandfathering

We proposed the grandfathering of some existing STRs as a way to provide a compromise and a soft landing for STRs who had been trying to follow the old rules but that would no longer be able to operate under the new requirement that the STR must be the permanent residence of the operator. We felt that grandfathering was fair for STRs that had been trying to follow the rules however, the Commissioners are leaning in the direction of “flexibility” and want to open the flood gates to a lot of STR operators who have avoiding getting required permits and avoided paying the taxes they owe.

Good Neighbor Issues

The draft code has a special section on compliance but we think neighbors would be better served if the county just used its normal enforcement process for STRs. Under the draft code for STRs, the complaining party has to go through a much more onerous process than for any other complaint: they must first attempt to work out the problem with the STR operator, they must document their attempts and only if they are unsuccessful can they file a complaint with the County. They must publicly identify themselves in their complaint. In small communities people are often reluctant to go against their neighbors even when the neighbor is doing something wrong because they don’t want to damage relations with their neighbors or because they fear retribution.

In contrast, Hood River’s normal enforcement process allows the complaining party to file a complaint directly to the County without first approaching the offending party and they are given the option to have their identity kept confidential. The STR code shouldn’t pit neighbor against neighbor, but instead follow the same process as for any other land use compliance/enforcement action.

Revoking a STR Permit

Under the draft code a bad apple STR operator can rack up more than three violations (not just complaints, but three hearings that result in a verdict against the STR operator) and still continue to operate. The County’s enforcement process requires a robust –and expensive!- administrative hearing procedure and is not undertaken lightly by the County. For an STR operator to be found in violation of the ordinance one time requires significant expenditure of County staff time and resources. A three-time offender is an STR operator who is determined to flout the rules. We think Section 53.68 should be changed so that three violations result in mandatory revocation of the operator’s STR permit.

If you want to dig deeper, here are the proposed Code Changes for Short Term Rentals, and Staff Report for the hearing.