There’s a great article in the most recent Point Loma-OB Monthly by Tyler Faurot which encapsulates the recent problems and issues identified with the new short-term rental ordinance, including the scandalous ability of slumlord Michael Mills to acquire more than 100 short-term rental licenses. [Faurot was able to get it published just as it was announced the PL-OB Monthly was sold to the hedge fund.]
Faurot focused not only on Mills but also on complaints by Ocean Beach leaders about threats to the community’s housing stock and even the vitality of the community by short-term rentals.
As many of us know, San Diego’s short-term rental ordinance was authored largely by City Councilwoman Jennifer Campbell with assistance from her chief of staff, Venus Molina. And when Faurot interviewed her, Molina had quite a mouthful to say.
In response to questions about the Mills’ situation and about his tenants being evicted to make way for short-term rentals, Molina said the city bears no responsibility for people being displaced from their homes to make way for short-term rentals. She told Faurot:
“When people call and say they were displaced from their homes because it’s being converted into a short-term vacation rental, that is a private matter. If you want to change your house and rent it long-term, or if you want to make it a short-term rental, that’s your prerogative. … That is between you and your tenants. That is something we are not involved with.” [Our emphasis.]
When Faurot questioned Molina on requests by the OB Town Council’s advocacy committee for the city to limit Tier 3 licenses by neighborhood and that the ordinance be amended so licenses are limited to a percentage of the units at one property, Molina responded by saying the city does not intend to rewrite the ordinance at this time, pointing to the bureaucratic process it would need to go through again. She said:
“If we change the ordinance, it has to come back to [the City] Council and it has to go back to the [California] Coastal Commission for approval. It would take another two to three years.”
Molina said officials need to “let the dust settle” before making adjustments to the law, plus:
“People have been waiting for an ordinance like this for 15 years. I’ve always said this ordinance is not perfect. … We just need to let this work itself through. … We want to see what else comes up.”
Faurot also quoted OB leaders on the problems and consequences of the short-term rental quagmire.
Andrea Schlageter, chairwoman of the OB Planning Board, said problems have arisen since the council first passed the ordinance in February 2021. She said:
“When we were going through this, we were specifically told by the powers that be that this would reduce the numbers of short-term rentals. The mayor looked me dead in the eye and said this would reduce the numbers, but it’s allowed people to enter the market that had no interest before.”
And Tracy Dezenzo, chairwoman of the Ocean Beach Town Council’s advocacy committee and treasurer of the OB Planning Board, commented:
“Michael Mills is not the only property owner doing this, but it is the most egregious example in Ocean Beach.”
In a letter to Mayor Todd Gloria and all members of the City Council in February 2021, the OB Planning Board recommended license caps for individual neighborhoods rather than general areas. Dezenso stated:
“The way [Campbell] wrote it, she said that if 100 percent of the license requests come from Ocean Beach, 100 percent of licenses would go to Ocean Beach. What we were trying to push for was a limit by community planning area. We knew most of the requests for licenses would be coming from beach communities.”
Schlageter said there is a significant impact on the community by short-term rentals.
“I continue to hear people say that this impacts only a negligible amount of housing in San Diego, [but] I think anyone who has been kicked out of their house by Michael Mills would disagree with you.” …
“600 fewer units [in Ocean Beach] is not negligible. It affects people’s very life and the way they live day to day if they are housing-insecure. Even the removal of just one unit of housing is not negligible.”
Andrea also hit upon a theme the Rag has enunciated for years, as Faurot reported:
Schlageter said the fallout from the [STVR] situation threatens the vitality of the community.
“If there are no more residents in Ocean Beach, there is no more OB Christmas Holiday Parade, there is no more street fair, there is no more Oktoberfest or St. Patrick’s Day, because they’re run by volunteers in the neighborhood who are trying to keep their neighborhood alive,” Schlageter said. “If we continue to allow the tourism industry … to hollow out and take over San Diego, the things that make it attractive will no longer exist. It only exists with people in their neighborhood that love it and want to make it the best.”
Faurot also reported on the deal involving an uninhabited apartment complex in OB on Abbott, owned by the OB CDC.
A deal is in motion for Wakeland and the city of San Diego to buy a 13-unit apartment building at 2147 Abbott St. in Ocean Beach from the OB Community Development Corp., or CDC, to use as housing with supportive services for homeless people.
The property, appraised at about $4.5 million, has been owned by the CDC since 1997 and is zoned for low-income housing. It has been vacant since January 2022.
“It’s kind of a win-win for the community because it will provide much-needed low-income housing,” said Mark Winkie, president of the Ocean Beach CDC. “If you know anything about Ocean Beach and Point Loma, there is hardly any low-income housing at all in our community. Also, the revenue generated by the sale will go back to the CDC, which we can use for a lot of the community enhancement and development initiatives we have on our list.”
Among those are redevelopment of Veterans Plaza and installing a playground and fitness area at Saratoga Park.
Here’s more of the report:
Campbell’s chief of staff, Venus Molina, said such amassing of licenses was addressed through administrative regulation. The city treasurer’s office, which awards and regulates STVR licenses, sent notices to the people whose names were listed on license applications requiring additional notarization and proof of compliance training.
“When we wrote the ordinance, we left kind of like a piece to say ‘OK, this is the bones, and all of the meat will be done through administrative regulations,’” Molina said. “We’re working with the city attorney’s office and the city treasurer’s office to figure out how to prevent something like this from happening and what we can do to mitigate things that we didn’t anticipate.”
The ordinance groups short-term rentals into a four-tier licensing system:
- Tier 1: Home-share (a room or rooms) or whole-home rentals totaling 20 days or less per year
- Tier 2: Home-share rentals totaling more than 20 days per year
- Tier 3: Whole-home rentals totaling more than 20 days per year
- Tier 4: Special tier for Mission Beach, which allows whole-home short-term rentals in a manner consistent with recommendations from the Mission Beach Town Council
Whole-home rentals for more than 20 days out of the year are capped at 1 percent of the city’s more than 540,000 housing units, or about 5,400. However, in Mission Beach, which has a long history of vacation rentals that predates the rise of online home-sharing platforms, the cap is 30 percent of the community’s total dwelling units, or nearly 1,100. …
As of June 28, more than 5,100 licenses had been issued across San Diego for the short-term rental of entire homes where the owner or permanent resident does not live onsite. Ocean Beach had 497 whole-home licenses, plus 103 of other types of STVR licenses, for a total of 600. Only Mission Beach, Pacific Beach and La Jolla had more whole-home and overall licenses.
For perspective, Ocean Beach has fewer than 200 hotel rooms.
The thing that is so infuriating about all of this is that zoning laws existed for a reason, from which entire industries were built. Now Silicon Valley comes up with a way to circumvent those laws, thus flipping the original intent of the laws on their respective heads, and nobody has done an f***ing thing about it. Turning neighborhoods into motels and motels into homeless shelters. It’s an absolute travesty.
I hope Campbell and Molina are tormented by this for the rest of their lives. The explosion of the homeless crisis in San Diego is a direct result of their actions. Shame on them both.
You need a conscience in order to be tormented.
Agreed. Campbell has none.
I’ve got friends who’ve lost their long term rentals in OB looking for somewhere else to luve in town. They say there’s next-to- nothing. It’s all short term. These are citizens of OB, members of our community. Who in our city government cares about them?
In the 1920 and on, properties were purchased near the coast in LJ, PB, MB, and OB as vacation villas, only used during the summer months. Mission Beach in particular was something of a slum area. Over time, as Spreckles began developing the area, the quality of the structures improved in all of the Beach communities, probably more so in La Jolla. In the 50’s, 60’s and 70’, the nature of the community evolved so that those properties, almost all on the ocean and bay boardwalks became summer winter rentals. There was little change to the nature of the situation in the beach communities until 2,000 when computer bookings came on line increasing the number of summer winter rentals, but the real explosion did not happen until around 2010, a couple of year after AirBnB was founded. In Mission Beach, the number of illegal STRs increased from around 600 to almost 2,000 in 2017.
Maybe it’s time to THINK OUT OF THE BOX? The wealthy sociopaths are NOT going to change their greed levels and Capitalism has gone completely out of control in the US. Time to rein it in!
The old mantra of ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ certainly does NOT apply here because, OBVIOUSLY, it’s f&&king broke!
So here’s a solution in Berlin Germany that was just won by voting! Can you imagine it happening in San Diego?
https://jacobin.com/2021/10/berlin-germany-nationalize-big-landlords-organizing-housing-campaign-rent-prices
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sealintheSelkirks
There is a comment that the number of STR licenses in Mission Beach is consistent with the Mission Beach Town Council. First, let me say that Mission Beach residents have a very myopic view and therefore parochial attitude, that is, they don’t see too well outside of the boundary of the community. Second, the Mission Beach Precise Planning Board is the legal advisory group to the City. They opposed a carve out or different treatment of Mission Beach from other communities. But, Campbell and Molina ignored them and sought out input from the town council. I was president in 2018. At that time the community supported the more restrictive primary only rules lead by Zapf and Bry, but that all changed in 2019. The town council was packed by greedy, and I emphasize money obsessed STR members. There was an attempt by one member to submit 16 membership applications using hosts. This is the group that recommended the 30 percent, not the residents. Since 2018, the STR industry people have done everything they can to undermine my credibility, including much lying and even physical assault. The so called Campbell plan is no more than Faulconer’s plan in sheep’s shit. The negotiations by Expedia and Bridgette from the hotel workers union was a ruse. Last point, there is no other community in California that has been hammered and then sacrificed like Mission Beach.
The revelations from the OB Planning Board and Town Council about the abusive use of hosts represents a crack in Ms. Molina’s door, and make no mistake, Ms. Molina takes full ownership of this now exposed ordinance. Similar to Faulconer’s plan, the owner can have as many licenses as needed; the only difference is that the owner must identify a real or fake host in the Molina plan. And like the Faulconer plan, there is no limit on the number of fake hosts. Allowing renters to be hosts to avoid discrimination is right out of the Trump playbook. There should be one STR license per owner, and one owner per single family property and or multifamily property. No spouse, no kids and no surrogate hosts. The town councils and planning boards need to coalesce into a unified position and move on the whole City Council.
So…the Dr. spends years passing a law to stop unwanted vendors at the beach. And the law she wrote doesn’t work. She then spends her time writing a law to make STR’s laws resonable. And once again that doesn’t work.
Why is she in office?
She isn’t in office, Venus Molina is.
Are you sure Campbell wrote those laws ? In some cases laws (at least the first draft) are written by lobbyists, and then pushed through to passage by the politician (who is getting contributions from the lobbyists).
She’s in office simply because the people voted for her (and Gloria) in spite of the fact we had alternatives who were clearly in favor of controlling the growth of STVR’s.
From Times of San Diego, Nov 22
Campbell has in recent months won approval to regulate and reduce the number of short-term vacation rentals with the intent of freeing up hundreds of residences for the strained housing market in San Diego.
Additionally, she successfully pushed for regulations on sidewalk and pushcart vendors. She is one of the leading forces behind Measure C, which seeks to remove the coastal 30-foot height limit in the Midway area to allow for a stadium and affordable housing project there.
My reading of the ordinance says that hosts must hold actual leases for
the property, not random friends or family members, neighbors, etc. Does anybody know if there are, in fact, valid leases in place for these properties?
Has anyone gotten any clear response from Campbell’s office as to how and when this loophole will be closed?
All I know – as a long term renter – is that there’s hardly anywhere longterm to rent in O B that’s anywhere affordable. Fine if you own your own home, but some of us don’t have a million plus to spend on a dwelling.
This ordinance will only change when the current councilmembers see a political advantage to do so, or at least feel politically threatened not to do so. The OB example has opened the door, slightly, but it will close again if there is not a widespread outcry focusing on Molina and Campbell’s incompetence. And, don’t forget Elyse Lowe, Gloria’s head of Development Services. She wrote the first ordinance for Faulconer and was then given a major promotion.
So what does it take?
Public shaming doesn’t seem to help.
Bad media doesn’t put a dent.
Maybe if bribes were discovered?
Other than that, I guess the next round will be to try to vote them out of office – but who knows what other wolf in sheep’s clothing will come along…
I wrote this in a Sept. 2015 post:
However, on top of housing shortages, the even more drastic consequence of loss of community occurs when there are so many residential units within a neighborhood that have been turned into short-term units, that a goodly-sized chunk of the area has morphed into a resort candyland of beach, surf and sand. There are no longer any actual residents in the immediate neighborhood, and every unit is utilized as a vacation rental – every condo, every McMansion, every apartment, every little cottage – no longer are the houses of residents – the human make-up of a community – but of visitors.
Without actual residents then, that portion of the neighborhood as “a community” collapses into a mishmash of rental and property managers, online rentals, private trash and private security details. … If there’s no one left to care about the community or that section of it, then there is no community. …
The loss of community for Ocean Beach is one of the chief threats from this so-called “sharing economy”. If significant sections of OB are no longer available for residents, then there are no longer residents available for OB.
As a woman who was complaining about short-term rentals said at the recent OB Town Council meeting, said: “Rather than a good vacationer next to me, I’d rather have a neighbor.”
OBceans need to be vigilante on this issue. It isn’t over yet. Along with gentrification, short-term vacation rentals have the ability to undermine parts of the community, change the character of the neighborhood for the worse and turn a vibrant village into a beach resort for vacationers.
https://obrag.org/2015/09/loss-of-community-is-greatest-threat-from-airbnb-and-short-term-vacation-rentals/
Sign me gone from OB after fifteen years.
The high cost of renting finally pushed me out…am now in an East Coast state.
The continued rise of short term rentals was a major contributor.
However, consider that 30 thousand people left San Diego last year alone, due to the high costs of housing and everything else.
The California exodus continues…
It is really a shame you felt you needed to leave. What East coast state did you land in?
Florida.
OH say it isn’t so, Tessa!! A state run by the Mini-Me Trump Bobblehead who liked watching people get tortured during his visits to the US gulag on Cuba? A ‘veteran’ who spent his time being a lawyer justifying US torturers in Iraq? EEEUUWWW!
You be careful there. They’ve got at least as many guns as Idaho being carried around under their overlarge shirts that aren’t just for hiding the obese bellies of RWNJs who all scream Stand Your Ground whenever they feel privileged. And far more armed deranged people due to a much larger population base than Idaho!
And remember, don’t say anything about extreme climate destabilization because De Satan signed that law into effect and people might get upset with you for ‘speaking out of place’ against their beloved governor who obviously, like Trumpie, was picked by god…
s/
And not being snarky, you’d best always keep your car gassed up and a bug-out bag packed and ready and know where you need to go because it IS the start of hurricane season in what might turn out to be the most extreme ever recorded if sea surface temps are any indictation. What a time to move to freaking Florida since hurricane Beryl is STILL spinning tornadoes into people’s houses and businesses up in NY and is about to run into Canada. Going to be a damned impressive season I would venture a guess… I think you can count on being evacuated at least a couple times in the next few months…
I’m assuming you didn’t buy property due to DeSatan’s extremely high property taxes? I inherited from my auntie two separate double lots in the Avon Parks Lakes subdivisions. One on W. Tanager Rd in Unit 4 and the other on Portland Rd. in Unit 5, which is a place where you can feed your own pet alligator!
Where I am up here on the Canadian Border is seeing an influx of people heading to the hills mostly from Cali as is Oregon that I’m hearing from friends living in various locations in that state. The wealthy get richer and the rest of us…run and try to hide somewhere we can afford…until it becomes unaffordable.
At some point there will be nowhere left to run away to I’m sure.
sealintheSelkirks
Nope, didn’t buy.
And I’m inland, near Gainesville, so way less concern about
hurricane damage.
To get double the space, with central air conditioning, at less rent than my “chicken coop: in OB made it more than worth it.
So far, people have been as kind as they can be.
I can no longer live in a Northern state, as I have too much arthritis….did live in the Northeast, including Burlington, Vermont, …..but that was then…I remember young men fleeing though the woods to Canada to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War..
Where do you live? Burlington? A small Vermont town?
Good for you, Tessa. Found yourself a spot that fits. I did the same thing after I left the beaches I was born and raised on, but it took a couple more decades to find it. I’ve been here two decades as of last month. Found mine, too, lady!
No, not Vermont though I did head north. Am just under the border in NE Washington State. No mortgage, 8 forested acres on a west-facing ridgeline in the southern Selkirks about 40 miles north of Spokane. Starting to be way too much work at 70 but I’m still cutting my own firewood… And been 25 miles from the parking lot of 49N my snowsurfing hill. It isn’t as close as the OB Pier or Cliffs were, but it’s done me well! And the Columbia River is west of me beyond the next ridgeline about 30 miles. It is where I was supposed to be I guess, eh?
And yes I understand about the arthritis. I have a friend that I’m helping out who has a real hard time with her hands. Winters are brutal (or used to be as climate destabilization is noticeably happening big time here) and she just can’t do much in the cold, but you know… I go over every week and roll her trashcan down to the road, helped her buy a used Toyota pickup, do some of the ‘guy’ chores that living on property requires. That sort of thing. She can’t grasp much anymore and it’s all she can do sometimes to turn a key in a lock. Been friends with her & husband for about 15 years but he died a year ago April… Her oldest son and his spouse help, too, as the middle son died 2 1/2 yrs ago in Alaska and the youngest is a local meth-head waste case who has no-contact protection order on him. He stole thousands of dollars of her husbands tools after he died… A warm climate is better on arthritis so she says but she was raised in Spokane and doesn’t want to move away from her property because it is also paid off.
You do well where you are, tessa. There are good people everywhere even in Florida. HA!
sealintheSelkirks
Thanks, seal.
There are many nice people here – there was a potter at the farmers’ market yesterday…he invited me to work with him at his home pottery, which is exciting. The man who does maintenance here in the building is from Cuba and is very gracious…I work up my Spanish and communicate well with him and he helps me out quite a bit…and on and on it goes.
At the moment, I’m a bit gripped by the assassination attempt in Butler County, PA. I grew up in the Eastern part of the state and know the whole state well.
James Carville described it as “Pennsyltucky- Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Kentucky in the middle. That’s an oversimplification but still somewhat accurate.
How is it that we think having the largest military presence in the world – and do such violence to others – won’t have blowback domestically ? Look at the incredible number of mass shootings that happen across the country so so many times.
Yeah, seems like that attempt has gripped people in oh-so-many way, ya know?
Today more info on the shooter has been posted, and it’s really looking bad for GOP & MAGA Trump policies. A registered Republican who’s parents are life-long deer hunters, whose few friends in school were the conservative rightwingers wearing MAGA hats and military camo, was pretty much just like a vast majority of mass shooters in this country; white male loner conservatives with no love life. Hmmm.
He always stood with the conservative side in school debates, failed to make it onto the high school’s rifle team he was such a poor shot… BUT BIDEN PUT HIM UP TO IT! Somehow it’s all the LEFTIES fault though Biden certainly has never been even close to being a fricking LEFTIE in his entire career as he’s always been extremely conservative and more of a DINO than a RINO!
The shooter was 12(?) when Trump got in with a minority of the votes in 2016, was 16 and in that high school MAGA crowd when Trump lost the 2020 election by a much larger number of votes.
My question here is just exactly who did his parents vote for in the last two elections? I have $200 bucks that says it was Trump. Any takers on that bet?
That he was raised a MAGAT, a Make America Great Again Trump Supporter, by MAGA voting parents? But Biden made him do it? REALLY?
You just can’t fix STUPID!
So why did he decided on suicide by cop this way? As a deer hunter 2nd Amendment gun enthusiast, he KNEW that AR-15s are not the best weapon to use but did anyway because, after all, it is the Republican’s favorite weapons choice. Being such a poor shot that he didn’t make the HS team, he had to have known he probably wasn’t going to hit was he aimed at anyway, ya know? Even with a scope-sighted Winchester 300 Magnum he probably would have missed. I think hitting Trump’s ear was just absolutely by chance. He was spraying and praying because that’s what those weapons are good for at distance by a kid who was a lousy shot….
Did he think that his ‘sacrifice’ would boost Trump’s chances? Unless he was completely stupid, and his school grades showed he wasn’t, he would have figured that out I would think.
And the MAGA cultists are eating it up, screaming FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT in the RNC convention today. Reminds me of old newsreels of Mussolini’s rallies.
Can’t fix stupid, never have been able to fix stupid.
Anyway Tessa, it’s 104’F at 4pm and time to go outside for 15 minutes and water the garden. Not as hot here today (been mostly 110’F for two weeks +) but the potting soil mix drinks a lot with this weather! Want the girls to prosper!
Ta-ta!
sealintheSelkirks
Here are some new facts:
Keith Olbermann weighs in:
TRUMP WAS SHOT AT BY A MAGA WITH TRUMP SIGNS IN HIS YARD: Tu.Countdown: https://tinyurl.com/bdeyczm5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5Ic26pXgSU
Neighbors have reported to FBI agents canvassing the neighborhood that Trump signs have been up for years and suddenly just disappeared. Hmmm.
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Shooter’s Family ON DATABASE used by Trump Campaign
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJCrs0Do4IM
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The shooter, if he was serious, would have taken his daddy’s deer rifle to use. And a .223 AR-15 round would have taken Trump’s ear clean off, and the shock wave would have spun him around and dropped that fat frat boy on his ass. He wouldn’t have had time to look around, touch his ear as the glass from the teleprompter shattering, and then slowly kneel down. There are AR-15s all over the place here in MAGA N/E Washington State. We ALL know just how they work and what they do. There is so much shock from them they aren’t allowed for deer hunting!
Been hearing the echos of them being fired the last couple of days even though we are under a Red Alert for fire danger and nobody should be target shooting…but this is MAGA-Land after all… But these Trumpies are angry and firing guns is their release. Dry lightning T-storms are coming and you just don’t shoot in 97’F with 20% humidity. At least is isn’t 110’F today…but looking kind of scary as the clouds are piling in.
sealintheSelkirks
I didn’t mean to generate comments about your choice, Tessa, I was just curious because I’ve lived all over the East coast. As with California, there are pluses and minuses to every state in the country. I hope Florida does it for you.
I don’t mind…a number of people have taken jabs at the notion of me moving to “red” Florida. But an economic reason is just that.
Having previously lived as far South as Tidewater Virginia, I expect things will be
fine and am used to Southern ways.
This is a cosmopolitan town/small city in the heart of the state’s largest county – Marion – so there are many resources here and things to do.
I am also grateful for the peace and quiet, having lived directly under the flight path for a number of years.
If I ever left California, I’d head for southern Virginia. I really liked that and northern North Carolina. I do miss the great seafood, especially crab. Enjoy the peach and quiet.
Southern Virginia is lovely, for sure.
One of my most longtime friends – in Williamsburg – encouraged me to return to where we lived so long ago.
But for the sake of the weather, price, and friends here, I chose the deep South….starting to get used to the country music on the radio, all the preachers and mega churces and the slower pace and courtly manners.
Excellent crabcakes here – there’s a Louisiana style fish restaurant, Harry’s , that’s terrific.
“private matter…That is something we are not involved with.” That’s true until the person displaced from their rental displaces another person by paying higher rent and the chain cascades until some other renter is now homeless (but looking at luxury newly built ADU’s that they can’t afford). So, new homeless on the street, probably living in a vehicle. Now the city is involved with building safe parking sites. Then the person loses their job due to showing up tired and then loses their vehicle. They are now on the streets. And the city is not involved? Return full house/apartment STVRs to local housing stock. The city needs to be involved. The owner bought the home in a residential, not commercial zone. That means it is for residents, not commerce.