Short-term rental work session set in Gearhart

Published 5:29 am Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Seaside Signal

Residents who opposed bans on short-term rentals added their voices to the City Council discussion in Gearhart. While previous sessions focused on complaints of noise, overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and limited parking, last week’s meeting featured remarks from local homeowners who see no need for short-term rental regulations.

Kathy Schroeder of South Marion Avenue said Gearhart was originally conceived as a rental community.

“It’s very nice that permanent residents have chosen to make this their home.” she said. “But most of the homes that were built on Marion Avenue 100 years ago were built to be summer shacks. They were not permanent residences. I don’t want the current population to be recategorizing the community differently from what it was created as.”

Gearhart’s Jim Whittemore sought a rationale for potential regulation. “What’s the end game?” he asked councilors. “Are you trying to determine if you want short-term rentals? If they’re necessary? If they’re wanted by the residents? I want to know, what is your thinking?”

“We’re attempting to come up with a fair and equitable system, the way they’re doing it in Cannon Beach, Manzanita and Seaside,” Mayor Dianne Widdop said. “With some guidelines.”

Many at the standing-room-only meeting picked up where an August meeting left off, with complaints about noise, overcrowding and litter at short-term rental properties.

Gearhart’s John Dudley told councilors one vacation rental home “packs as many people as possible in the house, almost wall-to-wall beds.”

“Short-term rentals are a big problem for me,” Wilson Mark of North Cottage Avenue said. “Different people are living next door to me every few days. Sometimes large groups of people. Our property value is going down.”

Mark asked residents and the City Council to speed the regulation process. He cited an ordinance from 1994 recognizing the importance of the city’s residential neighborhoods and the need to protect them from “the negative aspects of transient rentals of property.”

“To me, we already have this policy,” Mark said. “We have the framework for something that could work.”

“There are a few problems that people have with their neighbors,” Schroeder replied. “In other communities, people talk to their neighbors and solve them that way instead of instituting regulations that affect the entire neighborhood.”

“It seems you are predisposed to come up with short-term regulations,” Whittemore added. “Is that where we’re at?”

“Something needs to be done,” Widdop said. “We need to work on it, and work on it now.”

The process will likely be divided between the Planning Commission and the City Council, she said.

A City Council work session is scheduled at Gearhart City Hall in October.