Vacation rentals have created problems in neighborhoods such as Cove Beach.

Clatsop County commissioners say they want more information before they vote on where vacation rentals should be allowed in unincorporated areas, raising the possibility that a moratorium could be extended.

On Wednesday, the county Board of Commissioners held first readings of two ordinances that would address vacation rentals. One deals with where the development code should explicitly permit rentals, the other with county code standards for operating them.

Cities on the North Coast have adopted rules restricting short-term rentals. But the county has not yet called them out as an allowable use in areas other than Arch Cape.

Rentals of 30 or fewer days can help drive tourism and bring in lodging tax dollars. They have also led to strife in residential neighborhoods due to some vacationers’ behavior. Coastal communities must weigh the economic benefits of attracting visitors against the harm incurred when people without a stake in the communities show up, make noise, leave trash, park thoughtlessly, act rudely and leave.

A 2018 county ordinance addressed safety and livability issues surrounding short-term rentals. But the county has not taken the step of adding references to rentals in development code zones where many already operate.

Before the county commissioners on Wednesday were two zoning recommendations.

County staff recommended making short-term rentals an allowable use in 16 zones: four commercial, 12 residential.

Last month, the Planning Commission, in a divided vote, scaled back the staff’s vision, recommending short-term rentals in only the four commercial zones and two multifamily residential zones. This move would prohibit vacation rentals in the other residential zones and lead to a phaseout of scores of vacation rentals as owners can’t get their permits renewed. Of more than 180 vacation rentals operating in unincorporated areas, all but 77 would be eliminated, staff said.

The Planning Commission’s recommendation would also lead to a nearly $500,000 loss in lodging taxes, county staff estimated.

In addition, the Planning Commission recommended that all vacation rentals operate under a conditional use. This would involve a public notice, a public hearing and other measures that would cost the county thousands more. Staff recommended that these costs be passed onto rental applicants.

‘A common occurrence’

At the hearing Wednesday, county commissioners heard views that have been expressed in various forms at numerous town halls and meetings since late 2019.

Reba Owen, of Cove Beach, held up photos of recently occupied short-term rental sites.

“The renters are gone, but the garbage is not,” Owen said. “This is a common occurrence that the residents have to put up with.”

In her neighborhood, zoned Coastal Residential, vacation rentals compose about a third of the housing. Cove Beach residents have pushed to remove short-term rentals — which Owen and her neighbors have called “mini hotels” — from residential zones.

“The full-time residents are so tired of the county being unwilling to support the residential zone at Cove Beach … ,” Owen said.

Monica Wellington, a Banks resident who with her husband owns a vacation rental in the Sunset Beach area, said the Planning Commission based its recommendations too heavily on the concerns of the Cove Beach contingent.

“We don’t believe that’s a fair representation of the entire community of short-term rental owners,” Wellington said.

She agreed that a neighborhood where a third of homes are vacation rentals has too high a proportion, and said she would support a cap on the number of rentals in a given zone. “But what we don’t want to do is craft a solution that doesn’t take all stakeholders into account, and without research,” she said. “It needs to be an objective decision.”

Wellington and other rental owners believe neighbor complaints should be dealt with through operating standards. The county is looking to revise standards to address common complaints — such as fires, litter, speed limits and quiet hours — as well as permit transfers and occupancy limits. (Arch Cape has its own operating standards, which the county may move from the development code to the county code.)

A 2019 countywide housing study found that the county had adequate housing stock, but that much of the supply is used for second homes and short-term rentals.

Commissioner Lianne Thompson and Commissioner John Toyooka say they want more data on how vacation rentals impact the region’s housing — its prices and availability — before they vote.

Toyooka said vacation rentals may play a role in housing prices and housing scarcity, but he suspects the impact is less than what has been alleged. Housing prices have also skyrocketed due to rising material and labor costs, he pointed out. And many homes that function as short-term rentals, he said, are high-value homes — such as those with oceanfront views — not homes considered affordable.

‘It’s a difficult decision’

Commissioner Pamela Wev said she is more concerned about how rentals affect the quality of life in neighborhoods. “I think that that’s what is truly important here,” she said. She worries about a “one-size-fits-all” ordinance that treats Clatsop Plains the same as, say, Brownsmead.

She said two weeks — when a moratorium on new vacation rental licenses is set to expire — may not enough time for her to decide how to vote on the issue.

“This is an ordinance that has too many questions, too much fraught detail, for me to ever consider passing it,” she said, “and I think that we have a responsibility as a county commission to do a lot more learning and strategizing about what we do with this ordinance in the future.”

Thompson and Wev also said they favor extending the moratorium while county staff works to gather more information.

Commissioner Courtney Bangs took a different view. She argued that, by adding references to short-term rentals in development code zones where rentals already exist, the county is addressing an oversight — reconciling the code with the county’s practices.

“I don’t feel we can keep indefinitely extending out a moratorium … It’s a difficult decision, but I feel like we’re at a point where it needs to be made,” Bangs said.

The commissioners will meet again to discuss the issue on April 27, the day before the moratorium is set to expire.