*Take Action*
The FINAL vote to adopt Short Term Rental Regulations in Unincorporated Marin goes before the Coastal Commission on Thursday April 11th. The “Access Coalition” has flooded the Commission with opposition letters making cynical, inaccurate claims, such as “these regulations will result in the greatest loss of public access in the history of the state of California”.
We need your help to counter these false claims with reality! The STR regulations do not limit visitor access: they help to address the recent conversion of long-term housing into STRs and the impact that the doubling of STRs between 2018-2023 has had on the West Marin community schools, first responders, businesses.
Please, take 5 minutes to send a letter to the California Coastal Commission, asking them to approve the LCP Amendment to adopt our new STR rules.
Here's an email template, and you can click here to send the letter directly, but PLEASE ADD A PERSONAL NOTE ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE. Your personalization makes a big difference in the impact of the letter.
Go here to learn more about the documents in the record, or sign-up now to speak on April 11th (either in-person or via Zoom).
Houses should be homes.
CONCERNED ABOUT THE LACK OF HOUSING IN WEST MARIN? West Marin Residents for Housing (WMRFH) is an all-volunteer group of West Marin residents, business people and civically active community members dedicated to supporting affordable and accessible housing. We are concerned that Short Term Rentals (STRs) are not being sufficiently or fairly regulated in a way that creates balance in our West Marin communities. The positions we advocate below are representative of the many hundreds of residents, including teachers, fire fighters, business owners, and organizational leaders, who have testified to the negative impact that the doubling of STRs between 2018 and 2023, from 480 to 873, has had on our communities’ ability to function. The negative impacts of STRs on available housing have been well documented in the County’s plan to address the housing crisis: the Marin Housing Element.
In November, 2023, the Marin County Planning Commission listened to this community concern and approved a plan to gradually reduce the number of STRs back to 2018 numbers. The Board of Supervisors rejected this rejection in favor of the County Staff recommendations to allow current numbers of operators to continue, modest reductions to pre-moratorium numbers in some West Marin towns, but increases allowed in Dillon Beach and Seadrift.
Our Top Level Goals:
- Achieve a fair balance between visitor accommodations and long-term housing Prioritize licensing for properties hosted by primary residents
- License only “natural” persons (no corporations)
- Add incentives to encourage owners to shift from short-term to long-term rentals.
- Not allow an operator to hold more than one STR license
We believe that residential neighborhoods should be lived in, not monetized
We acknowledge that STRs, coupled with commercially licensed hotels and motels, provide important access for coastal visitors. Yet over the past decade, we have seen our residential neighborhoods become progressively “hollowed out” by the acceleration and commercialization of STR activity.
STRs have contributed to the escalating real estate prices, to speculation by property investors and to the decreasing availability of full-time rentals for local workers, families and seniors. Indeed, the California Coastal Commission has “recognized a need to restrict STRs in some coastal communities where evidence showed that the STR market is having impacts on coastal resources, or even was significantly impacting the availability of housing."
Other communities throughout California and around the Country have enacted much stricter regulations that have been effective and have withstood legal challenges. It's time for Marin County to do the same.
For more detail, read our STR Position Paper
(DOWNLOAD PDF)
