Thursday, March 28, 2024

Dear Mr. Kortman,

On STE's

Posted
This is in response to your letter in the January 6th Leavenworth Echo. I am hopelessly baited.
 
You pointed out the non-regulation at our county clerk’s office for vacation rentals during the first years of your property acquisition and business building. This is a sobering and important testimony. Thank you.
 
Vacation rentals here are finally facing a possible reckoning. You own 4 or 5 properties. You fear you shall be ruined. You have my sympathy. But what shall we do?
Leavenworth has a vacation rental density now of 15.6%. Public policy professionals state that “When the percent of vacation rentals exceeds 5% of the housing inventory, there is likely a negative impact on housing available for purchase or long term rental by residents.”
The teeter has tottered. How can we get it back into balance?
 
Your defense of your industry is persuasive, though some of your points gave me doubt. You say that vacation rentals by their very nature are highly unlikely to fall into the affordable housing or long term rental categories. Yet, in recent years I have witnessed at least 12 single family homes in the Leavenworth area get purchased by investors who converted them quickly into vacation rentals. We have friends who had worked hard to select a buyer who would simply live in their small house. They were lied to. It became a vacation rental within the year.
 
Much as we grieve the loss of affordable housing around here, I am writing on behalf of our community’s housing supply, “affordable” or “not affordable”, however one cares to define these. In 2001, as a single mom, I was able to rent a small cabin up Eagle Creek Rd. for $375 a month, while operating my sole proprietorship as an artisan and working as a waitress. When a house on Benton Street came up for sale at $72,000. I was able to consider purchasing it.
These numbers may seem ridiculous now, but are one example of the quality of life we had when our homes were considered shelters and not investor commodities. Affordable housing around here was a natural occurrence then, not a buzz-word or a contrived concept.
 
Doctors, nurses, teachers and other essential workers by the dozens would love to live in this town where they work. They are forced instead to commute from Wenatchee, as available homes in the Leavenworth area offer them little choice for the above reasons. You infer that these workers can’t afford a certain type of home, but that is not your call.
 
I fear that the era of real estate innocence is now passing. In this area which is now known to be sensitive and stampeded, it is not time for the practice of speculative and investment property pouncing to come into question? We hope to trust people of conscience to begin to recognize such exploitive dealings for what they are, and to consider alternative plans.
 
You spoke of our “neighborhood theory” like it was a failed experiment or another contrived concept. No. Neighborhoods with folks who know each other and who cooperate together are nobody’s theory. They are natural occurrences that we humans have always been drawn
 
to. Even part-time second homeowners who join in neighborhood life can enjoy the benefit of neighbors who will keep an eye on things while they’re away.
 
You claim that Leavenworth needs more lodging than just its hotels to “support the amount of tourism it needs in order to be able to make it.” We can add to this the hundreds of vacation rentals that also have a secure future here. We thrived before the mega trend of whole house rentals to vacation groups exploded. We will do well again when we manage to gradually ease this bloated, clawing brawl back into the bustling, thriving balance that we once had. Our county government and resident groups are working to restore this. The lodging rule adjustments are likely to result in far less cataclysm than what you fear. And is it not balance, Mr. Kortman, that you would also wish for our town?
 
You call on us to save our county and to save tourism. Really? Then find me a parking spot! Tourism here is alive and well, pandemic and all. The county budget, I believe, will pull through.
 
When travelers from all around the world want to be here, and when Seattle considers our small towns to be its playgrounds, where does our obligation to meet infinite demand stop? The presumption of unlimited growth stands out as a most absurd impossibility. It has been said that growth for the sake of growth is the psychology/imperative of a cancer cell or a virus.
 
We are willing, of course, to share our hiking trails, ski areas, commute routes, river float routes and, on a good day, even sometimes parking spots anywhere near to our places of work. But now, and exponentially more often, we are closed out of these places due to over-full parking and the sheer compression of humanity. And when our guests encounter these same let- downs, will they not vote with their feet?
 
When can it be justified that the rights of a community’s residents can be superseded by the rights of their visitors, or the investment goals of a few? We all know that even though something is legal, that doesn’t necessarily make it ethical or moral. Movie plots, philosophers, faith traditions, and ethicists have a lot to say about the above debate, and about the human tendency to worship the calculus of the coffer.
 
Now that you live here, Kelly, we hope to get to know you as a familiar face around town. There’s the farmer’s market, church, school and theatre events, the ski trails, Empty Bowls Project painting days and lots of opportunities to volunteer for Upper Valley MEND.
 
Dawn Kranz
Leavenworth
 

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