In his recent op-ed, Jesse Patterson of the League to Save Lake Tahoe wrote, “Tahoe is One of One.” On this, we agree: Lake Tahoe is truly unique. But what sets us apart isn’t just the lake’s beauty—it’s the tangled web of government agencies and “para-regulatory” nonprofits, like the League to Save Lake Tahoe, that have created a quasi-religious regime of regulation. Here, questioning the system is treated as heresy, and the costs—both financial and social—are staggering, yet too often ignored.
I’ve written before about the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA), which began as a check on runaway development but has since evolved into an entity wielding pseudo-tax, police, and judicial powers. Alongside it, the City of South Lake Tahoe has embraced a culture of “over-planning,” never missing a chance to add another layer of rules and regulations, and rarely, if ever, liberalizing them. The League to Save Lake Tahoe, with its catchy slogan, has become a powerful gatekeeper, not just a guardian, frequently using lawsuits and policy papers to stall or block projects, driving up costs and delays. Their influence is outsized, their accountability minimal, and their property ownership near zero.
In most of America, owning property means you can reasonably improve, maintain, or develop it. Not in the Tahoe Basin. Here, homeowners must navigate a maze of permits just to fix a deck or remove a hazardous tree. Adding a bedroom or garage? That’s a bureaucratic odyssey, dependent on the whims of officials and the depth of your pockets for consultants and lawyers.
I think we can all agree that virtually anything is better than a dilapidated gas station at one of the busiest intersections in the City, but the Asters are approaching five years to transform the former Runnel’s site, and still don’t have final building permits. It will likely take over a decade to build a new seismically safe hospital (on the site of a former casino!), most of that time consumed by permitting and environmental studies that will never be thorough enough. The “hole in the ground” near Stateline is celebrating 20 years of life this year, partly due to economic factors, but largely driven by interminable planning processes across multiple layers of government. This is not the American norm, and it doesn’t have to be this way to preserve and protect the Lake.
Small businesses fare no better. Want to swap out a sign, add a couple of tables, or expand your patio? Prepare for environmental studies, mitigation fees, and the constant threat of litigation. The cost of compliance is measured not just in dollars, but in vacant buildings, years of stalled progress, and missed opportunities to serve our community.
Affordable housing is the issue everyone claims to care about. Yet, after years of studies and tens of millions spent, the result is a few hundred subsidized units built at three times the private market rate and serving only a small fraction of the need. The solution is clear: developers can only build in three dimensions – they need greater density either in the form of height or coverage throughout the Basin to have the possibility of building enough homes for our workforce. But instead, we’ve allowed the TRPA and “para-regulators” like the League to enforce a regime that keeps new housing scarce (and therefore expensive), relegating workers to aging motels or overcrowded rentals. Studying the issue ad nauseum, workshopping it for decades, filing lawsuits, and hoping for a different result is not a viable strategy, yet it’s the one we’ve allowed to perpetuate through this “one of one” system.
And what do we have to show for all this sacrifice of living conditions, jobs, community fabric, and economic vibrancy? After spending billions on clarity initiatives since 1997, the lake’s transparency has improved by just one foot. I guess one could argue it would have been worse; but that’s a tough position to take given the immense costs. It also ignores the technological improvements made and demonstrated elsewhere in the last four decades to protect the environment while also meeting the demands of the people who live here.
The human cost of these policies is staggering. Our communities are largely comprised of retirees and second-home owners, while young families and workers—the backbone of our economy—are priced out or forced into substandard housing, or out of the Basin entirely. We are left with a divided community: wealthy part-timers on one side, struggling workers on the other, and a disappearing middle class. The problem will only get worse with time as our largely 1960s and 1970s-era housing and commercial buildings continue to age without any realistic plan for revitalization or redevelopment – perpetuated and enforced by this “one of one” regime.
The last thing Tahoe needs is more gatekeeping, more litigation, more consultants producing more studies, more unchecked enforcement power for TRPA, and more “para-regulation” through specious lawsuits. This “one of one” system of government and “para-regulators” with outsized influence has created an environment where the only growth industries are government and lawsuits – nice work if you can get it. It is also profoundly un-American (if not unconstitutional) in so many ways, with one largely unelected, unrepresentative agency possessing legislative, executive and judicial authorities. If we want to clean up something, let’s start there.
-Seth Dallob, South Lake Tahoe
In his role as COO of NexGen Housing Partners, Seth Dallob helped build hundreds of market-rate and market-financed workforce housing units. He and his wife are full-time South Lake Tahoe residents.