Letter: The Vacancy Tax Will Not Help Renters

My husband and I moved to South Lake Tahoe about five years ago from Denver, Colo., for an employment opportunity in town. The rise in the cost of living was immediately apparent and I, like many others, started to pick up part-time side jobs (in addition to my full-time job). My husband is a local electrician and also picks up extra work on the side when he can.

I want to be clear about my values: I’m a progressive, registered Democrat, and a renter. I care deeply about real housing solutions for our community and want to be able to buy a home in Tahoe at some point in the future. It is precisely for these reasons that I am against the Vacancy Tax.

The uncomfortable truth is that this tax has no built-in guarantees that it will do anything at all to improve housing in our community. If you’re a renter like me and you hope that you’ll be able to afford a home if this passes, you’ve been duped by pseudo-progressive-sounding language.

Not one single percent of any money generated by the Vacancy Tax is guaranteed to go towards housing. I’ve been quietly watching from the sidelines as proponents claim that it’s a dedicated fund, all while Councilmember Robbins claims the benefits of the tax are the flexibility wherein one year it can fund roads, another housing, and so on.

Housing is a complicated issue to tackle and it needs dedicated funds. This is not that. What’s worse, even if money was sent to housing element programs, the money is fungible—meaning there’s no guarantee of any actual funding increase.

I don’t support voting for a policy simply because I like the slogan. It’s crucial to peel back the layers and look at the way this policy is written and the ways in which it could be implemented. What are the actual needs of our community and what are the guarantees of effectiveness with this tax? If you take the time to do this, the cracks in the facade become clear as day and everything starts to fall apart.

Ask yourself honestly: Should we place a bet on a piece of legislation with this many cracks even before implementation, or should we find solutions that we know will be successful, like an actual dedicated fund for housing? For example, our City Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) is 12 percent (outside of the tourist core), currently below both El Dorado and Douglas County’s, which sits at 14 percent. If we just leveled ours up to our neighbors’, we could get the exact funding source that the housing crisis needs. All sitting members of the City Council support a TOT increase—they fully supported it last year and directed staff to explore it. That is, until Measure N was placed on the ballot. When that happened, the community support for TOT disappeared, and thus so did the political will for Council. In their February vote, each council member stated they could support TOT in the future when Measure N was no longer a factor.

Those lobbying the Yes on N efforts, Scott Robbins and Nick Speal (current candidate for city council), also advocated against the city’s Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance when first presented, the only existing dedicated housing funding source our city has. If they cared so much about housing, why would they do that?

I know there are many of you in our community who are intrigued by the language of the Vacancy Tax. I was too. But we owe it to ourselves and our neighbors to dig deeper. Sadly, I have watched for months as smart and heartfelt questions have been directed toward the proponents of this tax, only to witness them shying away, twisting facts, or outright ignoring. We need to say no to ineffective legislation and bring real solutions back to the table. Let’s stop wasting precious time and resources.

- Penney Garrett
South Lake Tahoe

Penney Garrett runs the editorial team for an outdoor gear publication and has spent the last three years working at a local ski resort and for a private cheffing company. She is an alum of the Leadership Lake Tahoe program and lives in South Lake Tahoe with her husband Mark and dog Enoki.