Vacation rentals under review in Sisters

At the request of the Sisters City Council, the Sisters Planning Commission is currently reviewing code regarding vacation rentals in town.

There are currently 39 permitted vacation rentals in town, which amounts to about 3 percent of the 1,300 residential dwelling units in the city. A vacation rental is considered a short-term dwelling unit that is rented out for 30 or less consecutive days. With the upsurge in Air BnB and VRBO-type rentals everywhere, the Council is looking for recommendations regarding the regulation of vacation rentals to help maintain the livability of the community and avoid or mitigate negative impacts.

There are currently local renters who are losing their housing due to long-term rental units being converted by their owners to short-term units, impacting an already tight rental market here in Sisters.

Although there are currently only 39 identified vacation rentals, 25 percent of those have come on line in 2017. There may also be units that are not known to the City. Based on what has been occurring in other small towns in the U.S., the Council would like to get out in front of the trend before there are possible negative impacts on the community.

City Manager Brant Kucera, who came from another tourist town, Cannon Beach, cautioned the Planning Commission: "It is better to get commonplace regulations in place now, so you don't have to come up with draconian measures to correct a negative situation."

Regulating how someone makes use of their private property can be difficult. The Planning Commission will be looking at viable ways to cap the number of vacation rentals so that permanent full-time residents don't end up feeling they have lost their sense of community within their neighborhoods.

Other locales facing this issue, like Bend, have utilized a variety of regulations. In most towns, the short-term rental permit doesn't transfer with the sale of the property. Some limit the total number of units allowed; others set the limit at a certain percentage of total housing units. Bend requires 250-foot minimums between units to avoid saturation in one area. In some towns, the unit must have someone living onsite. The Planning Commission will take a look at all options, including the price of the short-term permit, to determine what might be best for Sisters.

The City does collect transient room tax from the short-term rentals, which amounted to $65,000 last year, compared to $475,000 from Sisters lodging establishments. Currently, there are 236 lodging units, meaning there is one short-term vacation rental for every six lodging units.

There will be a public hearing on the matter of vacation rentals before any new regulations are passed by City Council.