Tag: Personal

I’ve lived in a few places in San Diego over the last 20 years; 4 relatively close to the coast and 3 further inland. In that time, I had air conditioning in the places inland, but rarely used it. In fact, when we lived 20 minutes more inland than we do now, I don’t recall turning on our A/C for the first few years we lived there; we used ceiling fans and just dealt with the warmer days. So when we bought our house and remodeled it, adding A/C didn’t even cross my mind. We’re pretty close to the coast, and I figured we’d get a coastal breeze. Within the first year of living here, I knew that this was a bad decision. It turns out that last year was the hottest year on record in San Diego with 12 days over 90 degrees at the airport whereas there are normally 1-2 days over 90 degrees. I thought maybe I had become a wimp and couldn’t take the heat (well, that still may be true), but the facts confirmed that I wasn’t completely crazy.

So, at the beginning of this year, I had air conditioning installed. It was pretty painless as we already had duct work, a thermostat and a place to put a compressor. Since the installation, we’ve turned it on 3 times. Twice last week because the humidity was so high and one of the days, it rained which required us to close our windows (it was well over 80 degrees outside so closing up the house rapidly increased the house temperature). I really hate to use air conditioning as it is a dry air and it isn’t cheap, but with outside temperatures increasing, this was a wise decision. We still use ceiling fans as much as possible, but knowing that we have this backup just makes our house even more comfortable.

When we were remodeling our house, we had to pick everything, including the kitchen sink! My wife and I went shopping for a kitchen faucet months before it was ready to be installed so that we could get it ordered and get it out of the way. We wanted a detachable sprayer and wanted it in stainless steel. We went to our local Pacific Sales and looked at all the kitchen faucets (and there were a ton). The one feature we hated on just about all of them was that the detachable spray heads were made out of plastic while the rest of the faucet was made out of stainless steel (or at least some type of metal). The plastic would chip, change color or just not hold up based on past experience. Even though many consumer faucets carry a lifetime warranty, I didn’t want to deal with that (been there, done that).

We stumbled across the Brizo Solna (made by Delta) and thought that the hidden spray head was great as the plastic for the spray head wouldn’t been seen. We ordered it and then picked it up a few weeks later (or so). The plumber installed it when we were ready and that was that. A few days after it was installed (the plumber was still around doing something), I asked the plumber why the spray head wasn’t flush and didn’t retract well and he said it had to do with the weight on the hose and the position of the pipes. Oh well, I guessed I’d have to live with it even though it wasn’t quite a clean look.

A few months ago, I discovered that if I pushed the spray head all the way up into the faucet it would stay. It seemed a little clunky, but it was better than what we had before. This evening, I noticed that the spray head was no longer staying, so I started pushing on a tab to see what would happen and discovered that the MagneDock® magnet was stuck to the spray head when it should have been in the faucet.

Now things were starting to make sense; the MagneDock® piece was never seated properly and I had to get it back in place. I took the neck of the faucet off and the spray head. I then started pushing the magnet back in place. I pushed it down with the handle of a pair of pliers and presto, it stuck. I tried the spray head and it clicked into place; I pulled it off and tried again. Holy cow, I had been living with this problem for 1.5 years and never even thought of investigating it.

So after I put everything back together, I tried again and just like magic, the spray head clicked back into place. Looking at the assembly instructions, it indicated that the magnet was part of the neck, but that it wasn’t a separate piece. I almost feel like an idiot that I didn’t figure this out for so long, but the good news is that I figured it out and as pleased as punch that I feel like I have a new faucet!

Today marks a kind of sad day for me; I no longer feel safe in my own home. The short term vacation rental next door has changed my whole sense of safety and security. The owner/operator has decided that money matters more than the neighborhood and rents it out to whoever will pay the asking price. This weekend it was a group of students on spring break. They have no respect for the neighborhood and have been loud. Last night we called the police and the noise quieted down; this morning, we saw them smoking pot in the backyard (they can see into our backyard and we can see into their backyard). Police responded and at least one of them had a medical marijuana card, so there was nothing the police could do. (Apparently police no longer deal with misdemeanor drug possession.)

As I was walking the dog, I got a frantic call from my wife that some guy named Rob was banging on our door demanding to come in. I turned around and hurried back. When I got home, I went inside and then came out again only to see “Rob” walking out from our side yard. I yelled at him and told him to get off our property. I saw him walk down the street the wrong way (not towards the rental) and instantly knew he was drunk (can you say public drunkenness?). I then walked down the street to see where he was going next. He went to my neighbor’s house and then the next neighbor trying to get in. I walked back and stopped in front of my neighbor’s house; I saw him again bang on my neighbor’s door (who wasn’t home) and Rob insisted that he was renting the place. I told him he wasn’t and to get off the property. (I sent that neighbor a picture of Rob on his property.)

My wife was on hold with the police for 11 minutes and when she finally got through, the dispatcher wouldn’t send officers because the guy was no longer on our property and was inside a residence.

The owners/operators talk about this being managed by “bad apples”; the problem is that some of the people turning to vacation rentals as mini-hotels (just the properties that are used exclusively for short term vacation rentals) are in it only for the money. If they weren’t, they’d be renting out the properties on a long term basis.

While the city council’s Smart Growth and Land Use Committee is bringing this up on April 22nd, I fear that anything they decide to do will be reactionary and allow this behavior to continue. If the police can’t respond fast enough (they are already under staffed), how can these problems be witnessed and documented? It becomes a case of neighbor saying one thing and no one listening. (Video evidence doesn’t appear to count in this case.)

Change needs to happen now; these mini-hotels have to go. If nothing is done about these, what are my options to keeping my sanity? Move? Where do I go? If I move, I kick the problem down the road to my nice neighbors. How many more days/nights will I have to put up with this? Will someone knock on my door at 3 am and scare the crap out of me? Will some drunk person vandalize my house? Every weekend I fear what will be coming next; this is a horrible way to live.

To all those that claim property rights and that people should be able to do what they want with their properties, live next to a mini-hotel for awhile and feel what it is like to have no idea if the renters will be respectful or you’ll have to call the police.

(As a side note, I hate to call the police, but my options are limited. My neighbor only wants to do short term rentals and there is no way that he can (or will) vet everyone that stays. One person rents and brings 10 friends.)

As many people who follow my blog know, I’m fighting a battle against short term vacation rentals since my neighbor decided to kick out a family and turn his property into a mini-hotel with people staying for a few days at a time. I’ve been scouring local regulations and reading everything I can about this topic.

Last week I spoke with a few attorneys about my legal options and listened to what they had to say. After these meetings as well as having another group of transients next door (with 1 call to the police), I think I have figured out my major complaint with the short term rentals. That complaint is that the property next door is being used as a mini-hotel and isn’t in the spirit of a neighborhood. Some people who support vacation rentals argue that they should be able to rent out their houses when they go on vacation to earn some extra money. While I don’t plan on doing this myself, I realize that I don’t have a huge problem with this if it is only done occasionally and not as a primary use of the property.

So while some may think I’ve softened my position on vacation rentals, I’m really just fine tuning it in a way such that what I want has a chance of being addressed by the city council. Taking a hard line stance completely banning vacation rentals has a very tough time passing given that the city collects tax revenue from visitors staying in these properties.

My new proposal is:

In order to promote neighborhood quality, character, and livability, the SDMC should be amended to allow short term rentals in RS zones with a minimum stay of 7 days only as an accessory use of a property. As an accessory use of the property, the owner must reside in the property for at least 10 months of the year.

This would address my needs of not having a mini-hotel next door and would let home owners earn extra cash. What it would do is prevent people from turning neighborhoods into rows and rows of mini-hotels. The proposal is similar to San Francisco’s new ordinance about rentals, but San Francisco’s ordinance doesn’t apply to single family residences.

The good news is that the city council’s subcommittee on smart growth and land use is taking up vacation rentals at its April 22nd meeting. You can submit feedback to Ryan Purdy by March 2nd. While I have no idea what will happen, the fact that the subcommittee is looking into this is a step in the right direction.

Now that I’ve started my fight against vacation rentals, I’ve been trying to get a meeting with my city council representative, Lorie Zapf. At a recent Town Council meeting, she indicated that she was going to setup “office hours” where the public could arrange a time to speak with her. I haven’t heard any more about this and have asked via email if I could setup a meeting. While I was down at city hall today, I decided to see if I could schedule a meeting in person as I’m impatient and haven’t heard back to my email.

I went to the 10th floor of city hall, walked out of the elevator to a nondescript waiting area with a lady behind a window. The waiting area was uninviting and all the doors around said “authorized personnel only”. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this seemed like an experience worse than a doctor’s office. I asked the lady behind the window if I could get a meeting and she called back to someone and asked me to wait.

One of the councilwoman’s people came out, asked where I lived and then went back to see if the area rep could meet with me. She came back, said he was busy and took my name, email address and phone number to setup a meeting. I’ve previously sent email and haven’t heard back, so maybe my physical presence downtown today might change that.

While I understand that we live in a representative democracy, it would be nice if I could express my concerns in person to the person that represents me. I’ve never been particularly interested in politics as it didn’t really affect me. Hopefully I can get a meeting with someone from my councilwoman’s office and plead my case.

In my battle to limit vacation rentals, those that are either for them or not opposed to them keep claiming “property rights” such that the owner of a piece of property can do whatever he or she wants with the property. This is a very naïve view of the world and factually untrue in our modern society. We live in a society of laws and regulations which dictate what a person can and cannot do with property he or she owns.

For instance, while I own my house and property under it (OK, the bank owns part of it right now), I can’t build a farm on it, I can’t park cars in my front yard, I can’t build a gas station on it, I can’t build onto it without a permit, I can’t tear down my house and build condos (it is zoned as single family residential), etc.

So for anyone to claim that vacation rentals are a property right is mistaken. While the interpretation of the current regulations (I saw interpretation because the city attorney of San Diego has a different view on what constitutes a business than others do) doesn’t prohibit them, property rights doesn’t guarantee that they are allowed.

Some may be asking why I’m so interested in trash regulations. It’s quite simple, if the city won’t regulate vacation rentals, the more I can find and do to make vacation rentals less profitable, the more likely the vacation rental next door will go away.

Today I received confirmation that my analysis of trash regulations with respect to vacation rentals was correct. However, there are a number of problems in enforcing it:

• Terminating trash collection for those with a Transient Occupancy Registration Certificate unfairly rewards those that don’t have the certificate and haven’t been operating within the law. That’s a pretty poor excuse. What I’d suggest is work with the city treasurer to enforce the TOT registration by issuing a subpoena to AirBnB, VRBO.com, etc. for records of all listings in the city. Then overlay that data with the registered ones and cite those without the certificate (and collect back tax). In addition, encourage neighbors to report vacation rentals. I’d be more than happy to work on data crunching to assist in finding people skirting the law.

• If the city picks up the cans from the vacation rentals, nothing is stopping the owner from going to Home Depot, purchasing a trash can for automated collection and using it. The drivers don’t know who is supposed to get service and who isn’t. Again, this is an excuse. If the trash vehicles are equipped with GPS systems, work with the vendor to integrate a POI system that would alert the driver of properties to skip. If the vehicles aren’t equipped with GPS systems, it is about time they were as studies have shown that fleet vehicles like this can improve fuel economy with more efficient routes guided by GPS.

• For areas like Mission Beach where the houses are rented out most of the year to students 9 months of the year and 3 months of the year used as vacation rentals, would the city stop and start service? Look at the regulations; they don’t say that a “transient occupancy facility” has to be one the entire year. So, if it is ever used as a vacation rental, stop trash collection completely.

• If vacation rental owners have to get private trash service, there will be a big environmental impact of having additional trash vehicles on the street. Trash trucks not only have an environmental impact, they do numbers on the streets. I don’t have a solution for this problem.

• How does this get enforced? That’s another easy one to answer. Encourage neighbors to report their neighbors; offer rewards under whistleblower statutes using money from fines. I’m sure neighbors would be more than happy to report vacation rentals next door.

Basically unless the Environmental Services Department is instructed to enforce the regulations by the mayor, they won’t do anything. I’ve sent a letter to the mayor and city attorney requesting that the trash service be discontinued for my neighbor; that doesn’t help anyone else, but it is a start. Will I get a response from the mayor? I have no idea.

Can I sue the city to get them to enforce the current regulations? I have no idea and I’d need an attorney to do pro-bono work for me as I can see the cost going up pretty quickly.