Dear Town Council,
Here are some thoughts regarding the proposal to update the Residential and Short Term Rental Definitions and Requirements by changing the definition of short term rental to include any rental of less than 90 days:
1) The Status Quo should have significant weight. In contemplating changing the status quo regulatory environment that homeowners depend on there is a heavy burden on Council to make the case for why removing a long held right from property owners is justified and that adverse consequences have been thoroughly examined. Without clear evidence that this change will preserve worker housing it seems like a purely punitive move. The ability to rent month to month is a convention that has existed in Jackson Hole and throughout the country since our founding. Removing that right is a radical proposition.
2) A Local worker exemption is a good idea. Skyrocketing property taxes are putting local working class homeowners in a bind, and they may need to rent out their houses periodically to avoid being forced to sell, so accommodating that in updated regulations is good. But I’m concerned this would necessitate the intervention of a government bureaucracy designed to determine who is a remote worker, who is a working local, or who is retired. This would be invasive and put this class of formerly unencumbered, free market homeowners into the “system” as if they were government subsidized homeowners. Is this a glimpse of our future? The Town taking control of our property, and then allowing us some of our rights back via an appointed board that decides if we are working or retired, or allowed to leave on vacation, in order to determine if we are eligible to rent out our house or not? Will older residents be incentivized to leave the workforce in order to qualify for the exemption?
3) What is the limiting principle? If the Town can claim the power to remove the traditional norm of month to month rental, can the Town go beyond the 90 days proposed and raise the minimum to 180 days or eliminate the ability to rent completely? Can the Town dictate who free market homeowners can rent to or sell to? This could be the continuation of a dangerous trend of overreach by the Town. Middle class homeowners seem to be targeted by the Town to have their property rights limited and their property values suppressed for the benefit of the wealthy employer class. Is this a slippery slope?
4) Tenants and landlords in the working class housing market need the option of month to month leases. Month to month leasing is a very useful option for landlords with working class tenants. Removing that option will cause the working class rental market to function less efficiently, and will undermine Town’s efforts to provide more worker housing.
5) This is government mandated wealth transfer from the less affluent to the more affluent.
In general there is already a dramatic economic divide between property owners in the non-Lodging Overlay parts of Town, and those who own properties in the Lodging Overlay and out in the County. Singling out the already restricted property owners of Town for further restriction while property owners in the Overlay and in the rest of the County are allowed to continue to rent short term without interference is a further transfer of wealth from an area of Town that has the highest density of working class homeowners to the Lodging Overlay and the County where the property owners are the most affluent. You are building a deeper moat around the property values of the wealthy at the expense of the less affluent. Is that your intention?
Any restriction on the ability to rent housing in the working class neighborhoods of Town should be accompanied by a reduction in the ability to rent in the Lodging Overlay and in the County at large. I support restricting growth and limiting the commercialization of Jackson Hole across the board. If you only target radical restrictions on the one area of the valley with the highest density of working class homeowners you will be complicit in a government decreed wealth transfer from the less affluent to the most affluent.
Best Regards,
Judd Grossman
50 Rancher St.