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About Cannon Beach gazette. (Cannon Beach, Or.) 1977-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 9, 2015)
October 9, 2015 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com • 5A A no-name house in a quaint village S In one email, Deborah, who ap- parently was getting tired of local streets clogged with summer’s usual array of cars and visitors, wrote to me, “Now I know why you enjoy the quiet months.” At the end of her visit, she sent me another email, thanking me for letting her stay in Cannon Beach for a month. Her friends enjoyed their stay, too, and several wanted to re- turn. “If you ever wanted to, I know you could rent your house out,” Deborah added. It was something I had never thought about, and, frankly, never want to do. I suppose I could name my house a “Forest Fantasy” and market it as being in a quiet neigh- borhood three blocks from Haystack Rock in the quaint village of Cannon Beach. There are a lot of people on the North Coast who have given plen- ty of thought to the idea of renting out their houses to perfect (and, as it turns out, not so perfect) strangers for hundreds of dollars a night and thousands of dollars a month. According its website, VRBO has at least 1,359 vacation rentals on the North Coast from Neskowin to Astoria. Of those, Cannon Beach has 148; Seaside, 238; Gearhart, 82; and Astoria, 13. omehow, we must accom- modate our visitors without destroying the very thing that attracts them here. My beach house doesn’t have a name. Unlike some homes in Cannon Beach, Seaside, Gearhart and oth- er parts of the North Coast, it isn’t known as “White Sands,” or “Ocean 9ista” or even “3uf¿ ns 3erch.” And, unlike those houses, which are all listed with either Airbnb or VRBO (Vacation Rentals By Own- er), my house isn’t for rent, either. Not by the night, the week nor the month. When , spent ¿ ve weeks this summer in John Day, my friend, Deborah, from Bremerton, Wash., stayed at my house. She invited her own friends to visit. They had a great time. She would send emails de- scribing their adventures. A cou- ple of times they drove to a ma- rina south of Wheeler where they bought freshly caught and cooked crab and enjoyed a picnic lunch in the sun. Sometimes — before the local ¿ re ban went into effect — they built a bon¿ re on the beach. They visited Cannon Beach’s farmers market. They shopped in Manzanita and traveled to Asto- ria. The practice of renting out a house in a small town like Cannon Beach or Gearhart has proven so popular that permanent residents who live next to these houses are starting to complain. In Gearhart, where the City Council has spent nearly two years developing an ordinance to reg- ulate vacation rentals, the prob- lem has pretty much gotten out of control, according to residents who must listen to the loud parties, watch the untended garbage À y out of the cans and maneuver around the numerous parked cars over- À owing the streets. Cannon Beach has strict ordi- nances regarding rentals, but with so many visitors in town and so many local homes being advertised on the websites, it’s questionable as to whether the ordinances — especial- ly the one restricting rentals to one reservation every 14 days on homes that aren’t in the city’s rental “lot- tery” — are being enforced. With the popularity of vacation rentals — some allow as many as 10 people per house — come the visi- tors. Of course, that means opportu- nities for local businesses, and that’s good for shops that have struggled during the slow winter months. But, sometimes, there’s too much of a good thing. One Cannon Beach business owner, who has run a popular oper- ation for at least a decade, told me they had to cut back this summer. It wasn’t because of a lack of demand; it was because they couldn’t ¿ nd enough employees. It’s a story I’ve heard many times up and down the North Coast. Find- ing enough staff to work the hours it takes to serve the number of cus- tomers coming into a restaurant, a store or any other establishment in this area is a challenge for most any business owner. Why aren’t there enough people to be hired? Because, in a vacation wonderland, where (VRBO) rent- als average $263 a night in Cannon Beach, $216 in Seaside and $257 in Gearhart, there is little housing left that people who earn an average hourly wage, or even slightly higher, can afford. Homeowners who rent out their houses as vacation rentals say they can’t afford to keep their properties without the ability to offer them up to visitors. The incentive of earning money from a house also requires owners or rental managers to main- tain the house, and this reduces the number of neglected properties in a community. But the problems are occurring far more often with the increasing I MPRESSIONS By NANCY McCARTHY Pretty soon the very thing that attracts visitors may disappear forever. number of vacation rental homes on the market. I don’t know what the solution is; I only know there needs to be some way to balance the need for visitors with the needs of the permanent residents, em- ployees and businesses in our com- munities. Without that balance, pretty soon the very thing that attracts those vis- itors — our “quaint villages” with the quiet beaches cited so often on these vacation rental sites — may disappear forever. Nancy McCarthy is the retired editor of the Seaside Signal and Cannon Beach Gazette. LET TERS Letters from Page 4A our food, attending to our needs during the ceremony and cleanup. They performed magni¿ cently and above the call of duty. We served over 200 din- ners; got the tables, chairs and the Seaside High School cafetorium in good shape Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 26 and 27. The night was a complete success. Thanks to Gearhart Market leaders and crew. The Induction Commit- tee would also like to thank Nike. Mike Burk, Julie Nel- son and their crew led the clean up department after the Seaside High School Hall of Fame induction event. During the ceremony they walked around and made sure that guests had coffee, water, etc. and worked well with Gearhart Market. They always had a smile on their face, asked ques- tions about what they could do next and because of their tremendous help, we were able to get out of there before 9 p.m. Mike and Julie have done a tremendous job of teaching and coaching those young people to perform the way they did. Without them there, it would not have been the successful night that it was. The Seaside Hall of Fame has inducted 127 individuals and 28 teams since it was started in 2001. Stubby Lyons Seaside Water problems are not limited to Cannon Beach This letter address the two- part article “Water Rating Indicate Infrastructure Prob- lem” by Dani Palmer that ran Sept. 29 and 30. We are all concerned about insuring the best wa- ter quality possible in our streams and on our beaches. The Surfrider spot testing for pollution in our streams and beaches may be misleading. The City of Cannon Beach was incorporated in 1957 to build a sanitary sewerage sys- tem to replace existing septic tanks and drain ¿ elds in use. Fortunately there were no combined sewers that con- veyed both storm water and wastewater in the city that sometimes led to continued stream pollution in cities like Astoria and Portland. The original 1958 system and additions in the north end of Cannon Beach and Tolovana Park were planned, constructed and inspected in accordance with Department of Environmental Quality standards. The city was one of the ¿ rst to use rubber gas- ket couplers throughout their system. Sewer lines were in- spected during construction and tested to insure proper construction. All sewers were also water tested for ex¿ ltra- tion by ¿ lling the pipes to a point above the groundwater table and measuring any loss in water. All sewers con- structed passed these tests. The city regularly in- spects, maintains and im- proves our sewer system. This is done by cleaning, visual inspection, TV camer- as, in¿ ltration detection, dye testing, etc. Having served on the Public Works com- mittee, I know that the city continues to look for better detection methods and main- tains long-term records. A long-term data collec- tion and study is needed. 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The corrected letter from Diane Amos and Elizabeth Lorish is included this week. 3301 S. H em lock St. • Tolova n a P a rk 503.436.1 1 30 • M in ors W elcom e “Helping shape the character of Cannon Beach since 1973” M IKE AND C ELINE M C E WAN tamination and would be an asset for future studies. Les Wierson Cannon Beach Loca ted in SO U TH Ca nnon Bea ch B OB M C E W AN C ONSTRUCTION , INC . E XCAVATION • U NDERGROUND U TIITIES R OAD W ORK • F ILL M ATERIAL S ITE P REPARATION • R OCK coast. The City of Cannon Beach and all of us should work with Surfrider to have the Department of Environ- mental Services recognize the statewide coastal prob- lem and how best to iden- tify the real culprits. 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