A family of four in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Europe, Asia, or elsewhere planning a vacation in the Tahoe basin can choose from more than 5,000 licensed short-term rental (STR) listings and likely many more that are unlicensed. Yet a family of four seeking a long-term rental might be lucky to find a few listings—most unaffordable as demand dwarfs supply.

Contrary to claims from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA), the Tahoe basin does not have a dire shortage of housing units. What it does have is a shortage of housing units available to residents who seek to live and work here. The TRPA, a federally and bi-state-funded planning body originally formed to protect Lake Tahoe and its surrounding environment, could go far in remedying this housing imbalance by reversing an amendment it put in place in March 2004. It legitimized single and multiple family dwellings as short-term or vacation rentals despite being widely recognized as business uses.

TRPA then punted to counties and permitted them to declare STRs “a residential use,” violating previous long-standing local residential zoning and CC&Rs so counties could collect transient occupancy (TOT) tax. This tax collection merely shifted from basin hotels to residential neighborhoods as STRs poach customers, contributing to some Tahoe lodging establishments losing or going out of business.

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A proliferation of STRs also reset the housing market fueling greater competition for the already built housing stock. Younger Tahoe residents struggle to find housing. Aaron Vanderbilt noted in a public comment: STR ordinances should not favor or “be for those trying to keep a second, third, fourth, etc. vacation home when so many can’t even afford a single home. There is an affordable housing crisis. It is insulting to allow STRs as they currently exist while we have this crisis.”

Washoe county, for example, has covered the annual STR program shortfall – about $259,000 – from its general fund. So, taxpayers in Washoe county currently subsidize STR owners’ business models.

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In defense of STRs, some TRPA board members continue to argue that “Tahoe has always had vacation rentals.” True, but times have changed. Wide-reaching online platforms turbocharged the STR business advertising not just locally, but internationally starting in 2007. On the strength of ‘Destination Marketing’ initiatives boosted by STR companies, Tahoe visitor numbers soared from two million in 2004 to 25 million a year in recent years.

To put that number in perspective, the 207,000-acre Tahoe basin now gets two times more visitors than America’s most visited national park, the 522,419-acre Great Smoky Mountains National Park. At the behest of developers and non-profits funded to write up reports that benefit business interests, TRPA is poised to set aside its commitment to protecting the lake, wildlife habitats, and scenic quality among other conservation efforts.

On December 13, the TRPA staff and Regional Plan Implementation Committee will recommend approval of buildings 65′ in height inside town centers, 53′ in height anywhere there is multi-family zoning, unlimited density, 100% land coverage and no required parking if there is deed restricted housing. (Enforcement of deed restrictions is notoriously lacking.) Further, there is no income cap on “achievable” deed restricted housing. Just self-report you work in the area 30 hours a week no matter how much money you earn. How does that help low-income service workers?

These draconian amendments serve developers plain and simple. Ironically, TRPA, once the Basin’s environmental watchdog, is advancing these aggressive amendments without undertaking detailed environmental analysis to gauge the cumulative impacts on traffic, infrastructure, and public safety (wildfire risk and evacuation). Instead, TRPA is employing its often-used Initial Environmental Checklist that flows from its 2012 Regional Plan Update’s Environmental Impact Study. Incredibly, it lists almost every environmental factor tied to these new amendments as having “no impacts.”

Noticeably absent in TRPA’s proposed amendments are basin-wide STR limits. This would make an immediate improvement in housing availability. The experience in South Lake with Measure T is that 10-15% of STRs have so far converted to long-term rentals — a substantial percentage. Back of the envelope math tells us a similar measure, basin-wide, would yield 500 to 1,000 housing units. The latter number exceeds the housing target set by TRPA’s amendments. And this in a matter of months not years without moving dirt, tearing down and forever altering town centers, providing tax incentives or public subsidies, or requiring costly changes to infrastructure. This is low-hanging fruit.

Hundreds of communities nationwide have already capped or restricted STRs, including in Airbnb’s corporate home of San Francisco where only permanent residents are allowed be STR hosts.

I would wager the vast majority of Tahoe residents — particularly those not associated with commercial development, the real estate business or their lobbyists and attorneys — oppose the proposed plan amendments. If TRPA held a public referendum of Tahoe registered voters it would fail. This is not “NIMBYism.” Concerns about increased population density and increased demands on the Tahoe basin’s infrastructure, fragile environment, and public safety (wildfire risk and evacuation) are legitimate.

Write to TRPA (publiccomment@trpa.gov) and ask that it go back to first principles: Protect the Lake and basin; prioritize housing for use by residents and local workers without forever urbanizing our rural town centers.

If TRPA is serious about addressing workforce housing it must act on STRs, regardless of any development or redevelopment initiatives it pursues.