Want a coveted vacation rental license in Yachats?
How lucky do you feel?
The Yachats City Council has approved a plan for a vacation rental license waiting list and lottery to choose who might get one – once the city drops below a 125-license limit, likely later this year.
Worried about the growing number of vacation rentals in Yachats, the city in October 2017instituted a two-year pilot program with a 125-license limit. Last year, after months of debate and discussion, the council extended the limitation indefinitely.
When the limit went into effect there were more than 140 licenses.
The number of licenses are slowly dropping because some people have simply surrendered theirs and because they do not transfer to new owners when a property is sold.
As of January there were 129 active licenses, according to the city.
Last week, the City Council set up a mechanism to stage a lottery once new licenses become available. Here’s how it will work:
- Using the current vacation rental license application on the city’s website, people have a 90-day window to apply for a license. There is a non-refundable $25 fee.
- At the end of the 90-day window, there will be some kind of lottery – the city is not yet sure how — to determine the ranking of applications – No.1, No. 2, No. 3, etc. for each of the qualified applications.
- Once there is a license available, it would be offered to the first person on the waiting list and they would have five days to accept or they would forfeit their space in line.
- Once the list has been ranked by the lottery any later application would be added to the end of the list on a first-come, first-served, basis.
