To the editor:
It isn’t often that voters have an opportunity to vote in the affirmative on a ballot measure, but that chance has arrived. You can save your neighborhood. You have the power to vote to limit the harm that our Lincoln County commissioners are unable or unwilling to limit.
Stand now with your neighbor and vote yes on Ballot Measure 21-203 in support of zoning laws which are intended to limit business activity within your residential neighborhood. Short term nightly rentals have spread rapidly and threaten to change forever the friendly, coastal community you have worked hard to create and maintain.
This is your opportunity — your ballot is coming soon and the moment to act and be heard is now. Vote yes on 21-203 and save your neighborhood.
— Dean Gissel/Waldport
Anyone who has had to live on a street with a vacation rental knows what it is like to have rude people intrude on their neighborhood. The ones saying to vote no are the ones who are making money renting their properties like this while there is a dire need in this community for long term housing. As for the jobs, they are pretty much low pay cleaning/ fixing up after the renters, not necessarily career paths to aspire to. I will be voting yes on this measure.
I’m a homeowner here in Lincoln City. In the 30 plus years we’ve lived in our house. My family has had to deal with some pretty unpleasant vacation renters. I understand the importance of jobs, however please try to understand the near-by homeowners lack of sleep, due to drunkenness, unruly language, worry about the safety of our children. The list goes on. Our children can’t play in their own yard anymore. A man made inappropriate comments to my daughter and niece through our fence. The girls were 8 and 9 years old at the time. We wake up to alcohol bottles thrown into our yard. One 4th of July they set our grass, and fence on fire due to some illegal fire works. So you see the reason I’m voting yes on measure 21-203 is not to hurt someone else it’s because too many times, it’s the innocent people who are being good citizens that get hurt in the long run. I don’t want someone else to go through what we have had to.
I have seen firsthand what saturation of vacation rentals have done to a once safe and quiet neighborhood. Rising crime, garbage, excess noise, businesses plopped right down in the middle of a neighborhood driving residents out with higher property taxes, noise, and just not feeling like the city, nor the county even paid attention to the zone “residential.” What gives? The investors have made comments, such as go live in a HOA if you don’t like it. Oh, yeah you probably couldn’t afford it. Read the reviews from these vacation rental business entities. They care only about the money. Calling renting out a home to a family to live and work here a business, when there is no comparison. These vacation rental companies do not seem to care what they have done to the residents and families who reside here. Only to be told, move it along if you don’t like it. This is not about job Loss for them, tt is not about saving businesses as they advertise. It is about lining their pockets with money at the expense of families and residents who reside here, and deserve to live in a residential zone that they purchased into.