The chamber was packed with a full house of people sharing varying views. Photos by Catherine Stachowiak
The public expressed varying views on a heated topic, when the Kernville Chamber of Commerce met Monday, August 26. At the request of community members, the chamber has been eager to address the controversial idea of potentially limiting Airbnb numbers in the town of Kernville, through some form of ordinance, via the county.
Ideally the chamber wishes to allow this be a community effort to bring balance between the two views, for and against, limiting numbers of Airbnbs in Kernville.
Some chamber members and locals have expressed exasperation toward dwindling permanent resident numbers and school student enrollment numbers, blaming these problems on the large numbers of Airbnbs. This was amid complaints about other nuisances within those neighborhoods where renters of Airbnbs temporarily reside.
Staff representing Congressman Vince Fong’s office was present amid the crowd attending the meeting. Jim Damian the chief economic development officer from Kern County was at the meeting and said he was taking notes and that Supervisor Phillip Peters was interested about what was shared at the meeting. “My model of good government is trying to stay out of the way,” Damian said. “If you have an Airbnb here, you pay a 6% transit occupancy tax, to the county. So that’s the small intervention, that the county did, a number of years ago.”
Tim Lambirth, an attorney residing in Kernville, said he wrote a letter to Supervisor Phillip Peters and the chamber on the topic of potentially limiting Airbnb numbers in Kernville. His letter was actually what brought the topic to the forefront of debate in recent weeks. Lambirth said, “I’m not out to ban Airbnbs. We need them. Maybe we don’t need so many of them. That’s above my pay grade. But we survive on tourism. We need the tourists. But we also need to get by when the tourists aren’t here. So we need a healthy balance.”
Lambirth used Placer County, where Lake Tahoe is located, for an example of how this issue has been handled in similar tourist areas where Airbnbs are prevalent. “They’ve come out with a nice Short Term Rental (STR) law,” he said.
Locals expressed multiple opinions on the issue including several Airbnb business owners assuring the public that they are responsible about monitoring guests at their property and that they provide jobs. At least the same amount of neighbors expressed their annoyance regarding nuisances attributed to Airbnb tenants disturbing the peace in what they described as once quiet neighborhoods.
Residents at the meeting pondered why zoning laws allow businesses such as an Airbnb in residential zoned areas. While others said short-term rentals are not a new thing at all and property rights ought to prevail, hoping for a happy medium to this and future talks on the matter.
In a previous chamber meeting some chamber board members supposed school enrollment was dwindling because of too many homes being used for Airbnbs, a discouragement to permanent residents enrolling students for Kernville Elementary School. At this meeting community members were questioning whether lagging enrollment levels were more likely due to the schools and the direction education has been heading with charter schools and other options available to parents.
Chamber vice president Gary Ananian, who was leading the meeting in president Orion Sanders’ absence, suggested that student numbers dwindling may not necessarily be because of the Airbnbs but may actually be because of the home school movement growing. Ananian said that he runs kids programs, through the Kern River Conservancy, which he founded. Numbers of students within his groups, per program, have quadrupled since COVID, including students from Porterville and Ridgecrest as well as Kernville. Ananian’s observation was that some parents working remotely have more time to school their child at home, while other parents could be home educating for political or other health reasons. He sees a lot of parents are pulling their kids out of public schools in general. “When I take kids out rock climbing there’s 60 kids and 45 of them were going to Kernville Elementary last year and now they’re not,” Ananian said.
Christine Dochterman, owner of Clean Getaways said her company does cleaning and property management, and has nearly 40 rentals and employs eight people. She encouraged the public to call her with any complaints about issues with her rentals because her number is listed on signage at her rentals. She also encouraged the public that people could complain about other poorly run vacation rentals at the Airbnb system.
Local resident Mike Woodward lives in the same block as four other neighbors in the meeting complaining about several Airbnbs within their neighborhood. “As I see it there’s major issues that we’ve had. An absent owner of an Airbnb who is across the street from me, next to Bill. Party house, that’s all it’s been since they started up about three years ago. We’ve had major issues,” he said. “I’m not bashing Airbnb. Actually I’d like to own one myself because I love the idea of making money off of real estate. But my point is that we have a density issue on our street, way disproportionate.”
Woodward said that if the owners of the rentals were more responsible he wouldn’t have a problem. He thought the amounts of units should be limited. He said locals had to deal with drug issues; hot tub pot smokers keeping them awake at 3am, people camping on their block, and a biker group on their street. “We ran it through LAPD. We found out that they were (in) the 10 most wanted motorcycle gangs in Los Angeles,” said Woodward.
Ananian told those attending the meeting that there would be future meetings addressing this issue.
