John Levy of Black Bear Cottages wrote this and sent it to us:  

The rhetoric regarding the Private Home Rental (PHR) issue has gotten overheated to the point where everything is presented as either black or white, while as usual the facts are really just different shades of gray.  I’ve read several letters and editorials in The Grizzly, and each of them seems to ignore valid points made by the ‘other side’.  Some people have tried to use scare tactics and told flat out lies in order to try to convince people that anyone supporting a level playing field is really trying to outlaw the PHRs and that it will have drastic consequences to the Big Bear economy and to the Real Estate market.  Others have lowered themselves to name-calling and saying “if you don’t like it, then leave”.  All that will get us is bad relations with our neighbors and even more of the nasty politics we currently have in this country where anyone who doesn’t share your viewpoint is automatically your enemy.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that not only am I a resort owner, I am also the neighbor (and friend) of Jim & Barbara McLean who have been the biggest boosters of the proposed ballot initiative and also the recently dismissed lawsuit.  However, this does not mean that I agree with them on every issue, and in fact as a person who hopes to own and/or manage a few PHRs myself someday, I am still undecided as to exactly where I stand on the issue.  People are trying to make this an issue about the McLeans , though, when in fact it is an issue affecting a lot of us on both sides of the issue.

First we must wade through the claims made by both sides. A while ago, The Grizzly printed a guest editorial stating, for starters, that there were only about a dozen permanent residents who complained about the PHRs in their neighborhood.  First of all, using anecdotal statements instead of empirical facts is misleading and, frankly, useless to a serious discussion of the issues.    Furthermore, having been to a few meetings about this issue, I can tell you there are a lot more than just a dozen of those folks.  I know the vast majority of visitors are respectful of the neighborhoods and don’t overcrowd the cabins they rent, but we all know that there are enough exceptions to that assumption to cause concern, especially with larger homes where visitors sometimes cram a bunch of people into one home in order to save money.  When that happens on a resort property like mine, there is a manager on-site (ME) to police this.  In a private home, there is no policing.  Yes, we have ordinances, but there are no real penalties for violation.  And as a result, the neighbors have to put up with extra cars clogging narrow streets and excessive noise from too many occupants.  Of course, we want our visitors to have fun but not at the expense of neighborhood tranquility.  The same editorialist went on further to complain of “changing history”.  First of all, saying in effect ‘it’s always been done like this’ fails to recognize the fact that as society progresses, we change and evolve to accommodate the changes.  If we only did things the way they have always been done, we would still have slavery and women wouldn’t be allowed to vote.  Secondly, she must not know as much about Big Bear history as she thinks because it most definitely has NOT always been done like this.  I’ve been coming to Big Bear regularly for 50 years before I moved here permanently.  I remember as a boy staying in a cabin we owned just down the road from what is now Bear Mountain Resort.  It had one room, no plumbing or electricity.  We used an outhouse in back and washed up in the morning at the natural springs that used to be at the Moonridge Y (you can still see the indentation in the ground where it used to be before development cut off the source of the water).  There were no big rental agencies then and I can tell you that, until the past dozen years or so, the vast majority of visitors stayed at small resorts like mine.  Yes, it’s true that people have always owned second homes up here, and many of those folks rented them out occasionally to offset their expenses.  A common practice among those folks was to post a 3x5 card on the bulletin board where they worked, and perhaps at their church, advertising their cabin for rent.  With that type of advertising, you can well imagine they probably rented their cabin for a handful of weeks a year and normally only to people the owner knew fairly well.  That probably brought in enough extra income for the owners, as the price of property up here was miniscule.  Remember when Caroline Cook would sell you a lot for $3000 and her husband Jim would build you a cabin on it for $12,000?  When you only had $15,000 total investment, your mortgage payment was about $200 a month and you didn’t need to rent it out much to cover your expenses.  Nowadays, though, we have the Internet and that has affected the market in two completely different ways.  First of all, it has allowed for a vastly increased level of marketing of PHRs.   Do you honestly think we would have as many large rental agencies as we have without the Internet?  Secondly, the Internet has truly made our world smaller, so that it is easy to telecommute for many workers.  That, along with simple urban sprawl that has occurred over the last 20 years or so has allowed people who ordinarily would be living and working down the hill to reside up here permanently, which has drastically changed the Real Estate market in Big Bear.  Big Bear used to seem like some exotic far-off destination.  I remember as a kid we would stop halfway up the hill to let the radiator cool down and it seemed like a real trek just to get here.  Now, we’re just another Southern California community as far as the Real Estate business goes.  We all know how expensive Southern California real estate has become, and as a result, we are no longer a place where you can buy a cabin for pocket change.  This has little, if anything, to do with the tourist population as that editorial claimed.  We’ve always had tourists.  Regardless of the causes, though, nowadays it’s not nearly as easy to buy up here unless you have a way to help defray your expenses, and as a result the PHR industry has heated up big time.

Because of all this, the market is over-saturated with PHRs.  Folks who own second homes up here who would like to rent them out to overnight guests to help cover their expenses have been led to believe they will enjoy a positive cash flow.  The fact is that with so many homes on the rental market, very few are rented out enough to bring in the money the owners thought they would receive.  The only people making money are the rental agencies.  Don’t get me wrong, making money is a good thing.  I own a business just so that I can (hopefully) make a bunch of it.  But, as a business owner, I am obligated to obey numerous laws and regulations regarding how I conduct my business and standards that must be met in order to rent cabins on an overnight basis.  PHRs, however, do not have to obey the same laws.  When it was just John or Jane Doe putting up that 3x5 card at their office, this really wasn’t that big of a deal.  The people who are resisting change want to make this into a fight between the lodge owners and the individual PHR owners.  But now we have these large rental agencies…some of whom have 400 cabins in their inventory.  I have a grand total of 4.  Are you going to tell me that I’m a “sophisticated businessman” (in the words of the judge who dismissed the lawsuit filed by the McLeans ) and the huge rental agency isn’t?  I have numerous rules and regulations I have to follow that they don’t.  Aren’t we both selling the same product (overnight lodging)?  Shouldn’t they have to obey the same rules?  A lot of people are trying to make this out to be the “big” lodge owners versus the “little” PHR owner, but the reality is that it’s the big rental agencies that are competing against us, not the PHR owners. 

Recently, a letter was mailed to all Big Bear residents signed by former City Manager Michael Perry.  Mr. Perry wrongly claims that the goal here is to eliminate PHRs.  This is a flat-out lie and I can’t believe a person with Mr. Perry’s intelligence didn’t know it was a lie.  Regardless of what ANYONE says, the proposed measures would NOT eliminate PHRs.  It would simply require them to follow just a few of the same rules as we resort owners have to.  If I want to put in an outdoor hot tub, I have to buy a commercial grade tub and with all of the required permits it will end up costing me around $50,000.  If a PHR owner wants to put in a hot tub in his or her back yard, it will cost them about $5,000.  Some might say that this means that I’m advocating making the PHR owners pay $50,000 for a hot tub, but that’s not true.  There are options.  In lieu of forcing the PHR owners to drain and lock their non-commercial hot tubs, and instead of making them buy the more expensive model, perhaps the better answer is to allow us small resort owners to buy the $5,000 model.  I agree with some, that if the proposed measures go into place, the PHR market will shrink somewhat.  Some of the PHR owners will feel that the little bit of extra work and the slight amount of extra expense is not worth it for the relatively small amount of money they make on rentals and they will remove them from the rental programs.  Many of them will remain, though and therefore proving wrong the aforementioned editorialist who claims that “future visits will be impossible”.  There will continue to be plenty of accommodations for visitors.  Currently most resort owners feel lucky to achieve 35% occupancy.  That means, in addition to the many PHRs that will remain, there are plenty of cabins available to rent just by utilizing the existing resorts.  Increased business for the resorts would encourage further resort development which would more than compensate for any revenue lost due to a shrinking PHR market.  People aren’t going to stop coming to Big Bear because there are fewer PHRs as long as we provide them with other options.  This is STILL the only place for snow sports in Southern California .  This is STILL one of only a few good fishing lakes in Southern California .  It’s possible that if the proposed measures are approved that home prices will soften a bit.  That might be painful for someone who bought at the market peak, but the values are still likely to remain higher than they were, say, 2 years ago.  Furthermore, who raised a voice in defense of the resort owners when the glut of PHRs affected the value of the resorts?  When I bought my property, nobody made any guarantees to me that I would make a profit.  I had to perform due diligence to determine whether or not it was a sound business decision.  If a PHR owner wants to operate his or her home as a business, they should also have to accept the same risks.

I’ve heard the argument that “It’s MY property and I can do whatever I want with it”.  Well, this just isn’t true.  You can’t open a gas station on your property, can you?  How about a tavern?  What about the guy down the hill who recently got in trouble for digging a hole 60 feet deep in his own front yard to look for gold?  He got in trouble because the fact is that you CAN’T do anything you want with your property.  That’s why we have zoning laws.  When you own a PHR, you are essentially operating a motel in a residential neighborhood.

It might appear that, despite my earlier claims of objectivity, I am completely on the McLean ’s side on this issue.  However, this is simply not true.  First of all, it does seem a bit unfair that the PHR owners will have little say in the matter as they can only vote where their permanent residences are.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be an easy answer to that problem.  But, again, this goes back to due diligence.  Also, I disagree with the McLeans regarding ADA compliance.  They advocate requiring PHRs to be ADA compliant in the same fashion as they were required to provide ADA compliant units when they built their facility.  The McLeans were required to provide the compliant units because they chose to build new construction, but in my case, because I bought a property with existing units on it that were built before the adoption of ADA, those existing units were grandfathered in so that I do not have to provide any handicap-accessible units unless I add newly built cabins.  It seems to me that it would be fair to have PHRs treated similarly…any existing cabin built before ADA would be grandfathered in and only cabins built after the adoption of ADA would have to be compliant.

Private Vacation Home Rentals are an important part of the Big Bear economy.  I doubt that any reasonable person would advocate eliminating them.  It seems reasonable, though, that they should have to meet the same requirements and have to go through the same procedures as any other overnight rental does.  If not, then let the resorts operate with little restriction like the PHRs do now.  The guests aren’t going to go away.  They will stay in the nicest accommodations we can provide.  That might be a resort, B&B OR a private home.  We’re all siblings in the same family, we just need to be treated the same.