Showdown at Diamond A Ranch

At last week’s Planning Commission meeting on revised rules for vacation rental permits, more than a dozen of the public comments came from residents and homeowners in the Diamond A Ranch development in the hills west of Sonoma. Most of them spoke of loud and late parties, cars parked on the narrow street, bright lights and other un-neighborly behavior in opposition to the county’s permitting of what they characterized as a “commercial enterprise” in the 50-year-old residential development.

Yet in the arguments posed by the other homeowners who spoke, whose properties are being used as short-term vacation rentals (STVRs), they contested that characterization, insisted they were good neighbors, bragged about their five-star ratings from AirBnB customers, and refused to recognize the Diamond A Neighborhood Association (DANA) as a legitimate homeowner’s association whose rules were binding on everyone in the development.

Nonetheless, the conflicts continue at Diamond A Ranch, dividing a bucolic community over an issue that literally pits neighbor against neighbor, lawyer against judge. And as we go to press, the Diamond A Neighborhood Association has filed an appeal with the PRMD to shut down the vacation rentals in the development, and come up with over $1,100 to pay for the suit, the latest salvo in a disagreement that is trending increasingly litigious.

The 170-plot Diamond A Ranch was developed in the 1960s, where Grove Street climbs into the canyons and ridges of Sonoma Mountain, with miles of horse trails and spectacular views across the Sonoma Valley. On a summer day, it’s hot and dry, its grasslands golden and stands of oak offer much-needed shade; the older houses are mostly ranch-style, squatting under tree canopies, while the newer ones – well, most of those are behind gates and walls, but they look to be pretty big. And unoccupied.

“All but one of the seven ‘vacation rental’ permitted properties in Diamond A are owned by persons whose primary residence is outside of Sonoma County,” said Tom Jones, a member of the Diamond A Neighborhood board.

While most of those who spoke at the Planning Commission meeting Sept. 3 objected to vacation homes in the development, at least two owners spoke of how much they loved coming to Sonoma on weekends and wanted to share its charms with others by renting out their homes to vacation renters.

But some Diamond A residents objected to the term “vacation renters” altogether. “These people are not on vacation, they’re partying,” scoffed Wayne Mehl. He said one side of his own Diamond A property had been converted to a vacation rental. “If I get one on the other side, I’ll have no neighbors – the neighborhood is gone.”

Like many others at Diamond A, Mehl terms operating a short-term vacation rental a “business” or commercial enterprise, therefore in violation of the development’s CC&R (Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions) policies.

The several CC&Rs for Diamond A Ranch’s units, dating from 1966, state essentially the same thing: “Each parcel shall be used for residential purposes only for a single occupancy, and no store, grocery or mercantile business or any commercial enterprise whatsoever shall be owned or operated upon the above described real property.”

But the homeowners of Diamond A who rent out their properties on a short-term basis bristle at what they feel is a “vendetta” against them, argue that there is no binding CC&R that covers sub-letting for a short-term rental, and say there are other home businesses operating in the development that are not subject to such scrutiny.

Sandy Atwood, a homeowner who told us she sat on the Diamond A Neighborhood Association board for five years, says the CC&R is simply not binding. “My issue with Diamond A is that it is not a homeowners association and the board does not have any authority over the homeowners,” she wrote in an email to the Index-Tribune. “It is a voluntary association and the residents do not have to pay dues or belong.”

Atwood defends renting out her own property, formerly for over a month at a time but more recently for less through AirBnB.com. (A short-term vacation rental is by definition under 30 days; longer rental periods do not require permits or pay Transient Occupency Tax.) She said she and her husband also have “properties in Mexico, Lake Tahoe and Park City, Utah, that we spend time visiting,” though they are retired and choose to rent out their Diamond A house when they are not there.

Tim Schroeder, whose house is co-owned with Pete Chandonnet and rented to weekend guests through Airbnb, told the Index-Tribune “the dominant use of our property is residential.  We like sharing our home and Sonoma with the people who stay at our property. We have made new friends through our AirBnB experiences and we believe it is a good use of our resources for the house to be occupied on weekends we are not personally using it.”

Their “Redwood Run” house on Prospect Drive, though tasteful, boasts an atypical green lawn in a draught year, and a row of county waste containers sits in their driveway all week long (until somebody shows up on the weekend to put them back), An old propane tank that hasn’t yet been picked up, or taken to the dump, is also an eyesore, though Schroeder has said, “Believe us, nobody wants that tank removed more than we do.”

The house is specifically singled out as a problematic property on what some are now calling “Party Mountain,” as in a letter Mehl sent to PRMD deputy director of planning Jennifer Barrett in March: “One vacation rental partied until 2 a.m. in the morning with loud music and yelling and screaming, it woke up 6 or more surrounding homes. Our 6-year-old grandchild woke up crying and our whole family was awakened.”

If it comes down to a legal issue – and it probably does – there’s conflicting testimony. Harry O’Brien of Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass filed a five-page letter on Aug. 31 of this year citing California and out-of-state rulings that vacation rentals do constitute commercial operations, and calling DANA a property owners association that already voted, in June of this year, to ban vacation rentals at Diamond A. These arguments are repeated in the appeal filed against the View Ridge Drive permit this week.

But when the PRMD rejected a vacation rental permit to Kevin McCarthy and David Bui of San Francisco, their lawyer blasted the legal standing of DANA, declared vacation rentals a non-commercial enterprise, and denied a July 17 notice of zoning violation over an apparent vacation rental without a permit.

Kevin Cholakian of Cholakian and Associates wrote, “They simply had family and friends over to visit as guests. They have not entered into any short-term leases for their property and have patiently awaited our permit.”

Unfortunately the View Crest home is listed as “Olive Branch House” on the VRBO.com (Vacation Rentals by Owner) website and its parent site at HomeAway.com – with reviews from renters who stayed in May, June, July and August, prior to the permit’s issue.

Inquiries to PRMD as to why they issued a permit to a property that had already been cited for county code violations, among other questions, had not been answered at press time.

The issue of whether renting out a home on a short-term basis is a business or not is probably beyond the purview of the Planning Commission, or even the Board of Supervisors.

Still, the Diamond A dispute is evidence that short-term vacation rentals have created a problem for neighborhoods that did not exist not so many years ago – before the Internet made the “sharing economy” a viable means of earning a living, or supplementing a retirement income, or just financing a second home’s mortgage payments.