La Quinta residents, have you been wondering why there are always 10 cars parked at the house next door every weekend? Well, wonder no more. It’s because the Orange County “investor” who owns that house has converted the living room into three additional bedrooms so they can include even more loud and obnoxious guests for Coachella and bachelorette house parties – because, really, screw you and your desire to have a home where you can relax with your family after a hard day at work.
The city has had to take action to stop the practice – which, of course, has come about from short-term vacation rentals, according to the Desert Sun.
For at least the next 120 days, residents won’t be able to erect a new wall in their living room.
The action comes after a handful of residents in La Quinta began converting living areas into bedroom space – without the proper permits – to make room for more short-term vacation renters, according to Gabriel Perez, La Quinta planning manager.
The city found three homes in the Del Oro neighborhood, east of Washington Street and north of Miles Avenue, that advertised eight rentable bedrooms, but the city only had a record of five permitted bedrooms. While the La Quinta Municipal Code currently does not have any rules that restricts homeowners from adding more bedrooms, city staff and residents said that the additional rooms led to more noise complaints and greater parking congestion in the neighborhood.
The council originally placed a 45-day ban in January and has since extended it twice, with the latest due to run out in September. The city is now is considering some restrictions of modifying single-family homes – with a maximum number of bedrooms based on a house’s square footage as well as limiting the number of short-term rentals in a neighborhood and heftier fines for violators.
And as the debate on short-term rentals takes place in La Quinta and other desert cities, full-time resident of La Quinta Melissa Labayog summed up the short-term dilemma pretty well..
“Neighborhoods look nicer than they did years ago,” she told the newspaper. “But I wouldn’t let my daughter ride her bike around or leave her bike in the yard because my neighborhood is filled with strangers.”
