• Vacation rental problems Vacation rental problems While a few good points about vacation rentals were brought up in the April 13 letter, the letterwriter also overlooks a few bad ones. Quite simply the reason property taxes have risen so
• Vacation rental problems
Vacation rental problems
While a few good points about vacation rentals were brought up in the April 13 letter, the letterwriter also overlooks a few bad ones. Quite simply the reason property taxes have risen so much is due to property values rising due to Mainland buyers coming here and buying up homes at prices that residents cannot afford .
They can do this and cover their mortgage payments with the revenues made by renting the home out at values no local working class people here can afford. This also enables them to come here a few weeks a year and stay in their “home.” Many are displaced by this way of thinking and have nowhere to go .The vicious circle you spoke of was created by the commercial use of residential property, aka vacation rentals.
These homes do need maintenance and people to tend to their needs but where are the people who provide these services supposed to live? Since the North Shore has become more of a resort area the lines of cars coming from the east side in the morning has increased quite a bit. Rental cars lead “parades of cars” around the island at any given time. I always see tourists out early and they don’t have appointments to keep or jobs to get to on time. They pack our beaches and trails leaving few, if any parking spots for people who arrive late and after work. As far as them eating out, they have kitchen facilities and tend to eat at their rental more. This takes away from the eateries and packs our grocery stores . Have you tried to park at Foodland or Big Save lately? Recognize many people in those stores anymore? Can you call it a community if the people all around you are strangers? Can you depend on these people to be there for you if need be? What is their contribution to our society here? Many are rude and expect to be treated like royalty because they have paid so much to stay there .
I would like to ask the letterwriter where all the kids growing up here now are going to live when they finish their schooling, be it just high school or be it college, where will they live? Will they have to live like rats and serve vacationers? The way it is now, they will have to move elsewhere just to survive. Not much for the youth of today to look forward to here . Nowhere to live and service jobs .
As far as Ms. Yukimura goes, maybe she wasn’t the best mayor but I’ll take her over Ms. Kusaka and Mr. Baptiste any day. She is not “coming up with” new problems but merely trying to deal with old problems that have left to go on too long. If you want to blame her for anything, it should be not dealing with vacation rental issues when she was mayor.
