Lyle Rapacki, host of Yavapai Speaks, talks to the Mayor of Lake Havasu City, Cal Sheehy, and the Mayor of Sedona, Scott Jablow, about the problem of short term rentals in their cities.
The original legislation allowed people to rent a room in their homes, but it has now gotten out of hand to where large corporations and investors are buying up houses and making them into Bed and Breakfasts. Not only does this disrupt a neighborhood’s cohesion, but it has sent long term rental prices too high and made it impossible for service workers, teachers, medical workers, and first responders to be able to live in the cities. Housing affordability is completely out of reach for most people.
Mayor Jablow says it feels like Sedona is becoming one large hotel, instead of the neighborhoods it once had. Mayor Sheehy points out that, unlike other cities, Lake Havasu does not have nearby bedroom communities.
Both of the mayors feel that the key is local control.
3 thoughts on “Yavapai Speaks: Interview with the Mayors of Sedona and Lake Havasu”
So if Mayor Jablow is opposed to more STRs, which i support, why does the city continue to spend millions a year on tourist destination marketing that in turn drives demand for nightly transient lodging and thereby funds more homes being converted into STRs? Logic eludes me
Logic is not a strong suit of Mayor Jablow. There are 4300 STR spaces is Sedona, of which about 60% are one & two bed units. Yes there are too many and the state did a disservice by opening up the entire state without local control however in Sedona the problem has been lack of backbone on the council for years to attract business not tourism related and the mayor has been in a council & mayoral position long enough to be held accountable for that problem. Now the city will not support wage support (higher min wage) or subsidies to landlords to keep housing stock in the LTR market. They attempted only to do deed restrictions in exchange for less than $700/yr for 3 bed home. Not one council member stepped up to deed restrictions on their homes but think there are fools in the community that would. The mayor does not want to solve a “housing” problem, he simply seeks political attention in the press. Sedona is not affordable because of the uncontrolled marketing the councils have funded and continue to fund. Don’t be fooled. The emperor has no clothes as we say!
We moved from Sedona 9 years ago. It was a total mess even back then. Everything the city did was to promote tourism. The residents were taking a second place position. The traffic today is even worse. Short term rentals are not the problem. The city spent $22 million to buy the cultural park and now wants to turn it into a homeless camp.
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