Editorial: A Changed Tone On Village STRs

Whatever truly lies at demurring on a decision, village residents will wait at least another two weeks for resolution.

Council member Lydia Boesch perhaps said it best Tuesday night when she spoke of the toll this all has exacted on the village.

“This has harmed friendships, and that’s just so horrible to me,” she told her fellow council members. “This is so beyond troubling to me. That’s why I’d like to try to work this out.

“I think a lawsuit is going to be even more divisive for this community.”

Plenty of Legal Questions

Mayor John Strickland and fellow council members Pat Pizzella and Jane Hogeman have made no secret of their desire to eliminate whole-house short-term rentals in most of the village. They have claimed such short-term rentals alter and degrade the character of neighborhoods and fundamentally manipulate the housing market to the disadvantage of those who would choose Pinehurst as a full-time home.

Fellow council members Boesch and Jeff Morgan prefer stopping short of an outright ban of STRs, saying the village should first use existing regulations to address any concerns.

Strickland may be having trouble holding his coalition together. As Boesch alluded, a few STR owners are jockeying to be the lead litigant in a lawsuit against the village.

Matters weren’t helped recently when the council last week received a letter from the Institute for Justice, a law firm that calls itself “the nation’s leading law firm for liberty and a nationally recognized advocate for property rights.”

In his letter, attorney Ari Bargil says the village’s proposed ban, which also would force current owners to sell or discontinue short-term rentals in single-family zones, “deploys legally dubious land-use tools to eviscerate the settled expectations of property owners.”

“And the supposed legitimacy of the town’s approach,” Bargil wrote, “rests on a half-century old legal decision upholding, unremarkably, the power of government to moderate nuisances.”

Finally, Some Rest?

Strickland, Hogeman and Pizzella have all spoken far more bellicosely about STRs than they did last week. Pizzella at one point equated them to cancer, saying that, without restrictive action, such rentals will have “metastasized beyond belief.”

But even the council’s own Planning and Zoning Board doesn’t support restricting STRs. That board recommended last month that STRs be allowed to continue, albeit with reasonable and sensible new regulations.

Such sentiment, combined with serious legal liability — the city of Wilmington’s failed attempt at regulating STRs recently cost it more than $300,000 in legal fees — may have finally caught up to the mayor and his majority.

“We’ll find a way to work this out,” Strickland said, speaking far more conciliatory words than he did this summer when he accused STRs of wrecking the local housing market. “I hope we’ll find a way successfully through this.”

That must be Strickland’s soundest strategy now. His leadership on this matter has, until now, fostered divisiveness. This has been badly misjudged, and those who have Strickland’s ear — who wish for a Ye Olde Pinehurst of Yesteryear — would do well to seek a more reasonable path respectful of everyone’s views. Even Pizzella seems to no longer be spoiling for the fight.

“Perhaps we can put something together,” he said Tuesday night, “that will make people rest for a while on this issue.”