City Targets Short-Term Renters

For perhaps the first time ever, the city of Santa Fe is cracking down on vacation rental scofflaws.

Over the past few weeks, three local property owners have been hit with criminal citations for illegally operating short-term rental units in the city without a permit, city officials said this week.

“I’m in ongoing conversations with these people, and I’ll be talking with them. Primarily, my focus is making sure, whether there have been violations or not, that there are no more violations in the future,” assistant city attorney Alfred Walker said.

The alleged offenders cited so far are Barry Paisner and Charlene Touchette, owners of a residence at 715 Gildersleeve Street, and Merrily Murray-Walsh, owner of a home on Old Santa Fe Trail.

Paisner and Touchette pleaded not guilty in municipal court on Sept. 17, Walker said. Walsh-Murray will be arraigned Oct. 8.

“What they’ve told me is that they are not in violation of the ordinance. I’ll be looking at the information to determine if that is the case,” Walker said.

He added that the three are arguing that their homes haven’t been rented out for periods shorter than 30 days , which is how the city defines a short-term rental.

Charlene Touchette said Thursday that the Gildersleeve Street home has been offered and rented out as a long-term unit.

“We don’t understand why were are being singled out,” she said.

Murray-Walsh could not be reached.

Short-term rentals have long been illegal in Santa Fe’s residential areas, although the ban was rarely enforced in the past. Santa Fe has developed a thriving vacation rental industry, and some of the illegal units were even listed on the city’s own Web sites.

In January the City Council, after much debate, approved a law that capped the number of short-term rentals in the city’s residential areas at 350. Strong regulation was also promised, with permit fees set at $1,000 for the first unit and $250 for additional units.

The new ordinance, which became effective May 30, hasn’t pleased everyone. In March, a group that included local property management companies filed a lawsuit against the city alleging the new law was arbitrary and capricious.

As of September 8, the number of short-term rental permits issued by the city stood at 206, though all 350 slots are expected to be filled, according to city officials. In addition to that, the 265-unit condominium community of Quail Run has been granted permission to submit one permit application, which will not count toward the 350 cap, for all its homes.

City land use director Jack Hiatt said the city is being “proactive” in enforcing the new law. “We are looking for people who violate the ordinance. We find them and we refer them to the city prosecutors,” Hiatt said.

Thus far, neighbor complaints and the Internet are among the city’s primary tools for catching violators, Hiatt said.

In the case of the citations already issued, complaints from neighbors alerted the city to the alleged offenders, and code enforcement officers subsequently researched the situations, Walker said.

The penalties for violating the short-term rental law are, theoretically at least, steep. The ordinance doesn’t spell out any specific penalty for infractions, which means the city falls back on a general policy that sets penalties for a petty misdemeanor at a maximum of 90 days in jail and $300 fine for every day the law is violated.

In all likelihood, however, the punishment won’t come to that.

“If people are willing to negotiate with me, we can probably work out an arrangement where there will be no future violations,” Walker said.