Restored Historic Property Wins Planning Commission Approval, but Eureka Preserves Two Units for Long-Term Renters

Aerial view of the STR project site

As in other areas of Humboldt County, Eureka is being careful about allowing vacation rentals in residential neighborhoods and the city’s Planning Commission has reduced the number of units in one project.

In a June 10 split vote, the commission approved a multi-unit Short Term Rental (STR) project at 1102 J Street at the intersection of 11^th Street.

But due a majority of commissioners’ concerns about neighborhood impacts and displacement of housing, two of the five units in the permit application were designated as long term rentals.

The city requires STR projects without an onsite owner to get permits and Planner Taylor Rayburn said the permit in this case was referred to the commission “due to the abnormal nature of multiple vacation rentals proposed on one site and community interest in vacation rentals.”

The proposed units are existing and have been in operation without a permit.

The applicant, local historic preservation consultant Kathleen Stanton, said she has two other STRs, one in Arcata and one in the county area, and “ all you have to do is pay your fee and you’re good to go, and that’s really what I was thinking was going on here with the city of Eureka.”

STR permit applicant Kathleen Stanton

But the city’s permitting process is “kind of like an octopus,” she continued, spanning multiple departments.

An initial attempt at permitting was deemed incomplete, which Stanton said “came as a big shock to me” but “thankfully with staff’s help, we’ve been able to work things out and we’re now on the right track tonight to hopefully get officially permitted.”

She said after buying the main house in March 2024, she and her co-applicant Chris Morse invested $150,000 in renovating it and a “payment plan” is in place for payment of Transient Occupancy Tax (hotel bed tax) “for the year we were in operation.”

A neighbor accompanying Stanton vouched for the project but another neighbor advised against it, saying, “I don’t believe that taking away places within neighborhoods like this from residents and giving it to tourists is appropriate for the life of the city.”

A motion was made to approve the project as recommended by staff, but Commissioner Steve Lazar flagged several issues.

Eureka Planning Commissioner Steve Lazar

“I appreciate the investments that were made in the building and I’m grateful for that and I do tend to be swayed when it comes to why vacation rentals can be useful because they make people invest in buildings and infrastructure,” he said. “But this is a lot larger volume. This is at least two to three times larger than what we conventionally see when we’re dealing with these matters that come before us when they’re more controversial.”

He wasn’t sympathetic to the explanation of lack of permitting, saying Stanton and Morse “applied only after they began operating and operated for over a year without permits.”

Commissioner Deborah Dukes lives in the area is disappointed the units aren’t being used for long term housing.

“I was walking by as all the construction was being done and thinking how wonderful it was that this grand old lady was being fixed up and I commend you for that,” she said. “And I saw the multiple mailboxes go up and was thinking, great, this is going to be multifamily — I don’t have a problem with Airbnb units, per se but having them in residential areas kind of rubs me the wrong way.”

Lazar made a follow-up motion to designate a detached studio unit at the site as a long term rental as well as one of the four other units in the site’s primary home.

It was approved in a 3-2 vote.

There had been some discussion of the city’s STR policy. Development Services Director Cristin Kenyon said the policy finds that of the city’s 12,000 housing units, only 93 of them are permitted vacation rentals.

“It’s a very small percentage of our overall housing supply that is taken up in vacation rentals currently,” she continued. “Other communities that do have caps, they’re usually higher than 1 percent and we’re below 1 percent right now.

She added that enforcement in Eureka “is pretty significant compared to a lot of the other jurisdictions” and “we haven’t gotten that many to become permitted but we’ve gotten a lot to stop.”

Also at the meeting, the commission affirmed that the city’s purchase of a site to be used as a 40-unit emergency shelter conforms with the city’s General Plan.

Located on 2^nd and A streets, the shelter will be operated by the Betty Kwan Chinn Foundation.

A written staff report describes the project as consisting of “a prefabricated building system of separate structures serving different functions including sleeping rooms, bathrooms, office, meal prep and laundry facilities.”

The half-acre project site is owned by the Chinn Foundation and Deputy Development Services Director Caitlin Castellano said the plan is for the city to own it.

“They purchased it with the understanding that we had the first right of refusal because we had already intended to buy it but we didn’t have the correct timing to buy it,” she continued, referring to a grant funding timeline.

The commission unanimously voted to find the project to be in conformance with the General Plan.