My husband and I bought our cabin in South Lake Tahoe in 2016. My family owned homes in Rubicon Bay and I spent every summer living and exploring the many, many opportunities and life Tahoe gives.

We purchased our cabin as a second home with the intent to retire in SLT. We made the decision to support our local merchants respecting how much SLT depends on revenue from rentals.

So in respect to our neighbors we had an open house to have a meet and greet but mostly to hear the pros and cons about us being a VHR.

We want to respect them and had our Vacation Rental Co., there to reassure our neighbors that we plan to do everything respectfully.

We partner with Cork and More to have baskets delivered for our guests with gift cards and discounts to Cork and More. We hire young men from Tahoe Turning Point to employ them to do maintenance and yard work. We could easily do the work ourselves except we, in our hearts, want to be part of our community to support them.

We found out from many local merchants that local year-round residents don’t buy from them.

It is heart breaking to see what is happening.

We chose to be VHR over Airbnb. To have better screening of who will be booking, manage noise and other regulations to respect our neighbors.

I have talked to many locals and they don’t believe the decrease in revenue from VHRs will effect them at all.

It would be nice to see locals challenged to support their community to take on the slack.

We are a positive in SLT, not a problem.

We work with Dream Foundation an adult Make A Wish. A young man’s wish was to be in SLT. We were honored when asked to let him and his family stay at our cabin for three days.

Our neighbor complained that the children were sitting on the rocks in our yard and laughing. Most residents are busy bodies and need something to complain about. We made his wish come true before passing.

We are not stopping VHRs, even through harassments, rudeness, and rude opinions.

God is in control.

God bless our gorgeous gift from God that we should share with open hearts.

Warm regards,

Lori Thompson

San Jose, California