Residents speak about how they’re voting on Measure N
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – As the election approaches and ballots arrive in the mail, residents are finally getting their chance to officially vote on Measure N, also known as the Tahoe Vacancy Tax. The Tribune spoke with six residents of South Lake Tahoe to see what their reasons were for voting yes or no on the hotly debated topic.
C.T. Rowe – Voting Yes
C.T. Rowe is a ski shop instructor who has lived in South Lake Tahoe for 31 years. He moved as a 19-year-old as a snowboarding junkie who wanted to live in an affordable town. Rowe’s seen the change happen in his neighborhood and said, “It’s so much harder to have a family and live your life here than it was 20 or 30 years ago.” He is voting yes because he believes Measure N will help encourage families and young people to live in Tahoe.
Rowe heard about the measure when the petition was going around, which already piqued his interest. He’d seen families move out and their empty houses be bought up—in fact, Rowe said he’d seen dramatic changes in his own neighborhood. Once the measure text was fully published, Rowe read through it, which solidified his desire to vote.
“A lot of what the opposition is saying are weaknesses of the measure are things that I think are strengths,” said Rowe. He pointed out that not specifying percentages in the measure is a benefit to him, not a drawback. “I love that there’s flexibility in the measure, which gives the city the ability to move around funds.”
Rowe also said the specification for housing, transit, and roads makes a lot of sense to him, since he doesn’t think the city spends enough on those issues. “With this measure, City Council gets to decide on how it’s all distributed. And if we don’t like it, hey. We vote in our members, they’re supposed to represent what we want and need, so we can vote them out.”
While housing is a huge part of the conversation, Rowe is more focused on the roads. “It’s a dream of this scenario, to have a ton of money to fix roads through this fund.”
To Rowe, the tax isn’t as extreme as it sounds. “$6000 is not that much for people leaving their homes vacant. People who buy these homes and leave it empty for that much of the year have the budget to pay that.”
He doesn’t want to stop people from buying houses in the area either. “I mean, nobody’s going to stop buying houses, so they may as well kick in a little bit to the community.” As someone who loves the area, Rowe said, “I believe South Lake Tahoe is worth it.”
Rowe concluded his conversation with the Tribune by saying, “To all the people who own empty houses, be very proud of your civic duty in paying a tax. And hopefully, you move in—I’d love for you to be my neighbor.”
Steve Costanza – Voting No
Steve Costanza is a former business owner and has been a resident of South Lake Tahoe for 35 years—and has lived in the same house for all those years. Costanza, who is voting no, said, “Measure N is fatally flawed and has failed everywhere it’s been implemented.”
Costanza expressed his concern over how the tax lumps second homeowners together as “rich” and thinks it selectively targets people who could come from different economic backgrounds to pay a tax. He also worries about the privacy issues, even for full-time residents, who would have to fill out a form that isn’t defined in the measure text. “I didn’t move to Tahoe to be monitored,” he said.
Tahoe became Costanza’s home because it was like “a sanctuary” to him. “It’s a place where people do look out for each other… but [Measure N] is going to ruin the dynamic of our town and change the feeling of living in a tight-knit community.” He expressed that the divisive nature of the measure over the last year has been a huge change from how he sees residents normally interact with each other.
While Costanza doesn’t think housing is a major issue in Tahoe, he also believes that the measure won’t bring affordable housing anyways. “Second homeowners don’t want to pack up their belongings and hand the keys over to strangers,” said Costanza. “And a lot of the money is going to go to building this bureaucratic machine—the website, the monitoring process, the committee, all of that.”
Lastly, Costanza, like most Tahoe residents, has an issue with the roads. “But fixing roads shouldn’t fall on people who don’t use the roads for the whole year,” he said. “Second homeowners do contribute a lot to our town and shouldn’t be specifically targeted to pay this tax, especially in light of the fact that they can’t vote against it.”
Jack Margolis – Voting Yes
Jack Margolis is a renter in South Lake Tahoe who works three different jobs in town: he’s a woodworker, works to divert food scraps from landfill to compost, and works on the hill in the winter. He is voting yes on Measure N because he says, “I want to live in a community where we use our means to address our needs. In our community where we have a high vacancy rate and restrictions on construction, I see Measure N as an opportunity to do that.”
Margolis sees the vacancy tax as a sustainable way of complimenting the already present funds in the city that can address the infrastructure needs in roads, transit, and the complex issue of housing. “It’s not a magic solution, but it’s a piece of the puzzle,” said Margolis.
He recognizes the work already being done to streamline permitting and to build affordable housing. “I don’t want my support for measure N to be construed as an endorsement to stop any of the work done by the city’s housing department or the community members who continue to push our city, county, and the TRPA toward housing policy solutions.”
Margolis understands that there’s concerns on the other side about what they’ve felt is a regressive nature of the tax. “I don’t like flat taxes but statutory restrictions from the California legislature regarding property taxes have historically forced this, and I do not believe that we should pass no new taxes while California’s laws exist in their current form.”
Parcel and special use taxes in California regarding vacancy are new, but Margolis said, “Ultimately, impact matters more than intention. If Measure N passes, our community and city officials must be dedicated to monitoring its impact and willing to make appropriate adjustments to mitigate harm and address our communities’ needs.”
Margolis believes the tax will be able to evolve through the ability to amend the measure and the participation of community members. He wants to see costs associated with zoning changes included in the possible expenditures for housing costs, which would help increase areas zoned for multi-family housing. Another change he hopes for if the measure passes is to address tax structure issue by having larger buildings have larger fees, as set in the precedent of Traiman v. Alameda School District (2023).
Lastly, Margolis wants to know that the city would truly dedicate itself to the community issues that are outlined in the measure text. “I’d like to see a partial matching contribution from the city’s general fund as a show of good faith from the council that they’re dedicated to affordable housing, transit, and roads.”
Kelly O’Haire – Voting No
Kelly O’Haire is a long-time government employee and attorney who has been a resident of South Lake Tahoe for 23 years through a condo, a house, and two economic crashes. Her reasons for voting no hinge on her experience in law and her personal experience with caring for her mother who has Parkinson’s. As her mother’s caretaker, she was away from her residence for months at a time. “If we got hit with Measure N at a time like that, it would have broken me,” said O’Haire.
O’Haire is still taking care of her mother who was unable to drive, was in the hospital for nearly half a year, and is unable to walk—meaning she needs 24 hour care that renders O’Haire unable to take new clients or work. Her mother also had a disabled brother, who is now in O’Haire’s care as well. “People who are going through hard times have no exemptions,” O’Haire said.
The neighborhood that O’Haire lives in has people who she called self-made. “We are not rich people—we put our money into our homes,” said O’Haire, in rebuttal to what she sees as the proponents framing the opposition as entirely rich out-of-towners. She referenced her neighbors who are elderly, no longer work, and also cannot live in South Lake Tahoe during the winters due to their disabilities. “There aren’t any exceptions for people like them either.”
As for ways to ensure their homes aren’t vacant by renting, O’Haire was skeptical. “None of us are going to rent our homes to strangers for six months.” She has experience renting to others to help pay her mortgage while she stopped working to take care of her mother, but dealt with needing to evict tenants after they removed furniture from her home and added new tenants without her knowledge.
She says that the number of people opposing the measure is “astonishing” and like nothing she’s ever seen before. O’Haire added that if the measure passes, “People are willing to pour their money into lawsuits like never before.” She pointed to the numbers in the city’s 9212 report on the potential costs and believed that the $100,000 was an unrealistic cost for defending the measure, saying that the cost would likely be much higher.
Additionally, O’Haire says that the lack of a cap on the measure’s length is unheard of and has been a topic of debate, along with the ambiguity regarding how the city would monitor occupancy. One of the ways proposed in the 9212 report was through utilities via the South Tahoe Public Utilities Department (STPUD), which has previously expressed that they were uninterested in disclosing those numbers to the city for the privacy of residents.
“People are offended by that proposition [about STPUD]. I hear people say they’re going to drip their water or turn on their heat—and what a waste that would be,” said O’Haire.
As someone who saw issues with housing in other communities when she was a police officer, O’Haire believes the issue in South Lake Tahoe is with jobs and not housing—but that Measure N won’t address any of those. Neither will it address bringing kids back to schools, a claim that O’Haire says the proponents have made. Instead, she hopes the city will focus its current funding productively, especially since the city stated that it had extra funds for this year.
Kelly Bessem – Voting Yes
Kelly Bessem is a hydrology technician and snowboard instructor who has lived on and off in South Lake Tahoe for seven years. She is a renter, but has recently started the process of buying a home—outside of Lake Tahoe, which she says she cannot afford. Bessem, who is voting yes, said, “City Council has not historically stood up for the working class—it’s been for businesses and outside investors. This, to me, is our one big chance to bring a change.”
Bessem previously lived at Ski Run, where her building was sold to someone outside of town, who she said was “totally disconnected” from the community. Her rent soared and she had to move elsewhere. “The ‘tourist corridor’ just does not incentivize housing for locals.”
She heard about Measure N at city council meetings where housing was on the agenda, then chose to do her own research on vacancy taxes through attending different meetings. She is excited about the impact of having a citizen’s initiative measure on the ballot. “It’s a way we can stand up to City Council, which can have ideas and things that sound good on paper but have no real effect on housing.”
Funding is top of mind for Bessem, who says that is what it all comes down to. “[Measure N] is a great funding source that would get these good ideas people have rolling. There aren’t any other good proposals right now—it all comes down to funding.” Bessem believes that the money brought in by the tax could help accelerate the rate that housing, roads, and transit projects are completed in the city.
As someone who works with environmental agencies, Bessem also highlighted the environmental effect it could have. People who do forestry or land management are crucial to the Tahoe basin. Yet Bessem says agencies cannot find enough people to work in those fields. Her supervisors have said it’s because of the difficulty in finding employee housing. “If we care about the environment and recreation, we need to be able to find and support people who can take care of Tahoe,” said Bessem.
Lastly, she knows the stakes of this election go far beyond the boundaries of South Lake Tahoe. “There are places in Colorado, in expensive tourist towns, watching us to see what happens. The realtors’ associations know that too—they see that this could make South Lake Tahoe a more affordable place to live,” Bessem said. “To me, it’s a positive domino effect if it passes.”
Erick Asbury – Voting No
Erick Asbury is an electrical contractor and small business owner who’s lived in Tahoe for 14 years. He and his partner made goals to move to South Lake Tahoe after years of vacationing here, then worked to buy property and build their house here. Asbury, who is voting no, said “We are for affordable housing, but Measure N is not the way to do it.”
Asbury got invested in speaking on Measure N because he felt like he sat on the sidelines for Measure T, the previous citizen-initiated ballot measure that places additional restrictions on vacation-home rentals. “Measure T promised that people would have houses and rents at lower costs. But rents and house prices both went up—I didn’t want to make the same mistake by not getting involved.”
The ambiguities of Measure N worry Asbury greatly. “Nobody knows how this tax will be enforced because it’s not written into the measure text.” He stated he was concerned over potential violations of privacy, which he felt would also add another level of bureaucracy when the city decided how occupancy would be proven.
Additionally, the lack of an endpoint for the measure gives Asbury pause. “I’ve never heard of any proposition or law without a sunset clause or expiration date. People would just have to keep paying with no end in sight.”
As a business owner, Asbury feels a lot of business comes from second homeowners—who he said have told him would go off the hill for their business as retaliation if the measure passes. “They see Measure N as a punishment,” he said. “But second homeowners are an asset to the community. The splurge and go to businesses that locals avoid because they’re expensive. A mixture of all different populations is what makes a community, and that includes second homeowners.”
Asbury reportedly has attended every city council meeting since Measure N became a topic and also attended September’s State of the City address. “We had a surplus of money this year and the city is working on these issues of housing, roads and transit. We purchased new snow removal equipment, there’s housing like Sugar Pine being developed, and the city is looking to repair and make new roads for travel.” He feels that the campaign for the other side has misrepresented what the city is already doing and what the measure can actually accomplish.
“This measure has been divisive, but it’s brought the community together against it,” said Asbury. “It’s refreshing to work with people of all different backgrounds for the good of the community.”
Eli Ramos is a reporter for Tahoe Daily Tribune. They are part of the 2024–26 cohort of California Local News Fellows through UC Berkeley.
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