Stop Pacaso Now
If you care about addressing local housing issues, it is time to fight the latest get-rich-quick Silicon Valley scourge named Pacaso. The only thing Pacaso is disrupting is our neighborhoods.
Pacaso’s business model of dropping virtual timeshares into our neighborhoods is not consistent with our adopted General Plans (or any sane reasonable perception of what a neighborhood should be).
If left unchecked it certainly trickles down to every corner of every neighborhood. This destroys neighborhoods and investment in single-family residences and negatively impacts the local housing market. It is already happening. The argument that it doesn’t affect houses that would be used for families or our workforce is self-serving. Santa Barbara doesn’t need to burnish a second home market. Vacant second homes are part of our housing crisis problem, but turning them into hotels and party houses is not the answer. If Pacaso wants to build hotels, they are welcome to propose hotels in commercial zones.
Pacaso’s business model of creating hotels in single family neighborhoods completely shifts all resulting impacts on to the existing neighbors. Noise, traffic, parking, litter, lighting, etc. 100 percent not compatible. And they don’t pay transient occupancy tax.
We spend years talking about building height and colors and other minutiae. This is the integrity of our neighborhoods at stake.
Contact your local government and request that ordinances be put in place to prohibit or limit Pacaso, at least in single family neighborhoods.