Drivers and Big Sur visitors will soon gain access to more breathtaking views of the Bixby Bridge and rugged bluffs of Highway 1 along California’s central coast under a recent deal between state regulators and a Monaco billionaire to open an iconic piece of cliff-side property to the public.
The California Coastal Commission and Rocky Point owner Patrice Pastor landed an agreement last month to open the 2.5-acre seaside parcel to the public in exchange for clearing violations related to unapproved construction and property changes made by the former owners.
Pastor’s real estate company, Esperanza Carmel, purchased the Big Sur property, most notably the site of the since-shuttered Rocky Point Restaurant, for $8 million in 2021, according to the Mercury News, with plans to open a high-end 166-seat restaurant and 14-room inn with views of some of California’s most beautiful terrain.
But Pastor inherited a slew of issues with the land, including investigations by the coastal commission into infrastructural changes made to the “environmentally sensitive habitat” by its former owners without approval. The owners also had limited public access to the land with “no trespassing” signs and locked gates, according to the Mercury.
The cliff-side restaurant, located about 10 miles south of the charming coastal town Carmel-by-the-Sea, boasted panoramic views of the awe-inspiring scenery along Highway 1, where visitors could “catch a glimpse of playful sea-otters, dolphins, seals, and many whales as they migrate up the coast.” It closed in 2020 during COVID.
The coastal commission agreed to clear violations and any potential fines if Pastor committed to making property improvements and guaranteeing development rights to the surrounding bluffs. He also agreed to replace the “no trespassing” signs with those signaling public access, and said he would improve trail access and add bathrooms and significant parking space. The agreement was signed May 17, the Mercury reported.
Pastor, a billionaire from Monaco who has in recent years purchased several properties in Carmel, bought the Big Sur land with ambitions to develop the property and open a restaurant, inn and visitor center. The agreement is limited to clearing the violations and guaranteeing public access, but could eventually make it easier for Pastor to earn approval for the redevelopment plans.
Esperanza Carmel did not return requests for comment.
A stay in Brian Maggi’s house, per the Airbnb listing, is what coastal California dreams are made of.
“Bathed in natural sunlight,” it reads, you can “enjoy unobstructed panoramic views of the ocean and Point Reyes.” You can bring your dog. Walk to the sand. Savor “the perfect getaway” in the 1928 “BoHo surf shack.”
The little house in Dillon Beach, a remote town in western Marin County, is a second home for Maggi, a software designer who lives full time in Livermore, a hundred miles southeast.
He and his wife stay here a few weekends a month: Enough time to befriend neighbors and know the gossip, like who put in a new hot tub and who moved here to please a girlfriend despite hating the foggy weather.
“We’re not full-time residents,” Maggi said, “but we’re not absentee owners.”
“We’re really fortunate, and I get it,” Brian Maggi says of owning a second home in Dillon Beach. But he says cracking down on short-term rentals hasn’t made houses more affordable.
When Maggi is not using the house, he rents it on Airbnb for about $300 a night.
That’s a pretty common practice in Dillon Beach where, according to county estimates, a whopping 84% of the town’s 408 housing units are second homes and 31% are used as licensed short-term rentals.
Are those vacation rentals ruining California’s rugged little beach towns? Or are they opening up the coast to people who can’t afford to live there? Depends who you ask.
In Marin County, on the northern end of the San Francisco Bay, short-term rentals have become a lightning rod amid an affordable housing shortage in one of the most expensive — and beautiful — places in California.
This month, the Marin County Board of Supervisors approved a hard cap on the number of short-term rentals it will allow in unincorporated places, including the bucolic towns hugging iconic Highway 1 and the Point Reyes National Seashore.
The ordinance imposes a cap of 1,281 short-term rentals for unincorporated Marin County, where there were 923 licensed as of January.
The county has placed specific limits for 18 coastal communities, most of which will be allowed no more than the existing number of short-term rentals — while some will have to reduce their numbers. The exception is Dillon Beach, a historic vacation town where the short-term rental market will be allowed to significantly grow.
Dillon Beach homeowner Paul Martinez walks home after surfing. “Rent it responsibly,” Martinez says about owners renting out their houses when they are not in town.
Mounted surfboards add to the charm of this colorful home in Dillon Beach.
In Point Reyes Station, population 383, there are 32 short-term rentals, according to the county. Under the new rules, 26 will be allowed. In Stinson Beach, the cap will allow the amount of rentals that currently exist: 192.
In Dillon Beach, vacation rentals will be allowed to grow 63%, from 125 to 204. The town has no school and the only businesses are a resort and its general store, which supervisors noted make for a different kind of community than many of the other towns dotting the Marin coastline.
County officials said they expect the number of existing short-term rentals to shrink through attrition. Current license holders will have to reapply and adhere to stricter regulations, which can include expensive septic upgrades. The new rules allow just one short-term rental property per operator, and licenses will not transfer to new owners if a property sells.
Debate over the issue has raised questions not just about limited housing in Marin, but also about whether Airbnbs have become a critical means of providing public beach access — a right enshrined in the California Coastal Act — in seaside towns with few hotel rooms.
“Please do not codify this anti-visitor, exclusionary behavior. Do not turn a region dense in coastal public recreational lands into an exclusionary playground that only the elite can access,” Inverness resident Rachel Dinno Taylor, founder of the West Marin Access Coalition, a citizens group that fought the measure, said in a speech last month before the California Coastal Commission.
The Coastal Commission regulates development in the Coastal Zone — which is generally the first 1,000 yards from the shoreline but extends a few miles inland in some areas — and increasingly is weighing in on local efforts to limit short-term rentals.
If it weren’t for vacationers — who fill the village with laughter and kids and wagons and dogs — Dillon Beach would be dead most days, residents say.
“Vacation rentals can provide important public access to the coast, especially where hotels are scarce. But without thoughtful guidelines, they can also have unintended impacts on local housing availability,” Kate Huckelbridge, executive director of the Coastal Commission, said in a statement to The Times. “We think Marin County achieved the right balance for their unique and world-famous coastline.”
The West Marin Access Coalition, many of whose members rent out their homes and so have a financial stake in the debate, argued the county did not have enough data to prove short-term rentals directly affect housing availability. Many residents rely upon income generated by their rentals to afford staying in their homes, Sean Callagy, a member of the coalition, said in an email.
The county’s new policy, he wrote, will “create hardships for low- and middle-income residents, worsen housing insecurity and deny visitors access to the coast.”
An aerial view of Stinson Beach in Marin County.
For years, high-demand destinations across California — including Los Angeles city and county, Palm Springs, Malibu, Ojai and San Francisco — have tried to rein in rental platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo, citing the need to prevent housing from being converted into de facto hotel rooms .
In Marin County, the explosive growth in short-term rentals has been particularly divisive in smaller towns. There, the number of full-time residents is dwindling while millionaires’ second — and third — homes, many of which are used as seasonal rentals, sit empty much of the year.
That’s a cruel paradox when there are not enough affordable homes for people who work in those communities, proponents of the cap say.
In unincorporated Marin County, the median sales price of a single-family home rose 98% from 2013 to 2021, to $1.91 million, according to a countywide housing plan adopted last year.
“Housing affordability and housing supply were really the driving factor in why we’re addressing short-term rentals right now,” said Sarah Jones, director of the Marin County Community Development Agency. “There’s not housing being built. And the housing that’s available, people are just seeing that it’s more profitable and easier to use it as a short-term rental than to rent it out long term.”
Although Marin County has much open space, it has little room to expand housing. Roughly 85% of its land, including the Point Reyes National Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, is public space or agricultural land protected from development.
Marin County Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, who represents the scenic West Marin towns where vacation rentals are most heavily concentrated, said they have transformed “tiny communities where even losing a few homes is a big deal.”
“Our volunteer fire departments are losing volunteers,” he said. “Our schoolteachers, we’re having a hard time locating them in the community; they have to commute long distances.”
Visitors stroll through downtown Stinson Beach along Highway 1 in West Marin County.
The elementary school in Stinson Beach, he noted, is “having a hard time keeping its doors open” because so few children now live there. The town’s population, according to census data, plunged 38% from 2016 to 2022, to 371. In 2022, there were no children younger than 15.
According to county estimates, 27% of housing units in Stinson Beach are used as short-term rentals — many of which are in the gated neighborhood of Seadrift, a flood-prone sand spit.
The town has “become like Martha’s Vineyard on the West Coast,” said August Temer, co-owner of Breakers Cafe on Highway 1 in Stinson Beach. “It’s not people’s primary residence.”
August Temer, center, co-owner of Breakers Cafe in Stinson Beach, says as a business owner he likes Airbnbs and the tourists they bring. But it’s sad, he says, that his employees can’t afford to live in town.
Standing behind the outdoor bar on a windy afternoon last month, Temer, a 45-year-old who grew up in Stinson Beach, said that as a business owner he likes Airbnbs and the money-spending tourists they bring in. But it’s sad, he said, that none of his employees can afford to live in town and must commute — which makes it difficult to keep workers.
Mac Bonn, the general manager, said he drives 45 minutes “over the hill,” traversing a winding mountain road, to his home in Fairfax.
“We used to know this as very much a vibrant neighborhood,” says Bruce Bowser, seated with his wife, Marlie de Swart. “A lot if it’s thinned out. A lot of people are older and have passed or moved on.”
In nearby Bolinas, artist Marlie de Swart and husband Bruce Bowser welcomed the new rules, telling the Coastal Commission in a letter that their town “is being changed from a characteristic village to a vacation rental suburb.”
The county ordinance limits the number of short-term rentals in Bolinas to 54. There are now 63.
The septuagenarian couple bought their century-old house with picture windows and redwood ceilings in downtown Bolinas in 1992 for about $230,000. They were stunned when a nearby house recently sold for nearly $3 million after its owner died.
Alas, Google Maps directed tourists to Bolinas. And the Airbnbs kept them there.
Bolinas residents say neighbors have been replaced by short-term guests and empty second homes, making the town feel more like a vacation rental suburb than a cozy hometown.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
During the summers, De Swart said, the town is overrun by visitors whose cars idle on narrow streets for more than an hour as they wait to park. Neighbors have been replaced by short-term guests and empty second homes.
“We used to know this as very much a vibrant neighborhood,” Bowser said. “A lot if it’s thinned out. A lot of people are older and have passed or moved on. We used to look out on this valley, and there were a lot of lights at night. Now, it’s mostly dark.”
Sitting on the couple’s living room table was a copy of the Point Reyes Light newspaper. On Page 11 was a classified ad that read: “In Search of Affordable Home,” placed by their friend, Tess Elliott, the newspaper’s publisher.
“We are the publishers of the Point Reyes Light and the assistant fire chief at the Inverness Fire Department,” the ad reads. “Please help us become permanent residents and continue to contribute to the place we love.”
Elliott, 44, said she and her husband have been running such ads for years. The mother of two young children, Elliott and her family live in an Inverness house that has been “rented to us at well below market rate” for the last decade by “a generous family.”
“It’s very fragile,” she said of life as a renter in Inverness, a town of 1,500 on the Tomales Bay with 93 registered short-term rentals. “People with kids, like us, can only take that so long. You want some stability. You want to invest in a property.”
Lately, she said, “we aren’t feeling very hopeful.”
Frank Leahy, a software engineer, bought his house a mile northwest of the newspaper office in 2020 and got a short-term rental license just before the county, in 2022, enacted a two-year moratorium on new operating licenses.
Leahy and his wife live full time in Inverness. But they travel a few weeks a year and list their house, with a bocce court out front, on Airbnb for $300 to $500 a night. Leahy said the county clamped down too broadly on short-term rental owners, conflating those who rent their homes full time and others who, like him, only rent a few weeks a year.
“I can name people who live up and down the street. If those were just rentals? It would be kind of weird,” he said. “I don’t have a problem with people wanting to rent out their home for a short amount of time.”
Leahy said short-term rentals are being scapegoated for the housing shortage in a place where it is prohibitively difficult to build.
About four years before they bought their home, he and his wife purchased an empty hillside lot nearby, planning to build a house. It took years to get all of the permits and to have the required bird, bat, geological and traffic surveys done. During that time, the cost to build rose by several hundred thousand dollars, he said. They gave up and sold the land.
On a chilly Wednesday morning last month, Dillon Beach was virtually silent — save for the plop-plop of sandals worn by a lone wetsuit-clad surfer walking home, and the tinkling of raindrops on Maggi’s windows.
With its gloomy weather, bad cell service and lack of jobs, Dillon Beach, on the south end of Bodega Bay, isn’t for everyone, Maggi said.
“A lot of the bugs in this place are its feature,” said Maggi, 54. “There’s no town. There’s no main drag. … This place has always been made of vacation homes. It’s not conducive to full-time living. It’s really far from everything.”
If it weren’t for vacationers — who fill the village with laughter and kids and wagons and dogs — the place would be dead most days, he said.
Maggi and his wife bought the house in 2020, when they and their adult children were going stir-crazy amid the pandemic. It was a financial stretch, but renting it out has helped. A gregarious Illinois native, Maggi joked that he had become a “California cliche” — a middle-aged guy with a beach house, a cool van, a border collie mix and a surfboard, even though he can’t surf well.
“We’re really fortunate, and I get it,” he said. But he finds it “kind of shameless” for the county to use the affordable housing crisis to justify cracking down on short-term rentals. The two-year ban on new licenses, he said, did not suddenly make houses cheap.
“You had this moratorium!” he said with a laugh. “How’s your affordable housing going?”
If the coast of California is a state asset worth trillions of dollars — and it is — why is the state agency that has successfully protected that asset for 50 years under assault? The answer — “unnecessary permitting delays” — is unfounded. Yet California’s exceptional history of coastal protection is in greater jeopardy today in the halls of our state Capitol than it has been for generations.
Like water flowing downhill, California’s incomparable coast has always been a magnet for development. In 1972, with this in mind, the voters of California overwhelmingly approved Proposition 20, a ballot initiative that set in motion the 1976 California Coastal Act. Unlike South Florida, the Jersey Shore or other coastal regions devoured by privatization, the California coast was by law given special protection: The coastal zone would be developed not as an enclave for the wealthy but for everyone’s use, with provisions for protecting its natural resources and its breathtaking beauty.
The California Coastal Commission was created to enforce the act with a specific charge to balance the needs of the ecosystem with the need for public access and economic development, including affordable housing. It works like this: Local jurisdictions come up with coastal plans that the commission must approve. Once a plan is in place, development permits are handled by the city, town or county, although those decisions can be appealed to and by the commission.
Over the years, the Coastal Commission has successfully defended public access to the beach in Malibu, Half Moon Bay, Carlsbad and other towns. It has helped preserve state parks, open space along the coast and the beach itself — denying permits for oil drilling, more than one luxury resort, an LNG port (in Oxnard) and a toll road (at San Onofre Beach). In 2019, it fined a developer nearly $15.6 million for replacing, without a permit, two low-cost hotels along Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica with a boutique hotel.
Predictably, this process has often been in the bull’s-eye of Coastal Act critics, and while the rationale may vary with the moment, their goal remains the same: To weaken oversight by the commission and return land-use control entirely to local governments.
Today, low affordable housing supply along the coast is the basis for attack. In legislation introduced in January, with a purpose of “resolving unnecessary permitting delays in the disproportionately low-housing Coastal Zone,” state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) has proposed an unprecedented carve out of 23.5% of the coastal zone in San Francisco. Specifically, Senate Bill 951 would delete from commission oversight residential areas on the city’s western edge, as well as a piece of Golden Gate Park. As the first significant coastal zone reduction in more than 40 years, this attack on the commission could set a dangerous precedent that would invite similar carve outs from San Diego to Santa Monica to Crescent City.
Last month, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted overwhelmingly to oppose SB 951, and, one day later, the Coastal Commission, by unanimous vote, did the same.
The existential threat that this legislation poses to the Coastal Act and the entire California coast is undeniable. Among numerous commission responsibilities affected, SB 951 ignores the agency’s essential role in planning for sea-level rise adaptation along San Francisco’s increasingly vulnerable coast. And it seems no mere coincidence that the excluded area includes land proposed for a controversial 50-story condominium and commercial project in the flats of the Outer Sunset neighborhood north of the San Francisco Zoo.
The claim that the Coastal Commission is responsible for housing inequity in the coastal zone, though long on rhetoric, is belied by the historical record. Indeed, when the Coastal Act became law in 1976, it required that “housing for persons of low and moderate income shall be protected, encouraged, and, where feasible, provided.” The commission actively complied, approving or protecting from demolition more than 7,100 affordable units between 1977 and 1981 and collecting an estimated $2 million in “in lieu” fees to support affordable housing.
But in 1981, the state Legislature amended the Coastal Act to remove the commission’s affordable housing authority. Contrary to the claim of “unnecessary permitting delays” on which SB 951 is based — only two coastal development permits in San Francisco have been appealed to the commission in 38 years — it is this amendment, and the fact that developers prefer to build high-end projects, that has produced today’s affordable housing deficit in the coastal zone. As then-Coastal Commission Chair Leonard Grote warned in 1981, “The passage of this bill would make sure that the ability to live near the coast is reserved for the wealthy.” And so it has.
If increasing the supply of affordable housing near California’s coast is actually the goal of SB 951, then restoring, not reducing, the commission’s authority is needed. It was a mistake in 1981 to remove the commission’s power to require that projects it approved included affordable housing, and it’s a mistake in 2024 to expect that diminishing the coastal zone will right that wrong.
The California Coastal Commission has an extraordinary record of success in protecting California’s most valuable environmental and economic resource, and its regulatory role is as essential today as it has ever been. SB 951 would weaken, not promote, equal access to that resource, and it threatens to erode, perhaps irrevocably, the most successful coastal management program in the country.
Joel Reynolds is western director and senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Santa Monica. Tom Soto is a former alternate member of the California Coastal Commission and a Natural Resources Defense Council board member.
ENCINITAS, Calif., July 19, 2019 (Newswire.com)
– On March 7, 2019, Coastal Commission Staff denied Andre Hurst permit to rebuild his 70-year-old home. In the denial of Andre Hurst for his coastal permit for reconstruction of his home, the Coastal Commission staff asserts that the new home will be unsafe.
The most important statement in the Staff Report is buried on page 33 is: “The Commission staff geologist and senior coastal engineer have reviewed the site geology and the submitted analysis and determined that with the existing shore and bluff protection, the site is stable for purposes of constructing the proposed home from a geologist’s perspective.”
The City’s geotechnical engineer (James Knowlton, E.G. 1045); the applicant’s geotechnical engineer (Walter Crampton, GE 245, CE 23792); the engineer who designed the shoreline protection (John Niven, PE 57917); the wave impact engineer (David Skelley, RCE 47857); and the Commission’s own experts, Joseph Street and Leslie Ewing, are all in agreement that the proposed home is sited in a stable location with a 40 foot setback from the bluff edge due to the existing shoreline protection permitted by the Commission.
Despite the universal expert opinion that the site is stable, the Staff recommends denial alleging that the Encinitas LCP prohibits relying on lawful shoreline devices into account when determining stability. “The City’s certified LCP does not allow for new development to rely on existing shoreline armoring. (LUP Policy 16(e) [armoring solely for existing structures]” Staff Report p. 17. The past decisions of this Commission, along with numerous other reasons, show Staff’s statement is untrue, according to Andre Hurst’s attorney. There is a long history of homes approved on Encinitas bluffs. In addition, at the hearing for Mr. Hurst’s application, Chairperson Donna Bochco asserted that the “I also don’t think it even makes sense for us to say that the seawall cannot be counted towards the setback for disallowing … or protecting from erosion because it’s there and we can’t take it out and we can’t make them do that for many reasons.”
Despite these facts in the report, Coastal Commission still denied Mr. Hurst’s application to rebuild his home.
ENCINITAS, Calif., July 18, 2019 (Newswire.com)
– ENCINITAS, Calif., July 18, 2019 (Newswire) -On March 7, 2019, Coastal Commission Staff denied Andre Hurst permit to rebuild his 70-year-old home. In analyzing the staff report the coastal commission staff asserts that the Encinitas LCP prohibits relying on shoreline protection and that this view is consistent with past city and commission actions.
Reliance on existing shoreline protective structures is consistent with past city and commission actions. Only four (4) homes in Encinitas relying on existing shoreline protection have been proposed. Each was approved by the City or the Commission.
a. CDP Nos. 01-196 (Contino) and 01-197 (Quattro) Were Approved and Not Appealed for 566 and 560 Neptune Avenue. The property at 560 Neptune and 566 Neptune is protected by a previously approved shoreline protective structure for an existing home. The shoreline protective structures were approved on June 10, 1999 in Coastal CDP 6-99-041 and on December 19, 2002 in City CDP 09-078. City CDP No. 01-196 (Contino) and City CDP 01-197 (Quattro) approved on December 16, 2004, authorized the demolition of the existing house and the construction of two new homes. Each of these homes (1) has a basement; (2) is set back 40 feet; and (3) was analyzed by the City for stability taking into account the approved shoreline protection, without which stability could not be established. No appeal of the City permits was initiated by the Commission Staff. If the Commission Staff believed that the LCP required that existing shoreline protective structures could not be relied upon, there would have been an appeal.
b. The Coastal Commission Rejected a Staff Recommendation to Ignore Shoreline Protection for 820 and 828 Neptune (A-6-ENC-09-40/A-6-ENC-09-41) (Okun). The property at 820 Neptune and 828 Neptune is protected by approved shoreline protective structures. (CDP 6-05-030) , The Okun property is 50 feet away from the Hurst property at 808 Neptune. The City approved the demolition of the existing Okun home which spanned two lots and the construction of a new home on each of the two lots. (City CDP 07-155, City CDP 08-073). Each new home has a basement. Each lot is 50 feet wide, the exact dimension of the Hurst property. The City relied upon the stability provided by lawfully erected shoreline protective structures. The Commission appealed the City decision for Okun. The Commission Staff took the new position that the Encinitas LCP prohibited using existing lawful shoreline protective structures to establish stability. The Commission rejected the Staff Recommendation for Okun and approved both homes with setbacks of 40 feet and basements exactly as approved by the City.
c. The Commission Has Approved Seawalls for More Than 40 Properties in Encinitas Without Limiting What Uses the Seawalls may Serve. Between 1995 and 2004, in more than 20 separate CDPs, the Commission approved seawalls along the Encinitas bluff. There were more than 20 staff reports and more than 20 public hearings. In no case did the Commission impose a condition prohibiting reliance on the seawall for redevelopment of any property. In no case did the Commission make findings that the Encinitas LCP would prohibit the future on development of any property to rely on the approved seawall.
In Andre Hurst attorney’s opinion, if the Encinitas LCP prohibited reliance on existing approved seawalls at some point in this 10 year period, the Commission or the Commission Staff would have stated it. But the Commission record is consistently silent about the application of the Encinitas LCP urged by the Staff Report for Hurst.
