Avila Beach Committee member Vicki Book misses having familiar next-door neighbors. Over the years, the homes dotting her surroundings have evolved into vacation rentals, eating away at the beach town’s stock of long-term housing.
“I don’t have a problem with vacation rentals, what I have a problem with is not having neighbors, of having empty houses that aren’t occupied,” Book said. “It makes it hard; there’s not community here.”
As a subcommittee of the Avila Valley Advisory Council, the Avila Beach Committee faced a dilemma early this year when the San Luis Obispo County Planning Department reached out with a request from 215 1st St. property owner Erik Vasquez to amend an existing condition that limits vacation rentals to one studio unit on-site.
According to Book, Vasquez wanted to convert all nine units into vacation rentals—which doesn’t align with the local short-term rental regulation that new vacation rentals can’t be within 50 feet of an existing one.
Book’s owned her Avila Beach home since 1989. She runs a portion of it as a vacation rental herself—a way for her children to pay for its maintenance once they eventually inherit the property. She alleged that the county doesn’t regulate vacation rentals equitably.
“When I wanted to remodel my house, I couldn’t add more than 25 percent of the square feet. I couldn’t change anything or if anyone complained, I would have to put it back the way it was,” she said. “And I’m not offered an amendment, but an LLC guy comes in and wants to change something, and it’s, ‘Oh well, you can do an amendment.’ That really pissed me off.”
In January, Vasquez of HDFT Investments applied to the county Planning Department to change the coastal development permit that identified a sole unit as the only allowable vacation rental on the property that sits a few blocks away from the beach.
This isn’t his first brush with frustrated Avila Beach residents. In 2020, he tried to get the same condition amended for a project at 217 1st St.
Project construction replaced three existing residences with seven residential townhomes and one studio spanning four buildings. The county Planning Commission limited vacation rentals to just the studio after Avila Beach residents complained about the property’s potential to host short-term visitors.
The Planning Commission denied Vasquez’s request to repeal the condition, which the Board of Supervisors upheld after an appeal in 2021.
Now, a similar review process is brewing for the 215 1st St. property that’s located within the residential multi-family land use category. Vasquez didn’t respond to New Times’ request for comment.
Planning Department Deputy Director Mark LaRue told New Times that the county, like any agency with land use authority, can’t prohibit an applicant from proposing a project. Planning Department staff will review Vasquez’s permit application and make a recommendation to the Planning Commission for approval, modification, or denial.
Any subsequent vacation rental proposed on Vasquez’s property must comply with Title 23 of the Coastal Zone Land Use Ordinance that dictates elements like traffic volume, noise, the number of occupants allowed, and the distance between new and existing rentals.
Book told New Times that the increasing number of vacation rentals in Avila Beach goes against the vision for the small beach town as laid out in its 26-year-old specific plan.
“The Avila Beach Specific Plan envisions Avila Beach as a fun, funky, and eclectic place widely known for its weather, its beautiful, south-facing beach and its mix of shops and homes,” the plan reads. “The charming and quaint town will continue to be filled with people who value its serenity and isolation.”
“When residential properties became business opportunities, it really started to present challenges for our authorities like our county Planning and Building Department, for us at the board, for the communities itself.”
—Dawn Ortiz-Legg, SLO County 3rd District supervisor
But that all changed with the onset of the internet, according to 3rd District Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg.
“When residential properties became business opportunities, it really started to present challenges for our authorities like our county Planning and Building Department, for us at the board, for the communities itself,” she said. “We’re still working on trying to figure out a good balance.”
Ortiz-Legg added that a combination of initiatives must be enacted to achieve that equilibrium, starting with raising the cost of having a vacation rental.
Last year, the Board of Supervisors approved an annual review fee for all short-term rentals starting January 2026.
Separate from a business license fee, the short-term rental fee will cover costs to manage more than 2,200 registered license holders in unincorporated SLO County. The annual fee will also support code enforcement staff who monitor unlicensed vacation rentals that don’t comply with land use regulations and business license requirements.
Ortiz-Legg also mentioned the possibility of creating a compliance system that tracks whether a vacation rental’s occupants and overseers are good neighbors. A “use it or lose it system” could be implemented in the future, too, which penalizes people who have vacation rentals but don’t rent them out often enough throughout the year.
“One of the things that we have is we don’t have any consistency in our vacation rental rules,” Ortiz-Legg said. “In Los Osos, when I was on the Planning Commission, we actually put a cap on the number of vacation rentals because of the fear of losing more of the workforce housing. … That’s really the only place where we’ve put a cap.”
For Avila Beach Committee Chair Mary Matakovich, the increasing number of vacation rentals leaves the beach town with a smaller pool of full-time residents who can represent the community at advisory council meetings.
Of the 400 water bills sent out by the Avila Beach Community Services District, 288 are mailed to people who live outside the community, she added.
“We just realized that the reason why we can’t find anybody to volunteer is we have such a shortage in terms of the number of available people that aren’t connected to second homes,” Matakovich said. “We just want people that are open-minded and will come and talk through any issues that surface at the advisory council level.” ∆
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in March 12-19, 2026.
In my community of Oceano we have the same problems and are the only Coastal town to have no vacation rental ordinance–other than Coastal Commission and County guidelines. Our County advisory council fully supports more vaycay home rentals and actually snubbed an invitation from the Coastal Commission to comment on the issue. Maybe that is because some members of the Oceano Council own multiple vacation rentals. The same Council members say they support more affordable housing. As President of the original Oceano Advisory Council, I drafted a Vacation Rental Ordinance for our community which was reviewed in public hearings. Ex-Supervisor Compton said the OAC was overreaching our authority and killed the 40 year old advisory group. She then created the new advisory group which has never seen a vacay re-zone or newly proposed one they did not like.