In South Lake Tahoe, owners of second homes are being offered cash to open their properties to local renters for up to a year, a move aimed at easing the resort city’s affordable housing crunch for workers. But the incentive comes with firm conditions.
The effort is part of South Lake Tahoe’s Long-Term Rental Incentive Program, known as LTR. Property owners who commit their second homes to a 12-month lease can receive $4,500 from the city, while those who make a property available for a six-month lease can qualify for $2,000.
According to the city, “The goal of the program is to increase the supply of long-term rental housing available for moderate and low-income households” by paying owners willing to turn spare rooms, vacation properties, or second homes into longer-term rentals for periods ranging from six months to a full year.
The program is not open to every property owner. To qualify, the second property must be located within the City of South Lake Tahoe and must meet a set of specific requirements.
Among the required qualifications are:
• The unit must be legally permitted and comply with health and safety standards.
• Eligible properties include single-family homes, townhomes, condos, and vacant rooms inside owner-occupied homes.
• Owners must sign either a six-month or 12-month lease with qualified tenants.
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The biggest catch is that the city decides how much property owners can charge, with rent set at no more than $3,500 for units with 1 bedroom or more.
The city also said the home also can’t have been a long-term rental within the last 18 months.
Tenants can qualify if their average household income is “no more than 125% AMI ($79,688 for an individual in El Dorado County, 2021 standard).”
The city also only wants to rent these homes to working adults, with at least 50% of the home occupied by adult tenants, who work in the South Shore area at least 20 hours or more a week.
There’s a severe housing crisis in the city, with the affordable housing waitlist having grown dramatically in South Lake Tahoe, the Daily Tribune reported.
It is quite the opposite situation from what’s happening across the country in New York, where millionaire homeowners are being targeted for having more than one home.
New Yorkers were seething this week after Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration alerted them they’d be on the hook for the state’s new pied-à-terre tax — which was explicitly sold as a levy targeting wealthy owners of luxury second homes.
Longtime residents — some who have called the Big Apple home for decades and own a single abode in the city — told The Post they were shocked to get hit with five-figure tax bills they believe were mistakenly mailed out, and are now being forced to navigate a bureaucratic labyrinth to prove it.
The tax is meant to apply to one-to-three family homes worth at least $5 million and co-ops and condominiums valued at $1 million or more — that are unoccupied, non-primary residences, according to the legislation approved by Albany lawmakers and NY Gov. Kathy Hochul this spring.
Mamdani touted the surcharge as making good on his campaign promise to “tax the rich”, while longtime residents claimed it was nothing more than a shakedown.
