Steve Weil’s family has owned a cabin in South Lake Tahoe since 1957.
First, it was a vacation home for his grandparents, who lived in the Bay Area, then a getaway place for his parents, when they lived in Long Beach. Weil’s mother later moved there and took her final breaths in the home, surrounded by family. Some of her ashes were spread on the property.
Weil is now the owner of the single-story house, nestled between trees and less than two miles from the shores of Lake Tahoe. He lives in Carson City, Nevada, but uses the home occasionally. So do his two adult children.
When Weil, 73, learned about the November ballot measure that seeks to tax owners of infrequently used homes in the city , it felt like an attack on his property rights and his family’s history.
“It’s mine,” he said. “I should be able to do with it what I want.”
For many residents and frequent visitors, the proposed vacancy tax, called Measure N, is an assault — on a way of life that has made South Lake Tahoe such an attractive place, on the story of their homes, and on people who would be taxed but can’t vote on it because they primarily live somewhere else.
The response has been vociferous: Protests on street corners, angry comments at town hall meetings and on social media, and a flood of money from state and national real estate groups. At the heart of the measure are existential questions about one of the state’s crown jewels: Who gets to live near Lake Tahoe? And at what cost?
“This is probably the most controversial issue I’ve ever seen in Tahoe,” said Tom Davis, 78, a former councilman and mayor who has lived in the area since 1971 and is a critic of the initiative.
If Measure N passes, owners of houses and apartments would be penalized $3,000 if their properties are occupied less than half of a year. The penalty would increase to $6,000 annually in subsequent years if the homes remain mostly unused — a cost that could grow in the future because the tax has no cap and is tied to inflation.
Supporters of the penalty say it has several benefits. It encourages people to stay in their homes more often or to rent them — perhaps to workers that keep the city’s tourist economy humming but can’t afford to live in the community. If someone decides to keep their home mostly empty, and pay the tax, the money it generates could be used to build more affordable housing.
Homes in city more expensive, vacant
South Lake Tahoe’s mild summers and snow-filled winters create a beautiful setting year-round, and attract swarms of visitors throughout the year.
The city has about 21,300 residents, but has long drawn teachers, government officials and utility workers in the Bay Area and Sacramento who have bought more modest homes to spend weekends and holidays and, like Weil, pass them down through generations.
That has helped create a community with roughly 6,180 houses, apartments and other units that are used only occasionally, according to a 2022 estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau. That was a 14% increase from a decade earlier. Some neighborhoods are filled with homes that regularly have empty driveways and no lights on inside, even during the busy summer season.
At the same time, the cost of buying a home in the city has increased rapidly. The median value of owner-occupied properties was $571,700 in 2022, according to the census, an almost 53% increase from five years earlier.
“This is an unsustainable path that we are on,” said City Councilman Scott Robbins, an outspoken backer of the initiative. “We have to stem this tide of the hollowing out of our community.”
Robbins, 45, has been a frequent target of Measure N’s opponents. In one example, a fellow city councilmember called him a “rogue,” in an opinion piece for a local newspaper.
In an interview, he countered that the personal attacks were a sign the opposition doesn’t have good arguments.
On a summer evening, the councilman walked through an apartment complex to talk with residents. He came upon the door of Jennifer Buckley.
Clutching a clipboard with flyers, Robbins asked if Buckley would support the measure.
“We’re trying to solve the housing crisis here,” he said.
Buckley, 39 and a single mother of three children under 16 years old, already knew about the proposed vacancy tax. She was working as a server at a restaurant in the city, and customers were regularly asking her about it, she said.
Buckley hadn’t decided how she would vote, but she was supportive of the idea.
“I’ve lived here since I was 3 years old, and it’s not affordable anymore.”
If workers in service industry jobs aren’t able to live in the area, she added, “how is this town going to stay a beautiful tourist destination?”
Robbins and other supporters of the initiative see it as a way to help keep people like Buckley in South Lake Tahoe. It could eventually generate more than $10 million a year, a city consultant estimated, creating a significant new funding source for housing.
The idea of having more affordable places to live excited Bella Wigart, 19, while working at a city marina on a summer day.
Wigart was born and raised in South Lake Tahoe but said she couldn’t afford to live there. Instead, she commuted about an hour from Carson City to the marina. She said she also had jobs at a golf course and watching over pets and young children.
“I want to live here so bad.”
Well-funded opposition
Although Measure N has largely been campaigned for as an affordable housing initiative, it does not mandate the money it generates be used for such projects. It can also pay for road work, transit and the cost of collecting and enforcing the tax.
Opponents say the lack of certainty of how much money will be spent on housing is a reason to vote against the tax. They also warn that the measure will create a costly new city bureaucracy, and they call it a major invasion of privacy that could lead neighbors to rat each other out.
The initiative would require owners of apartments and houses to file paperwork annually declaring them either vacant or not vacant. The city also has to come up with an auditing process to verify those claims.
The opposition is supported by the national and California Realtors associations, which together have contributed more than $900,000 to a committee trying to defeat the measure.
“We are the voice for real estate, and we’re the voice for the property owner,” said Sharon Kerrigan, executive vice president of the South Tahoe Association of Realtors, which is affiliated with the national and state organizations.
Amelia Richmond, who co-founded Locals for Affordable Housing, the group behind the initiative, argues that the outside money is sowing division and confusion.
Campaign advertisements put out by the opposition show images of people that look like they have been generated by artificial intelligence. Steve Teshara, a spokesman for the anti-Measure N campaign, and director of government relations for the Tahoe Chamber, acknowledged that they were computer-generated, but added: “This is not the issue. The issue is it’s a bad measure.”
Even with deep-pocketed backers, opponents of the initiative have shared concerns about winning the battle over messaging. Richmond, 37, worked as a spokesperson for what is now the Palisades Tahoe ski resort and has sent out several polished press releases about the measure.
“Our community is not for sale to the highest bidder,” she said in one last month. “We need real solutions that protect our community from being gutted by rising vacancy rates and increasing vacation homes.”
One critic of Measure N likened her to Vito Corleone, the fictional character played by Marlon Brando in “The Godfather” (whose family, incidentally, owned a lakefront Tahoe vacation home).
John Raleigh, 70, calls Richmond, and other backers of the tax, bullies. He said they are trying to push people out of the city.
“We feel like it’s theft,” Raleigh, a South Lake Tahoe resident, said on a summer day.
He was visiting his friend Tom Spencer, who hates the vacancy tax so much that he attached a professionally made sign to his 22-foot pontoon boat urging people to vote against it. Spencer said he had been taking the boat out more regularly so he could get the word out.
Spencer’s home is in the Tahoe Keys neighborhood, which features rows of properties along canals and sweeping views of nearby mountains and open space. He lives there part of the year but also has a home in Nevada, where he is registered to vote.
Spencer, 77, declined to say how much of the year he spends in his Tahoe Keys home but said he could “absolutely” be subject to the tax.
He supports the goal of having more affordable housing in the city.
“The issue is how they’re doing it.”
High voter interest
The threat of having to pay the penalty has led some property owners to think creatively about how they could get around it. County officials are watching closely .
Bill O’Neill, El Dorado County’s top election official, said his office is monitoring voter rolls after a letter was distributed to some property owners encouraging them to change where they were registered so they could cast a ballot on the initiative. The elections office has already identified over 180 suspicious registrations, O’Neill said, and has shared its findings with the county’s district attorney’s office. The city has roughly 11,900 registered voters.
“I understand the passion around it,” O’Neill said. “I don’t want either side to put themselves in a position that calls the legitimacy of the election into question.”
For all the anger over the tax, not all people who could have to pay it are unwilling to do so.
C.T. Rowe owns a home in the city and works at a sporting goods store.
He also owns a property in Boonville, near Ukiah, where he was born and grew up. Rowe, 50, said he and his wife have considered living there full-time.
If that were the case, and his South Lake Tahoe home sat empty, Rowe said he would pay the tax.
“It’s a public benefit.”
Rowe was 19 when he moved to South Lake Tahoe. He loves to snowboard and rented a two-bedroom apartment with a friend. Now, he sees young people, including his coworkers, struggling to get a foothold in the community, like he did.
“I want those 19-year-olds to move to Tahoe,” he said, “and I want to help them.”
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