LAKE COUNTY — Some local vacation rental owners are renting rooms to essential workers from outside Lake County amid ongoing statewide shelter-in-place orders.
Despite the fact that hotels and lodgings for leisure and tourism purposes continue to be barred during the second stage of California’s “Resilience Roadmap” for economic recovery from the coronavirus lockdown, local providers of online services like Airbnb and VRBO continue to cater to some guests. These include essential out-of-county workers like healthcare workers, and some residents are questioning whether this has left Lake County more open to COVID-19 transmission.
“The governor has said nonessential, vacation travel is still prohibited,” said Lake County Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace in an email response to this newspaper last week. “We are trying to limit out of area travel for obvious public health reasons, this includes hotels, Airbnb, and VRBO. When it comes to our attention that people are in violation, they are contacted. I’m not aware that we have had to enact a penalty. People generally seem to comply when educated in the issues at hand.”
Lake County resident Skip Anderson sent an email in the last week of March to the vacation rental website’s support team. “You idiots!!! Stop breaking the law! There is a California Stay at home order! Renting out local Airbnb properties to Bay Area residents may infect Lake County. We don’t need this. You are risking our lives to make money,” he wrote in the email, although it was not clear if he was addressing his complaint to the company in order to compel them to reduce the amount of listings on the website. Anderson did not return requests for clarification, but similar concerns have been expressed by other local residents.
“With immense appreciation for everyone’s wish to be in the fresh air, enjoying our beautiful county and recreating on Clear Lake, now is NOT the time to visit Lake County,” officials wrote in a press release last month, adding that visitors should remain at their primary residences and refrain from traveling to Lake County for non-essential activities, even if they own a vacation home here.
“If you are renting out your home through Airbnb, VRBO, or any other rental agency, please immediately remove your listing to help protect our community,” the official communication from the county went on to state.
This message appears to have gone mostly unheeded as a recent search on the rental website Airbnb showed multiple listings in Clearlake, Lakeport, the Northshore and various other locales around the lake. Some asked out of town guests if the purpose of their stay was to visit local retreat centers, while others touted “rare finds” for as little as $40 per night.
However, a recent investigation by a Record-Bee reporter posing as a traveling essential worker resulted in more than a half dozen local Airbnb and VRBO hosts responding to travel inquiries about rentals throughout Lake County. Some hosts’ responses indicated they were not adhering to, or seemingly overlooking, the requirement that restrict rental bookings to essential workers only.
One host said her property was available to be rented, but documentation from the Lake County Department of Health would need to be provided, otherwise she could risk fines. Another said his property was occupied until the middle of June by traveling nurses. In sharp contrast to such rental owners, who appeared to be limiting their guests to essential workers only—one host told this newspaper’s undercover “guest,” upon being informed that he had forgotten his I.D. and documentation in a neighboring county, that no identification was necessary to identify him as an essential worker. The “guest” was told that the property could still be rented for up to 10 days.
After a recent meeting of the Board of Supervisors, Chair Moke Simon said, “I live in South Lake County and close enough to [Highway 29] that I see traffic coming and going every day. On weekends, (the activity often) increases. There are places in our county, including the Middletown and Hidden Valley Lake areas, that are bedroom communities, and those people regularly travel to areas where viral activity is greater.”
Simon added that In both Lake and Mendocino Counties, (confirmed infections) have come from contact with known cases out of the area. “If people don’t think the COVID-19 threat is real in Lake County, we’re kidding ourselves. From day one, my concern has been the health and safety of our communities, and reopening our economy will bring more people from out of the area.”
However, Simon acknowledged the level and nature of the risks Lake County is facing are not the same throughout the State of California since Los Angeles and San Francisco are more densely populated areas with a wider spread of infections in comparison to the County of Lake’s eight confirmed cases.
The Board of Supervisors had discussed the problems associated with potentially limiting entrance into the county from people who live outside the area at their meeting on March 24, prior to the first announced case in Lake County and the last time the entire board met in person prior to switching to virtual meetings.
At a virtual town hall meeting in March, Lake County Sheriff Brian Martin stated the county could not legally prevent people who own vacation homes and other properties from coming into the county to check in on their homes, but that they were still bound by shelter-in-place orders when they got into the county.
Medical community response
A spokesperson for Sutter Lakeside Hospital in Lakeport sated, “Sutter facilities have put in place safety measures, including universal masking for anyone in our facilities, visitor restrictions (with a few exceptions); keeping patients with COVID-19 symptoms away from common waiting areas, entrances and other patients; and arranging for environmental services staff to perform extra cleaning and disinfecting. All staff and visitors are screened for symptoms and temperature upon arrival, and patients are screened to ensure they are directed to appropriate care.”
According to Laurie Anne Allen, Communications Manager for Clearlake Adventist Health, normally out-of-county employees at the hospital are committed to long term schedules and are living in the county for up to six months at a time. “It depends on their schedule, but it’s not like they are traveling out-of-county every single day,” she said. Allen said everyone is screened when they come into the building and visitors have been restricted to pediatric patients accompanied by their parents or caregivers.
“Every employee is screened regardless of whether that employee lives outside of the area, their temperature is taken, they are screened for symptoms. We have over 600 employees so I am not aware of where every employee lives,” she said, adding that there is now increased testing countywide. “Public health is taking care of the contact tracing but we have only had eight cases confirmed and none here at Adventist Health. So far the county has done an excellent job of staying on top of that.”
