La Quinta Testing Noise Compliance Program; Aimed At Mitigating STVR Complaints

The City of La Quinta has recently spent a significant amount of time addressing short-term rental complaints. As the city decides on whether new short-term rental permits will stay, a new program has come into play, a program aimed at mitigating noise complaints. "I am opposed 100% to short-term vacation rentals. we have simply too many to control and it seems to me that most of the people that have bought homes are asking the city to protect their investment," explained Alan Woodruff, La Quinta Resident. "Yes there is a moratorium based on Covid, so we took from something that was really driven from that Covid-19 perspective and then moved it into homeowner complaint," explained Kristen Perry STVR homeowner in La Quinta. The short-term rental debate re-ignited in La Quinta, the city council taking up the issue at a recent meeting, but homeowners are still unsure of the solution. "From my perspective the way they walked away from it is, they are not willing to make a decision," said Kristen Perry, STVR home-owner in La Quinta. Perry owns a permitted vacation rental property in La Quinta, it’s one of 25 properties the city has selected to participate in a special pilot program. "If there’s a noise event and it reaches above a certain threshold for a certain amount of time, then the homeowner gets an alert and says hey your tenants are being too loud, and so this give a chance for the homeowner to address the noise before it escalates," said Jaime Torres, Community Resources Analyst with La Quinta. The city hopes to reduce the noise complaints that have continued to pile up over the past year. "We reached out to three of the biggest vendors in the noise compliance industry. Each of these vendors has a device that helps monitor and track noise and our goal with this is to basically see whether these devices are effective," added Torres. Perry welcomes the program and says so far, so good. "I’ve had people in our permitted homes since we put those in and I keep bringing the noise monitoring down thinking maybe I’m not missing them. and I’ve yet to even get an alert and I have them at half of what the recommended setting is," said Perry. Results on the pilot program are expected in late June or July after 90 days, and those findings will determine if the devices will become mandatory on all vacation rental properties.