Oh now, another, yet ANOTHER, sacking of Haeder in this at-will, predatory capitalist world. And the confluence of a multi-millionaire guy and his wife running short term rental homes (vacation homes) in a county with failing infrastructure, bad traffic, no housing for the working class, and an environment that is already overrun by people.
The idea was to get active in my town and so I applied and got the delivery-guy job, at that whooping $17 an hour. Their truck, just a short walk to the main warehouse, and alas, exercise and taking me away from my ranting and rampant disgust of almost all things America, all this Western Civ (sic) and all things tied to genocide. The op-ed will appear in the local newspaper, without me naming the outfit, but there is only one outfit that fits the description of running over a hundred rental units for vacationers.
The outfit even owns townhouses, a small boutique 8-unit hotel, and a few homes. The dude made his money from Louie Louie, the song, and his wife is bringing hundreds of thousands a year as provost of UN of Las Vegas. I answered this ad:
Why do I write about this for Dissident Voice, given there is so much hell to pay in the world, geopolitically and war-wise? Because as a groundtruther, I have consistently written about my own work as a social worker, case manager for houseless youth, adults, and veterans; as a part-time college instructor; as a sustainability coordinator; as a K12 substitute teacher; as a newspaper journalist; and as a union organizer.
Nickels and Dimes? Or,
We have news deserts, medical deserts, and housing deserts in rural America, and this place where I live is considered rural and has all of those associated deserts. The fact that there are some retired folk who moved out of the county but still have homes here for rental sake, some would call that a job creator. You know, jobs for toilet cleaners, laundrywomen, drivers, and handymen.
RE: Conference and Film Screening on News Deserts and Lack of Civic Engagement
A Spray by any Other Name: Agent Orange or Clear-cut Agent?
When Homeless Means Homelandless: Guatemalans in Lincoln County
Sweet Homes has 55-60 employees, most of them employed year-round, says Todd Korgan who manages 125 houses along the coast for their owners. That’s 30-40 more properties under their portfolio following the height of the coastal vacation rental conflicts from 2019-23, and as national companies downsize many of their more far-flung operations.
“There’s a fair amount of folks who don’t like us or what we’re doing,” Todd Korgan says of the vacation rental business. “But like it or not, tourism is the base of the economy on the Oregon coast.”
But the Korgans are done with arguing with people about vacation rentals. They believe their company’s standards and local operations help prevent many of the problems that beset companies with remote operations or far-flung call centers.
They have also purchased two buildings in downtown Waldport that have six apartments for employees working at their large operations center in Waldport or others in the industry. It has rental offices in Yachats and Newport.
“We agree there needs to be affordable housing …” Todd Korgan says.
All lip service.
STRs increase pressure on local infrastructure such as roads, water supply, waste management, and emergency services. Communities may not be designed to accommodate the fluctuating and often high volumes of visitors that STR can attract, leading to congestion, strain on public utilities, and higher maintenance costs for local county and city services.
This is typical for our area, Lincoln County, the city of Newport. Over the last 20 years, Marti Johnson has lived in a few small Oregon Coast towns, but she’s always considered Newport home.
“Coming up here, especially the sign that Newport has that (says) ‘the friendliest?’” she said. “I’ve never met more friendly people in my life.”
Johnson said her teenage son has been in the same school system his entire life, an experience she never had growing up. He’s had opportunities to play sports and be surrounded by a circle of family and friends.
Johnson is an EMT and first aid instructor. She said despite working more and spending less, it gets harder for them to stay housed every year.
“We’ve been so close so many times,” she said. “I’ve had to borrow money from family members I still owe, I’ve had to sell things that were family heirlooms. (such as) my grandpa’s coin collection that he passed down to me. Things I didn’t want to do, I’ve done, to just try and make sure that we had another month.”
Johnson said in the past she’s had to scramble to find housing after previous landlords sold the home she was living in, or raised the rent higher than she could possibly pay.
“Working 40 hours, picking up every extra shift, working overtime, it still doesn’t cut it,” she said. “The struggle is real.”
Reality:
- Lincoln City’s permanent population hovers around 10,162 residents, but the influx of tourists causes this number to swell to well over 30,000 during the summer months.
- Newport, Oregon‘s population more than triples during the peak summer tourist season, skyrocketing from its year-round base of roughly 10,000 to 11,000 residents to anywhere between 26,000 and 40,000 people.
Look, I witnessed the STR Sweet Homes model: bloody four full-sized towels for each guest, dozens of washclothes, dozens of hand towels, and dozens of beach towels in one HOME. We are talking about five to 12 people staying in these five-bedroom places where spare rooms also have fold-out beds.
Garbage bins that are usually filled up by a couple or small family in a week overflowing in three days. No concern about recycling. Showers? These people take three showers a day, on average, since they are in the ocean, in the sand and sweat it up even on our tepid coast.
Flushed toilets? Come on, this is the model for disaster. Heavy beer, vodka and White Claw drinking. There are no greenwashing signs for Sweet Homes. Beds have eight pillows each, so you can imagine the amount of laundry this outfit has to do.
Am I, or was I, part of the problem? Well, I was a slave laborer, and that meant, according to Sweet Homes policy, that we were not to talk to other staff, and we were to have zero interaction with the clients; hence the check-in time was 5 pm, and we had to get all the stuff delivered and set up before folk start coming in.
All homes are dog-friendly, so there is that other waste component for the beaches, parks, and city. People in America are dog crazy, so we are talking an average of 2.5 dogs for each vacation rental. Imagine the wildlife on our beaches dealing with Fido chasing down seal pups and avian chicks. All part of the hidden costs of vacation rentals/renters.
You, then as a renter, paying $300 a night, for the low-end joint, have to pay for laundry service, all part of the so-called vacation rental scam.
- What it covers: This one-time fee pays for a professional cleaning crew to sanitize the home, restock essential items, and handle a complete commercial laundry service for all sheets and towels upon your departure.
- How to see the price: The exact cleaning fee for your stay will be dynamically calculated and displayed as a clear line item during the checkout process before you finalize your reservation.
- Potential extra cleaning fees: While the standard fee covers expected post-stay turnover, you can be charged an additional fee (such as a $25/hour fee for a dirty BBQ grill) if specific amenities are left uncleaned. Extensive or excessive mess left behind that requires deep remediation can be charged to the credit card on file or deducted from a damage waiver.
I live in a small town and in a small county with some very interesting “good Germans” as neighbors. I guess I won’t be running for mayor of Waldport with this commentary in the local news . . . and I have already been negative-listed for most jobs, any teaching, and the like.
Does the following commentary in the Newport News Times put the final nail in my communist coffin? Come on, now, answer me honestly.
Here it is, with some context first.
- Ballot Measure 21-203: The group successfully organized and campaigned for this local measure, which was passed by voters in November 2021. The policy halted the licensing of new short-term rentals, restricted owners to a single vacation property, reduced maximum occupancy limits, and introduced stricter safety rules.
- Legal Battles: Following its passage, the measure faced legal pushback and was struck down by the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) over land-use definitions. The group has since continued its efforts to defend voter intent and advance local housing protections.
Hell, the folks down under are grappling with the issue of STRs —
- The City of Sydney passed a motion on 28 April 2026 directing its CEO to investigate STR restrictions across 11 inner suburbs
- 5,454 active STRA listings exist in the City of Sydney LGA; only 2,468 are officially registered
- Short-term rental listings represent an estimated 0.9 to 1.6% of Sydney’s total housing stock
- NSW law caps non-hosted STRs in Greater Sydney at 180 days per year; hosted properties have no cap
- Bookings of 21 or more consecutive nights are exempt from the 180-day cap under current legislation
- The investigation is ongoing. No ban has been implemented.
*****
PREFACE TO POSSIBLE CODE CHANGES
“Social capital” broadly refers to those factors of effectively functioning social groups
that include such things as interpersonal relationships, a shared sense of identity, a shared
understanding, shared norms, shared values, trust, cooperation, and reciprocity.”Most nonresident owners/investors of Short Term Rentals (STR) are not residents of Lincoln
County. Most do not share these values. This is based on our review of the Public Comments submitted by Proponents of STRs during the Workshops in 2019, 2020, and 2021, media reporting, and even social media accounts.The Lincoln County Business License model for STRs was adopted without a qualitative and quantitative study of the countywide infrastructure and services’ impacts. We now know from the widely reported experiences during the wildfires and recent bond measures for increased Emergency Services that infrastructure has been affected. Other examples include waste management (septic v sewer), availability of long-term workforce housing, roads, public health and safety, and emergency preparedness. Even the supply of volunteers needed to a variety of government agencies and nonprofits has been affected. We need more volunteers even as fewer are available.
Through personal experience and County records, 15neighborhoods (we) know that the STR Regulation was designed to rely on Neighborhood Reporters. However, licensing STRs in single-family Residential Zones that include pockets of residential areas or neighborhoods was short-sighted. The lack of a robust enforcement program that has allowed the Industry a “pass” for over four years is proof that the Industry cannot self-regulate.
We urge the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners (Board) to look at the record of problems that have been reported in the Public Comments submitted for 2019-2021 Workshops, the Public Testimony provided at the 2019-2021 Workshops, and the Public Input provided during the Board’s pre-COVID meetings. We ask the Board to consider the residential neighborhood problems that prompted you to review the STR Amendments in 2019. Finally, we ask the Board to consider the threats made by property managers and owners, including threats of litigation, against Neighborhood Reporters who report violations. Do not be lulled into believing STRs will ever be good neighbors to permanent residents in single-family areas, regardless of the number of restrictions that you will enact or whether STRs are managed by professional property managers. — 15neighborhoods
At-will piecework for those Short-Term Rentals
By Paul Haeder, Lincoln County Leader
You may recall the animus throughout Lincoln County:
Unleashed dog(s), dog poop, people unloading boxes of food, children, and bags. Clicking their car alarms, on and off, on and off. Then they use adjacent driveways: loading unused boxes of food, leaving trash to blow around, more dog poop, and loud parties.
“Bayshore Board and Committees ignore this and these situations of STRs. None will approach to fix; they ignore it, as Full Time Residents deal with vulgar-mouthed STR transient tenants – disrespecting other people’s private property.”
Ahh, that’s an old Facebook post, and alas, I just got sacked by one of those evil vacation home STRs, not for doing anything badly, but ironically, because a Bayshore “Karen” supposedly took a video of me making a California stop – rolling stop – at a stop sign.
I got zero recourse from the multimillionaires who own the STR outfit. There were no moving violations, and no second chance for me to, well, slow my roll and stop at stop signs. Terminated.
This is a tale again of the haves and haves-nots – and at $17 an hour, delivering laundry/supplies throughout the county and picking up dirty laundry, bags weighing 80 pounds, well, it is a mad dash to get to the dozens of SRT’s before check-in.
Now, think of the optics – I was fired on hearsay, and if a video exists, it’s not evidence enough to have me sacked. But rich people breathe from a different atmosphere than the rest of us.
Mostly Mexican housekeepers rush to clean their rentals, from bottom to top, with white-glove inspections. It’s an endless battle with sand, dirty renters, and canine guests.
Three huge vacation homes in a day some of the Latinos clean in teams, so they can “make bank.”
And what a racket. Many of the homes have rickety, cracked wooden stairs. Storm doors are unlatched. In basements where linens and supplies sometimes go, I came across spider-infested rafters. I know my brown recluse and wolf spiders by sight.
Homes in disrepair: many places have rodent traps set up all over, out of sight from guests, who pay, gulp, from $260 to over $600 per night, with larger beachfront properties pushing $1,000+. A cleaning fee is added on.
The Oregon coast short-term rental fight entered a new chapter three years ago with a state ruling by the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals overturning a citizen-approved ballot measure phasing out vacation rentals in unincorporated Lincoln County.
Remember? 15neighborhoods was the coalition of citizens who garnered more than 10,000 Lincoln County residents to vote to phase out STRs.
STRs create jobs, though, as this most recent bitter experience was relayed to me, a union organizer going way back. At $17 an hour, one laundry driver comes from Depoe Bay to Waldport to start her shift. Another worker lived in an RV but was forced to leave the county when rental slips doubled.
Rich folk don’t like workers’ tales, one of which included a college student living in a van. She was sacked because of her “poor tone.” This multimillion-dollar family-owned outfit has no second or third chances in its blood.
The outfit doesn’t just manage other people’s homes. They have purchased many properties: single-family homes, condos, and apartments.
Now, sure, the person who turned me in is, well, a good German in my book. Many workers in this outfit have told me of their own travails with the rich company owners and their HR staff.
Back to the spiders. Brown recluse spiders, like most others, don’t go after humans, but they nest, so when someone rubs up against them, say in bed, the short fangs come out, and venom is injected. Caution should be observed when grabbing stored items—such as boxes in the attic, garden tools, or old gloves.
Short-term rental cleaners are always grabbing things out of these spider-infested locations. One cleaner told me she got bit at one of the SRT’s. She went to the ER, and $1000 later, after they abraded the wound and drained it, and prescribed a course of expensive antibiotics, she went back to cleaning.
She failed to file a workman’s comp claim, received no assistance from her supervisor, and, alas, the millionaire owners allegedly told her she couldn’t prove she was “bitten at one of OUR rentals,” so they decided zero compensation for ER and med bill would be best practices.
Ahh, the stone hearts of rich business owners.
I attempted to get unfired, but I got a boilerplate response back from the millionaire. Rules are rules, but this rich SRT impresario, who is fixing up a conglomerate of single units, is employing a nice Spanish-speaking guy from Nevada. He’s doing wiring, plumbing, and construction work for the owner, without, I am sure, an Oregon contractor’s license.
Brown recluse spider bites can take a person down quickly, and while their venom is complex and can cause serious local tissue damage (necrosis), most bites like the one I got in Phoenix heal on their own. Complications occur with those with compromised immune systems, which currently is a hefty thirty percent of Americans.
Let this sink in: millionaires benefiting from our infrastructure see an injured worker as, well, not worthy of financial help. Millionaires sacking workers with no recourse
Capitalism is vicious, and while people should reject this transactional, bloody economic system, we see none of that in our little town of Waldport’s SRT outfits.
These millionaires have been quoted in the media as stating they know people do not like Short Term Rentals, but “just get over it.” I imagine these millionaires drinking their fancy Merlot with resentment since Oregon has a minimum wage of $15.55 while the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has remained unchanged since July 24, 2009.
I’m no bible thumper, but here I go:
He who oppresses the poor to increase his riches, and he who gives to the rich, will surely come to poverty. (Proverbs 22:16)