Their Petition

What is this petition?

After years of complaints, the city council studied evidence from STVR business owners, and local voters. That study took over a year,  including reports from a task force, and numerous public meetings. And finally, after weighing everything, the city council – our elected officials – decided on a compromise:

  • Allow STVRs in ANY zone where an HOA or CC&Rs permitted them
  • Allow ANY owner anywhere in the city to rent a room in the house they live in normally
  • Restrict STVR licenses in the main residential neighborhoods (mostly R1/R2)

But big business doesn’t like that. They want free rein in our city to build their businesses everywhere they want, and they are willing to bully their way to get that. That’s why they organized a petition, along with threatening lawsuits against our city.

California allows voters to challenge an ordinance. If 10% of voters sign a petition, the city must act on it. We should note that 76% of the OWNERS of STVRs in Cathedral City are not residents; they would not have been eligible to sign the petition.

If Riverside registrar of voters certifies the petition (having checked that the names and addresses correspond to voters IN Cathedral City) then the city has two options under California election law:

  • Scrap the ordinance; in which case, it can’t be reintroduced for a year, or
  • Put it to a vote of all residents.

 

Why did the petition claim STVRs are being banned?

Any mention of banning STVRs is a lie – and the petition organizers knew that. The ordinance just restricts STVRs to HOAs that allow them, and in all other areas, to homesharing – where you let out a room for the weekend, but you are still living there. There were many reports of paid signature gatherers lying about that. We know from talking with signature gatherers that they were being paid $15 a signature. That means they had an incentive to mislead or misdirect local voters into signing. We heard that some straight out lied to get signatures; others gave misleading information. This isn’t about protecting YOU – it’s about allowing (mostly) out of town and out of state business people to go on running businesses that disrupt the lives of locals.

Who’s behind the petition?

An organization called ILCC. They claim to be ‘local’ – but none of their spokespeople live in our city. In fact, 76% of the owners of STVR businesses in the our city do not live here. Some of them don’t even live in California. Others may have changed their ‘primary residence’ to Cathedral City addresses, so that they can vote here – but they are not truly locals.

What happens next?

The petition was delivered to the city clerk with over 4,000 signatures. Those are now being verified by the Riverside registrar. If 2,400 are genuine registered voters in Cathedral City, then the city has the option to reverse the ordinance or to put the issue to a special election in March or November 2021. We don’t believe the council members will change their minds – so it’s almost certain we will be going through a special election to decide whether to keep or reject the ordinance. That may happen as early as March 2021.

Updates

Check back here for updates. There will be more in-depth updates available in PDF format