The Bed Police

How many people slept under your roof last night?

Will the spy in the sky have reported any extra visitors you accommodated to the shire? Do you even know how many you’re allowed to have tucked up under your roof? And who cares how many people you choose to cram into your house anyway?

As I was driving to Busso yesterday I started to think of some of the issues surrounding residential vs tourism accommodation. Because the proposed Karridale housing estates are predicated on investment/second holiday homes it is an issue that interests me.

I already know elderly people in Augusta who are suffering greatly from the impost of having their residential streets turned into short term holiday letting properties. After living quiet lives among people they trust these old people now fear to open their doors, because they experience large mobs of young people who are in town to party (yes - hard to believe but even in Augusta we have visitors partying!)

The visitors are not actually committing crimes or even being unpleasant, they are just exuberant, loud, and in most cases much bigger than the elderly residents.

From the time the Molloy’s landed, as the first European settlers, until very recently this whole area enjoyed a culture that welcomed only a very occasional visitor, but otherwise lived with an incredibly stable community. MCDavies once had an unfortunate incident with a passing Afghan, but apart from that the locals fight among themselves without any real fear.

The fact that the majority of people were engaged in farming or the timber trade made the residents firmly grounded to this place, and really it wasn’t somewhere people just travelled through. The great distance and lack of decent roads made this a destination for only a few regular visitors each summer, and these folk would stay for extended periods as families, and mostly returned every year to stay in the same guest house or camp site. Therefore local people have never needed to adjust to a culture of transient visitors drifting through their community.

Until the recent new technologies living far away from the city meant that humans had to adopt a strategy of growing food, or else live a grazing life following whatever bush foods could be found. Europeans generally chose to grow food and to develop established settlement patterns.

There is no right or wrong in such matters it is just how we are.

Our European based culture here in this corner of the SW has always been very stable. The remote rural community has always survived sustainably with a reliance on reciprocity, which needed trust, which obviously needs stability.

Now the shire have introduced strategies that no longer honour the culture of the families who have lived here in this way for over a century. The shire has broken the social contract and expect the long term residents to not only live with the consequences but for them to pay for the privilege of having their stability disrupted.

The following is a rather dry exposition on a few issues that can occur when a residential house becomes short stay holiday house. The purple text is from the shire minutes, and the observations are mine alone. I always like to be better informed and so please let me know if I’ve misunderstood this whole situation. The house involved here happens to be in Gnarabup.

From page 89 of Local Draft Tourism Strategy dated August 2012

• The need for a holiday house activity to be appropriately managed to ensure that it will not cause nuisance or annoyance to the owners of adjoining or nearby properties.

• An indication that if the Shire has received complaints regarding the holiday house activity, a further approval may not be granted. (my underlining)

There is already evidence of complaints about residential properties used as holiday houses. The shire knows that is the case and so why do we tolerate investors buying residential properties and then using them as short-stay holiday accommodation?

Ask why?

The following notes are extracted from a planning officer’s report on a Gnarabup property, but it could happen anywhere in this shire. If anyone has ever experienced the stress of living alongside noisy neighbours then they may have some empathy with the complainant in this case.

The following issues have been raised by the objectors (summary):

• used as a ‘party’ house – i.e., party all night, noise etc;

• I work on the weekends and the night time noise level impacts ability to sleep;

• I have had to contact the manager many times and on occasions the police;

• I have tried to address the issues myself but to no success;

• parking issues – number of cars parked everywhere – verge etc;

• rubbish bins overflowing.

This is interesting, because among the solutions proposed the owners responded;

There are currently 2 normal bins and 2 recycle bins. We will provide an additional normal bin and recycle bin. ....

Waste is obviously an issue when possibly 14 adults are sharing one residential house the amount of rubbish will be more than a family might create, especially if they are eating take-aways etc

Does anyone know how much more rubbish these residential houses turned into tourist accommodation generate than a typical residential property? Are the shire keeping metrics?

Clearly any initiatives that the community might undertake to educate our community along the reduce, reuse and recycle message will be wasted here, as the visitors are transient.

Are the properties rated as commercial and charged for waste disposal accordingly?

How do the kerbside collectors know which properties are allowed 2 or more wheelie bins per week?

Letting Conditions of the property will be amended, so that any call outs for noise to the police or the managing agent will result in a cost recover from the tenants bond of costs so incurred.

Once people are asked to pay for anything the “social contract” is broken and they may well feel as though they have paid for the right to party hard and loud, and they really won’t care if they lose the bond.

How much is the bond? Split 14 ways it isn’t likely to be too much, and where is the compensation for the neighbour? How could there ever be compensation for a person having their home life disrupted in this way, week after week?

 ... In the Letting Conditions, noise after the hour of 11pm will not be allowed.

But how will anyone stop this?

And if you are raising a family how can 11pm be a reasonable time for noise to cease?

  The Letting Conditions will be amended advising that all cars must be maintained on the property driveway (we do have a long driveway).

There is no way of enforcing this.

  Notices to the above effect will be provided in the house compendium of rules and also erected in the kitchen so that it is clearly visible...

We know that permanent residents who are sent fire break notices every year do not always read them and then comply with rules, and those are rules intended to save lives and property. Are any of us really convinced that partying visitors will be compliant with a note pinned up in the kitchen?

Does anyone, other than the shire employee issuing the holiday house approvals, have a reasonable expectation that at 10.55pm a responsible party goer will hear the alarm they set earlier and immediately insist that all their drunken friends switch off the music and speak softy?

Is that how you were in your late teens and twenties?

Did you want to be the party pooper, the wet blanket?

Me neither.

And when one of the visitors drives back to the house to change quickly, before going out again they may not want to park their car in a line on a driveway. They may want to park in the most convenient way for them, not for the neighbour who they don’t know and will never see again when the week is over.

The house occupancy has been reduced as noted above and in accordance with the previously issued conditions of the Council and of course this will be maintained.

Of course.

This is the business owner reassuring the shire that from this moment on they will only let the house to compliant holiday visitors who undertake a head count before bed time.

Who is going to check how many people stay here?

If they hook up when they are out for the evening are the bed police going to be waiting to check on numbers? Is that the number allowed to be under the roof at any given hour of the day, or the number allowed to sleep in the house? Define sleeping?

Do you remember sleeping on holiday when you were young?

Me neither.

If they promise they didn’t sleep is it OK to have double, or triple, the number approved for occupancy?

The Holiday House shall not be occupied by more than eight (8) people at any time excluding people that are members of the owner’s family.

Is this the killer clause?

The Walcliffe weasel has crafted a phrase so impossible for the neighbours to ever argue with that it offers complete immunity from complaints of overcrowding.

How can a neighbour know all the members of the owner’s family?

A Manager or a contactable employee of the manager that permanently resides no greater than a 1 hour drive from the site shall be nominated for the holiday house and retained at all times during the use of the site as a Holiday House.

So if there is loud music at 10.01pm the neighbour will potentially have to wait until 11pm for any respite.

The 24 hour contact details of the manager of the Holiday House shall be visible on the property from the nearest street frontage and maintained to the satisfaction of the Shire.

Does anyone check compliance with this? We need rangers to check compliance with fire break requirements, does the shire now need more rangers to be employed to check this signage is present at all times? Is the charge for checking compliance fully covered by the property owner?

All vehicles & boats connected with the premises shall be parked within the boundaries of the property.

What does this mean? 

Does it mean vehicles belonging to the short term visitors, or visitors who are visiting the visitors? 

If the holiday visitors just block a drive for a short time? Who really cares? 

It’s only the neighbour who is being inconvenienced,

An Emergency Response Plan and Fire Management Plan shall be displayed in a conspicuous location within the development at all times.

And for which languages do these need to offer translations?

Amplified music to only be played outside of the approved dwelling between the hours of 10am and 10pm.

How about non-amplified, loud drunken singing, drumming OK? So that’s OK then.

Just another 12 months of potential hell for one of our residents? Is the shire keeping data on this?

Maybe every house is now being used this way and so it no longer represents a problem? Over time this will happen. Eventually those who wanted a quiet life will be driven elsewhere. Except for a few old people that I know in Augusta, and they won’t be around for many more years.

....Please note that in the event that any substantiated complaints are received again in relation to the holiday house use on the site, the Shire is unlikely to support any further renewal applications. 

Weasel words that spell misery for a permanent resident who has to provide substantiated evidence to support their complaints, and then they have no certainty that the shire will withdraw the approval.

Are there any figures for how may approvals have been revoked?

b. As this approval has been limited to 12 months. A new planning application seeking such approval must be submitted 90 days before the expiry of the twelve (21) month period, along with the appropriate planning fee. (P)

From reading the planning fee page it appears that the fee is $295, which would not be anywhere near the actual cost of planning staff and administration support for this application. Bearing in mind that the planning officer is interviewing people, analysing submissions, corresponding with owner about issues, recording responses and preparing a report, etc.

c. Noise emissions resulting from development/use of premises for the approved purpose shall not exceed the assigned levels in the Environmental Protection (Noise) Regulations 1997, and shall not unreasonably interfere with the health, welfare, convenience, comfort or amenity of an occupier of any other premises. (H)

How does anyone assess this, “unreasonable interference with health, welfare, convenience, comfort, amenity etc”, is the shire employing a specialist, maybe a psychologist, a medical doctor?  

These are weasel words again, any interference is unreasonable, and the neighbours could have their health seriously impaired. Depression is increasing throughout WA. Stress is a killer. Sleep is essential to our well-being.

d. In relation to condition 4, if at any time there is not an appointed manager or a contactable employee of the manager for the site, the Shire may cease the operation of the approved use until such time as a manager is appointed. (P)

No imperative again, no doubt the neighbours would have to prove the manager had failed to attend, hardly worth it as any suspension of approval is only going to be for the duration of the time the manager is not available.

So when you see the shire advertisement for the new position of bed ranger, to police the holiday home requirements, you’ll understand that it’s just another externality of the wonderful growth in tourism we are experiencing here.