Pine trees tower over either side of Highway 28, a Tahoe area wildfire evacuation route. Photo by Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos/Nevada Current)
On Monday, Jan. 6, Washoe County planners held the first of two barely noticed workshops to discuss proposed, far-reaching changes to the Washoe Tahoe Area Plan (TAP). These changes didn’t come from Tahoe community members. They originated with a Portland-based consulting firm tapped by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) with help from developers prioritizing their bottom lines, not public safety. Together, they advanced a high-density urban infill model best suited to large cities.
The public heard about TRPA’s proposal from a confusing patchwork of meetings and presentations in 2023 that were met with widespread public concerns and disapproval and one lawsuit. More than a year has passed since TRPA approved its controversial land use amendments.
Tahoe-facing counties, however, share land use, construction permitting, and building plan decision-making power. TRPA’s proposed high-density developments, with inadequate parking and no income caps, prove these units are not really aimed at Tahoe’s workforce. The unpopular land use proposals went dark in 2024 as county executives representing Tahoe districts faced an election year dog fight and TRPA was preoccupied with a deadline to unlock federal funding.
Wildfire threats increasing
In September 2024 the Davis fire made Northern Nevada residents acutely aware of Washoe Zephyr wind dangers. With recorded gusts of up to 70 miles per hour embers spread and torched nearly 6,000 acres, some nine square miles. In a matter of days, 14 houses and 22 outbuildings burned. The Davis fire came perilously close to the Tahoe basin. Courageous firefighters from northern and southern Nevada and reinforcements from as far away as Alaska and Florida and many states in between comprised a unified command with cooperating agencies. They worked heroically to contain the raging inferno. It could have been far worse. Each year wildfire fighting demands increase. There’s a finite supply of incident management teams.
With January barely underway multiple fires are savagely tearing through southern California residential communities forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes. A stunned resident told an NBC News journalist: “it’s not like we live in cabins surrounded by pine forests.”
But many northern Nevadans do live in pine forests. We understand we must be vigilant and prepared amid challenging mountainous topography with limited infrastructure and limited access to evacuation routes. On the southernmost tip of Washoe County and the western edge of Douglas County lies Lake Tahoe. First developed well more than a half-century ago, land use planners and civic leaders then had little of today’s ecological or meteorological knowledge.
Tahoe communities are nestled in what’s now recognized as wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas. Much of the year, those living in Washoe Tahoe and Douglas County’s South Shore Area and our California Tahoe neighbors to the west face added competition for narrow roadways once used by hundreds. Then thousands. And now millions wooed by Lake Tahoe tourism and short-term rental company promotions. Most visitors are unfamiliar with wildfires’ unpredictable behavior or evacuation protocols.
Tahoe also lies in a well-known seismically active, ecologically fragile wildfire double hazard zone. Knowing this – and witnessing recent horrific fire destruction and loss of life – it’s dumbfounding to think Tahoe-facing counties are now being asked to blindly agree to ill-conceived, poorly analyzed land use changes.
It’s twisted that amid historic wildfires, TRPA has stepped up its pressure campaign on counties to allow 65-foot structures surrounded by wildfire fuel in Tahoe. It’s clear these high-density developments will further strain infrastructure and fire-fighting capacity. Just look to the densely populated communities to our south, which saw fire hydrants run dry, and panicked people abandon their vehicles preventing fire crews from getting resources where needed.
Counties bear the costs
Let’s remember it is not the TRPA nor the agency’s development consultants and tourism business partners who bear the high costs of firefighting, emergency planning and evacuation, and infrastructure. Those are borne by the counties and people who live in them. That’s why county land use ordinances should reflect the realities of building in high-risk areas. County leadership must take the time to do environmental and infrastructure analysis, update and provide more in-depth emergency and evacuation planning to encompass larger structures and populations and ensure widespread public involvement. Counties have standing and should use it, not just roll over and blindly follow TRPA. The bi-state agency has erred more than a few times before.
Take its short-sighted 2004 TRPA governing board decision approving short-term rentals (STRs) as a permitted “residential use.” This led to the conversion of thousands of condos and houses, once available as long-term rentals for locals, to become STRs for tourists. This drastically reduced local housing options throughout the Tahoe basin. Washoe County, which today allows unlimited STRs, could unlock existing housing without putting a shovel in the ground by instituting a cap on STRs, and/or require that STRs belong to primary not secondary homeowners.
Residents and local business owners know well that affordable and workforce housing is sorely needed. That’s why Washoe’s Tahoe Area Plan, last updated in 2021, followed years of careful deliberations and community input to encourage development of more affordable housing. Washoe’s TAP mandated that “single-family dwellings shall only be allowed in the commercial regulatory zone when they are part of a mixed-use development or when they are affordable housing units.”
Sadly, the Washoe Board of County Commissioners made a hasty decision in January 2023 that torpedoed its own affordable housing goals. The board voted to advance to TRPA an Area Plan amendment to allow luxury condominiums in an area originally limited to mixed-use affordable housing and commercial.
These units, starting at $2.85 million, are not affordable to a first responder, schoolteacher, health care or service worker. Worse, the developer’s amendment encompassed all Special Area 1 and didn’t define how much of the mixed-use project must be commercial space. The county and the developer team erroneously claimed this significant TAP amendment would not produce environmental or traffic impacts.
There’s no more important land use question for wildfire prone areas today than how many people can these areas safely accommodate and evacuate. How many more Paradise, Lahaina or Pacific Palisades disasters are needed as proof?
The human and dollar costs of rushed or poor policymaking are immeasurable. 2025 provides an opportunity for Washoe, Douglas and California’s Tahoe counties to reevaluate the best use of housing and the impact and scope of proposed new buildings in the Tahoe basin, and to reconsider land use policies that fail to prioritize public safety. They should not rubber stamp TRPA’s ill-conceived amendments.