Tonya Hansel, 36, who has lived in the area since she was four, shares this concern. For the past eight years she has been cleaning short term rentals. She often works seven days a week to make ends meet. But when it comes to seeing her 14-year-old daughter, it’s better than her previous performance as a piercer, she said.
But last month, she lost the thing that allowed her family to survive from $65 to $150 a cleaning: her $575 a month rent.
When she moved into her two-bedroom apartment on the north side of downtown Joshua Tree in 2014, there were only a handful of short-term rentals around, but they were in nicer neighborhoods.
But then investors started seeing her neighborhood as the best place to stay. In the beginning, when there were more renovators than heavy drug users, it “cleaned up the neighborhood,” she said. But then things got creepy when she realized that the families she encountered were gone and that pretty much every house was a short-term rental with “the same white, black, and gray paint, glossy fence, and Christmas lights.”
These didn’t seem to possess the “mixture of artists and lunatics” like her client, Mr. Giuliano of the Desert Yacht Club. Rather, they seemed to be owned by people who saw renting as “easy money.”
In January, Ms. Hansel learned that her lease would be terminated in 60 days because her landlord was remodeling. It’s impossible to find a place, she said in February when she started packing, “because it’s either an Airbnb or it’s three times as much as I can afford.”
At the last minute, she found a temporary $800 single room in Landers, about 25 miles from Joshua Tree. It’s not ideal, said Mrs Hans, noting that her daughter can no longer walk to school. But, she said, “for now we are safe.”
