In the Sept. 23 issue of The Island Eye News, a pair of Op-Eds were printed on Page 8.
One was by Carl Sherrill, a resident of Sonoma California, who has been part of one of the grassroots movements opposed to Pacaso in the area of California where they first started.
The other was by Sarah Filosa, an employee of Pacaso, whose job title is Public Affairs Manager at Pacaso, and who is located in the New York City Metropolitan Area. Mr. Sherrill's letter was filled with interesting facts about Pacaso that are in direct contradiction to the statements on the Pacaso website, and the "information" offered by Ms. Filosa. For those who don't know, Pacaso is a California based business that buys homes, and then offers what they describe as, "a unique coownership opportunity." Their marketing people came up with that term because "timeshare" has too many bad connotations. In the case of Sullivan's Island, Pacaso purchased a home and is in the process of marketing eight, 1/8 shares of the home for $902,000.00 a piece. The home is furnished and maintained by Pacaso. The shareholder pays a maintenance fee for upkeep on the property. For your $900,000 you get 44 nights, 14 of which can be consecutive. You can use the remaining nights broken up in smaller blocks and gifted to your "friends."
What constitutes a friend, and how this doesn't become an AirBnB is left to the imagination. The house is set up as an LLC so, as their lawyer explains online, you don't have to worry about liability, it's an LLC.
Also, apparently, another LLC could be a 1/8 shareholder in the original LLC. How there might ever be a responsible party to identify in case of a problem could prove to be a mystery.
There are a lot of rabbit holes. I take issue with Ms. Filosa's letter on Sept. 23, not because she is paid to be Pacaso's Public Affairs Manager, or because she is from the New York Metropolitan Area, but because her premises are all so incredibly wrong. In Ms. Filosa's letter, in her second paragraph, she states that the pandemic has created an unprecedented demand for second homes in "destination communities like Sullivan's Island." Let's stop right there. The vast majority of residents of Sullivan's Island actually live here.
This is their home. It's their furniture, artwork, dishes, window treatments, it's their house. We live here and vote here as South Carolina citizens. We, who live here,don't think of ourselves as being in a destination, but in our home.
Ms. Filosa states that the fact that some homes sit empty 90% of the year, in the case of people who own vacation homes, is somehow a problem. If someone can own a home here, and only want to use it for two or three months, fine. Better that than a new group of people every week coming to party for their limited amount of time. Ms. Filosa goes on to state that co-ownership is not new. Here she is conflating a family ownership with an unrelated group ownership, as is the Pacaso timeshare model. There are homes on Sullivan's that have been in the same family since the time the Island was still a military installation. Those are not timeshare business models, which Pacaso is. Pacaso makes no bones about being a business, and brags about how fast they have grown.
Finally Ms. Filosa offers a lot of happy talk about being good neighbors, etc. From those of us who have taken the time to inquire and learn about the Pacaso business model, and their interactions with other communities where they are attempting to gain a foothold. It is evident that would mean a drastic negative change to our community. We don't want Hotels, Condos or Timeshares. We are a community of, primarily, single family residential homes, and wish to remain that way.
