Relegation coming for short-term lodging

The Laguna Beach City Council decided Tuesday that the controversial practice of short-term lodging should be relegated to commercial zones and out of residential neighborhoods as the Planning Commission suggested five months ago.

After listening to 45 speakers, many of whom shared stories of unruly behavior, littered sidewalks and parking nightmares, effects they linked to renters occupying space in a house or apartment for 30 days or less, the council unanimously agreed to alter the city’s existing ordinance pertaining to short-term lodging.

“There is overwhelming support for a ban on short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods,” Mayor Steve Dicterow said, adding he walked Laguna’s neighborhoods asking residents how they felt about the practice. “Today, I counted over 500 emails from people in town urging us to prohibit short-term rentals, which is more than any other issue I’ve dealt with.”

The council has grappled with short-term lodging since May 2015, when it stopped issuing new permits for the practice, which opponents claim limits Laguna’s long-term rental housing stock.

On council’s direction, a subcommittee of Dicterow and Councilman Bob Whalen and city staff held two public meetings in the last two months to discuss potential ordinance changes that would have allowed short-term lodging in residential zones. Under the proposal, property owners could rent space twice per year for no more than 14 days per stay.

Concerns from speakers with how those rules would be enforced appeared to doom that proposal, which James Danziger called a “surveillance and privacy nightmare.”

“Imagine there is a [short-term rental] going on close to me,” Danziger, a UC Irvine professor of public policy and political science, said. “To prove there are more than two, two-week rentals, I’ll have to take date-stamped photos of people who will be staying there every day, each day there are people I don’t recognize. I’ll have photographs of every parked car on the street and try to trace them to people who are in these residential areas.

“I’ll have to count the number of people staying overnight in each bedroom. I’m afraid I can’t tell you how I’ll be doing that.”

Knowledge of available short-term rentals has blossomed in the last several years with companies such as Airbnb and VRBO providing online space for property owners to list available rooms.

Laguna has 36 approved permit holders, including Karen Pettywho told the council she acquired her permit three years ago after her husband died.

“I have not had one incident in three years,” Petty said. “Now I have a family in the home — a mom, dad and two kids who are looking at universities.”

The 36 permits cover 81 rental properties, Community Development Director Greg Pfost said Wednesday. City staff are researching how many of the properties are in residential zones, Pfost added.

Other permit holders, though, have been noticed by the city.

Between 2007 and 2016, police responded to disturbance calls for 14 of 36 permit holders, with nine of the 14 having more than one call, according to a city staff report.

Police received complaints of illegally parked cars linked to five permit holders, the report said. The city acknowledged in the report that staff “does not have enough information to know exactly if all of them were caused by short-term rentals.”

The Planning Commission’s suggested ordinance would allow existing permit holders to continue renting their properties. If ownership changed hands, the permit would run with the land.

Under the revised ordinance, permits would not run with the land if properties changed owners.

Each short-term rental must provide at least two parking spaces and the property owner must provide the city with the name, address, and phone number of a person who is able to respond within 60 minutes of a complaint, according to the revised ordinance.

As for whether to target online hosting platforms for advertising illegal short-term rentals, City Atty. Phil Kohn urged caution.

“We would try to encourage the companies by indicating they are not required to independently investigate and ascertain the validity of the permit status for people who are posting,” Kohn said, “but rather the city will assist them in identifying those properties for which permits are issued and solicit their participation.”

In lawsuit filed last month, Airbnb is challenging the city of Anaheim’s mandate for hosting sites to remove unpermitted listings or face fines, the Orange County Register reported.

On Laguna’s end, Pfost said the city will “increase communication with the Police Department so when we know violations are occurring, we can take action on them. That is not something that has been occurring in the past.”