April 27--Santa Monica could be the next Southland city to take a hard line on short-term rental companies.
On Tuesday, the City Council is expected to consider an ordinance that would require short-term rental hosts to have a business license and pay taxes. It also would "explicitly make vacation rentals unlawful" and require online hosting services like Airbnb and VRBO to report data to city officials.
If passed, the law would be one of the toughest yet in Southern California, where a number of cities are considering ways to regulate the fast-growing industry.
Santa Monica officials say there are about 1,700 homes and apartments in the city that are advertised on major short-term rental websites, and a staff report raises concerns about the effect on neighbors, and on the supply of housing in the city, where rents and home prices have soared in recent years.
While the bill would stop short of an outright ban, it would require a short-term rental host to continue staying in the unit while it's rented -- "home-sharing" -- while outlawing "vacation rentals" where the unit's primary occupant leaves the premises. The staff report estimates that 1,400 of the 1,700 short-term rentals in Santa Monica are primarily used as vacation rentals.
The bill also would require short-term rental hosts to obtain business licenses and pay hotel taxes to the city, and it would require hosting sites to share host names and pricing data with the city, measures Airbnb has pushed back against elsewhere.
Neither Airbnb nor city officials responded immediately to messages seeking comment Monday morning.
The short-term rental industry has come under increasing scrutiny in Southern California in recent months. A report last month from labor-allied research group Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy suggested that hosts taking units off the normal housing market to rent them short-term have driven up housing prices, especially in popular neighborhoods such as Santa Monica. West Hollywood's City Council recently voted to prohibit all short-term rentals and Los Angeles officials are considering new regulations.
But industry leader Airbnb -- which pitches itself primarily as a "home-sharing" service -- has also taken steps to appease regulators, agreeing recently to collect taxes in Malibu and booting a number of large vacation-rental hosts from its site. The company also argues that it helps hosts afford housing, especially in high-cost tourist hot spots, by helping them make extra money from spare bedrooms.
Meanwhile, officials in some cities, including Los Angeles, are trying to walk a fine line on the topic, appeasing neighborhood concerns about noise and housing availability while not alienating a booming "sharing economy" and tech industry that they want to attract.
Keep an eye on housing and real estate in Southern California. Follow me on Twitter at @bytimlogan
