Owners of illegal vacation rentals: Beware. The city is trying to find you.

The Santa Barbara City Council on Tuesday voted 6-0 to create a one-year pilot program to find illegal vacation rentals.

“It is an incredible and ongoing problem in our community,” City Councilwoman Meagan Harmon. “We have heard for so many years from so many different people in our community, residents and business owners, this is having a big impact.”

The program calls for the hiring of investigators to find the illegal vacation rentals. Including new administrative and potential litigation costs, the program for the first year could cost as much as $1.2 million, depending on the number of illegal vacation rentals the city finds.

City Attorney Sarah Knecht said there was an explosion of illegal vacation rentals in 2015 with the rise of Airbnb and other hosting sites.

“Illegal short-term vacation rentals are generally more lucrative than long-term rentals,” Knecht said. “Their existence compounds the existing city housing crisis. They can also adversely impact neighborhoods, causing increased traffic, increased noise issues.”

Knecht said the city doesn’t know how many illegal vacation rentals are in the city. Currently, vacation rentals are allowed only in areas where hotels are allowed.

She noted that the city is not proposing any new regulations.

“We want to put some teeth into what is already on the books,” Knecht said, adding that it will come with a financial cost. “It takes some effort, and muscle and some money to be able to do that.”

Assistant City Attorney Denny Wei said the city’s goal is to reach out to the owners of illegal vacation rental first, before seeking administrative citations. The costs, if fined, will range from $1,500 to $5,000.

If a case goes to court, the city will seek back transient occupancy taxes based on any records subpoenaed from the hosting platform company.

“That’s the city’s money,” Wei said.

Santa Barbara city leaders believe that a proliferation of vacation rentals hurts local residents and their ability to find housing. Property owners, they say, should rent to locals who work in the community, rather than renting the space at high fees to out-of-towners.

“The big driver is restoring housing stock for people to live in, for families to live in,” City Administrator Rebecca Bjork said.