Same decision, different day.
For the third time in four weeks, the Santa Barbara City Council told a property owner that he couldn’t legally convert a single-family home — this one at 2017 Bath Street — into a vacation rental.
The vote was 5-2, with councilmen Frank Hotchkiss and Randy Rowse siding with the property owner, just like in the previous two instances.
Vacation rentals have become the focus of Santa Barbara’s nightmarish housing situation.
The city’s architectural board of review denied the conversion, saying it was not “sound community planning,” while a majority of the council on Tuesday said a vacation rental at that site would worsen parking problems on the street, and increase nuisance behavior.
The project legally required two off-street parking spaces, but some members of the council and activists at the meeting said that people on vacation often have several cars, and parking on the street, near Cottage Hospital, is already scarce.
The city banned all vacation rentals in single-family residential zones in 2016, but City Attorney Ariel Calonne said the city has about 200 current enforcement cases active against illegal vacation rentals.
The city does allow vacation rentals in residential areas where commercial use is allowed, but those rentals must get approval from the ABR if they are between 1,000 and 3,000 square feet. The project before the council on Tuesday was a 1,260-square-foot house.
“We are in desperate need of housing,” said community activist Anna Marie Gott. “We have people from out of this city and out of this state purchasing homes to convert them into vacation rentals.”
The meeting illustrated some of the deep divisions and tensions that exist among property owners, neighborhood activists, city staff and members of the City Council.
Many city officials and activists believe that every housing unit in the community is important, and that Santa Barbara should resist vacation rental conversions because they erode the city’s housing stock.
Converting a single-family home kicks out a starter family from a home in favor of tourists looking for a vacation in Santa Barbara.
Property owners and their advocates, however, say that vacation rentals do not affect the availability of affordable housing because the homeowners would never rent to people in the community anyway.
The homeowners often enjoy staying in the homes at least a few months a year.
If they were to rent the homes out, depending on the size and the location, the cost would be between $3,000 and $5,000 monthly, a rate that is out of reach for most renters.
Jarrett Gorin, principal at Vanguard Planning, represented property owners Drew and Deanne Rudman at Tuesday’s council meeting. He said that the ABR was stepping out of its role as a design review board and making arbitrary and capricious decisions based on housing ideology, not the legality of a vacation rental.
Gorin, who spoke intensely toward the council, showed document after document that pointed to the legality of his client being able to convert the home to a vacation rental.
Gorin even showed a list of five vacation rental conversions, similar to his project before the council on Tuesday, that city staff approved.
He said that the ABR had no right to deny the conversion because it was compliant with city rules, which allow conversions in commercial zones.
“I believe words have meaning,” said Gorin, who at one point singled out Gott and “the cadre of people she gets to write in.”
He said if the city is going to ban all vacation rentals in the city, it needs to be transparent about it, and not mislead clients who are then at the mercy of design review boards.
“Discretion doesn’t mean you can just get up on Wednesday and do something different from what you did on Tuesday,” Gorin said.
ABR member David Watkins spoke at the meeting against the conversion.
“In my mind, it is taking housing out of the housing stock that we have right now,” Watkins said.
Hotchkiss said he felt the ABR’s decision was unfair, and that the property owner had an expectation of consistency in the process.
“I would support the appeal just because I don’t think we treated it right,” Hotchkiss said.
Councilman Jason Dominguez, however, said there is too much nuisance behavior associated with vacation rentals in residential neighborhoods, and that conversion reduces the housing supply.
Councilman Gregg Hart said, “I don’t think this is an appropriate use in this neighborhood.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
