On Monday the Goleta Planning Commission recommended that the city should regulate short-term vacation rentals by limiting the number, restricting them to owner occupied properties, and implementing a waiting period.
The Goleta City Council is set to review these recommendations on April 15 and then direct staff to draft an ordinance to implement whatever regulations they support.
When the city adopted its Housing Element, officials committed to researching the impact of “unused” and vacation rental housing on the housing stock.
A consultant study found that there were 51 active short-term rentals in Goleta last year which generated $245,856 of transient occupancy tax revenues. There were 56 permits pending approval, and 96 expired permits.
However, Luke Rioux, Goleta’s finance director, said there are now 24 active permits, 84 inactive, and 24 pending, explaining that many property owners have chosen not to renew their permits.
“Even though we don’t have a huge impact here in the city of Goleta right now, that doesn’t invalidate that we do have problems with some short-term rental properties, because we also received some letters that sound like they have some very valid complaints with those properties that are in their neighborhood,” Planning Commissioner Anne Miller said at Monday’s meeting.
Based on the study, the consultant Bay Area Economics recommended that the city prohibit short-term rentals on properties recently subject to no-fault evictions, to discourage property owners from evicting tenants to convert the property into a short-term vacation rental.
They also recommend establishing a waiting period for short-term vacation rental permits; specifically, property owners wouldn’t be able to get a permit until one year after they purchase a property.
The Planning Commission supported this recommendation but wanted to exempt owner-occupied properties. That way residents, living on the property could still rent out rooms to help them afford their home. This would also protect properties from being purchased and immediately turned into a short-term vacation rental, according to city staff.
The consultant also recommended that the city should encourage hotel development, but Planning Commissioner Katie Maynard said there’s not necessarily a need for another hotel in Goleta.
“We’re just barely getting into the space where you might want to encourage hotels and we have so much demand for housing and a number of other needs locally,” Maynard said. “I wouldn’t be opposed to new hotels necessarily, but I also don’t know that we need to actively go and try to make sure we have lots of new hotels.”
Planning Commissioner Cary Penniman said he didn’t want to see Goleta’s housing stock turn into a short-term vacation rental market.
“Goleta doesn’t really strike me as a top vacation destination, I’m not sure making it one is really in line with our neighborhood values or the General Plan itself,” Penniman said.
Penniman also said he’d be interested in seeing a rule that limits short-term vacation rentals to a property owner’s primary residence. That way, owners could not turn their second homes into a vacation rental and owners would usually be around if there were any problems.
Planning Commissioner Jennifer Fullerton said she supported limiting the number of short-term rentals allowed in the city, but that limit should change based on housing availability.
“It’s so important to get housing here and it seems that with short-term housing, people can make more money by doing this,” Fullerton said. “They can rent it for a shorter amount of time and make more money, but it kind of pains me sometimes to see how many people still can’t find houses to live in and there’s houses sitting empty for months at a time, waiting for those vacationers to come.”