On Monday the Goleta Planning Commission will make recommendations on regulating short-term vacation rentals and under-used housing.
When the city adopted its Housing Element, officials committed to researching the impact of “unused” and vacation rental housing on the housing stock.
At Tuesday’s Goleta City Council meeting, Peter Imhof, the city Planning and Environmental Review director, explained that the purpose of the meeting is to review the study and talk through options to regulate short-term vacation rentals.
Imhof said staff hopes to get Planning Commission recommendations that they will use to craft an ordinance and later present to the City Council in April.
Currently, there are no regulations concerning how many short-term vacation rentals the city can have or where they can be located.
The city hired Bay Area Economics to review trends in short-term vacation rentals and the impacts on workforce housing needs.
In the study, they found that there were 51 active short-term vacation rentals in Goleta as of August 2024, which generated $245,856 of transient occupancy tax in the last fiscal year. During this time there were 56 permits pending approval, and 96 expired permits.
The study also found that in 2020, 93 housing units, or 0.7% of the city’s total housing stock, were reserved for seasonal use, which is comparatively low compared to the city of Santa Barbara and the county in general.
According to the study, 2.5% of housing units in Santa Barbara are reserved for seasonal use, and 2.6% of housing units in the county are reserved for seasonal use.
Based on the study, Bay Area Economics recommended that the city prohibit short-term renting on properties recently subject to no-fault evictions in order 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 will explore these and other recommendations on Monday at 6 p.m. in Council Chambers at 130 Cremona Drive.
The public can make comments on this discussion by attending the meeting in person, via Zoom, or sending written comments to the clerk at nnorman@cityofgoleta.org.
The full staff report, study, and recommendations can be read here.
