By Cheri Rae
Santa Barbara is known as a great place to vacation. I’ve only lived here, worked here, raised a family here, and tried to contribute to the community that’s given so much to me: A beautiful natural setting, cultural and historic resources, great amenities and a fine neighborhood where I feel like I belong.
Usually.
Except now, when it’s so commonplace to encounter an ever-changing population of strangers who rent out nearby bungalows and enjoy their Santa Barbara vacations in private homes far from their own homes. One place is frequented by a fair number of hot-tub revelers who, judging from their crude comments and wild behavior, might be better suited for a stay at a no-tell motel than at a Vacation Rental By Owner with a cute name. That one also allows dogs who typically bark all day and night when their owners are out seeing the sights and enjoying entertainment venues.
But for the most part these well-heeled Vacation Renters of Homes in the Neighborhood are pretty quiet folks who typically arrive in luxury cars or by taxi, walk to town for some shopping, and hang around the house, spending plenty of cash for their few days or even a week relaxing most of the day—just as vacationers do in fine hotels and increasingly, in private homes around the world.
What’s unnerving is for those of us who aren’t on vacation dealing with those who are.
As I work on my research, or type out a story, I sometimes gaze out the window, and cannot help but notice the couples decked out in their resort wear, sipping cool drinks as they while away the hours seated in the Adirondack chairs placed for their relaxation on the nicely appointed porch. They read, use their laptops and clearly enjoy themselves. Must be nice.
Yet, I can’t help but feel guilty going about daily life in front of them, interrupting their vacation idyll in their Home Away from Home as I go about the mundane tasks that must be done: picking up the mail, pulling weeds on the parkway, sweeping the sidewalk, bringing in groceries, taking out the trash and recycling. Who wants to be reminded about what you’ve taken a vacation to get away from?
The city ordinance that prohibits these short-term vacation rentals is a joke, with city officials claiming that the only way to enforce it is for neighbors to make a complaint—and even city council members intimidated into silence about the issue. I’m not about to turn in my neighbors for making an extra buck—some financing their own vacations by turning their homes into hotels.
The truth is that the more who get away with it, the more get into it—at least it’s a growth industry in our community. But this freelance lodging practice rips-off the city’s professional hotel industry, deprives the city of the proper amount of bed taxes. Yes, I know that some of these homeowners do charge Transient Occupancy Taxes and pay the city for their unpermitted short-term rentals—which the city happily collects while looking the other way at enforcement.
And there’s another reality to these unregulated rentals: It removes much needed “workforce housing” stock from being available to residents, while also introducing a sense of disquieting unpredictability when neighbors turn into clientele who check in and out, which doesn’t do much of anything to improve the lives of those who reside in the neighborhood all year long.
For a city looking for revenue I’ve always wondered if these home rentals and home swaps pay taxes or other fees charged by hotels
Shhh! it’s one of our towns great cottage industries.
I suspect (but of course I do not know) the illegal rental income goes undeclared to IRS as well. Even Rep Lois Capps failed to report hers; let alone ignoring she was running a rental operation in her single-family neighborhood
http://www.paradiseretreats.net/about.htm
How many of these homes do you think are properly licensed with the City for vacation rentals?
I’m guessing most of the homes rented out for vacation rentals are handled through management agencies rather than the homeowner themselves. You give up a small percentage of the rental fees for the management services. Means the homeowner has even fewer inconveniences while the neighbors are left to deal with the problems. I’ve also heard people complain that the parking situations around these vacation homes gets out of hand as the renters pack a ton of people into them to share the expenses. Seems the City should just go after the management companies to make sure that all of their listings are properly registered rather than trying to go after each individual homeowner. The one referenced above is a SB company so it shouldn’t be that difficult to check with them.
Large groups and noisy parties are among the worst curses caused the invasion vacation rentals in single family residential neighborhoods.
Sure, residents have large parties from time to time but in this case, it becomes every weekend. A true neighborhood blight with no over-sight or recourse. Thanks a lot.
Neighbors can file nuisance actions against the owner in small claims court, so build your case against them with police reports about noise ordinance violations and maintaining a private nuisance.
Keeping this black market housing illegal is currently the best leverage neighbors have keeping it quiet and unobtrusive. Get too rowdy and misuse the sensibilities of the neighborhood and the force of law comes crashing down on the scofflaw owners. An IRS complaint might be the better enforcement agent than the city, when neighbors have complaints.
VRBO! My least favorite four letters!
Our congressperson even takes advantage of this http://www.vcstar.com/news/2012/aug/03/lois-capps-says-she-paid-taxes-after-website-of/
It’s good income if you can get it. Just look at Craigslist and you will find hundreds of listings.
ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) needs to ensure these public accommodations for hire meet proper accessibility requirements.
I am sure there is a good lawyer out there that can help anyone denied access to these public accommodations to understand what rights might have been violated by the vacation rental business owner or agent.
The city and county should really be charging a yearly business tax on any property that rents out for less than 30 days of at least $1,000 and double in penalties if not paid and caught doing this. Collecting the actual bed tax might prove to difficult to enforce
It’s so easy for the city to regulate this. Places like Palm Springs send someone to your door if they see your home or apartment on VRBO or Craigslist. It’s pretty easy to track these places, since they advertise. It’s rampant in SB and the people I know doing it do NOT need the money!! They are wealthy already, often buying up downtown homes for VRBO renting, never intending to occupy the place. Ka-ching!
That would mean someone or a whole department would actually have to work.
City council needs to survey “best practices” for zoning enforcement. Other cities have great programs, real turn-around programs. We could stand to learn a few things and stop ignoring this and de-funding enforcement officers. There are more efficient ways to handle blight enforcement than the personnel cumbersome, administrative inefficient way it is set up now.
Try walking through a zoning violation complaint, cost it out, and see the value of the net results (if any) – bureaucratic nightmare, and that is when they had people on staff. Now I think there is no one FT on staff, so it is just an over-paid joke to even pretend they work on this — a primary link with city residents and property owners.
Blight enforcement needs to be a number one priority. Vote for the next city council person who promises to put this back on the top of municipal services along with other direct health and safety issues.
Be careful what you wish for. That’s all we need is a legitimate recognition of this practice and you will be having investors snatching up houses in Santa Barbara cookie cutting them into cash cows. If you’re envious of a neighbors’ money making operation or have too much time on your hands, that you’re being bothered by everyday life, maybe think about moving and not making a stink.
I agree with Jeff: watch for the unintended consequences of your wish. Who wants to live in a neighborhood where the neighbors are peering into the yards to see if the legal owner is living in the house? Where the neighbors are clucking together about the other’s exceptional (to the neighborhood) yard – “weeds” instead of water-guzzling lawns, house tenants, vehicles, etc. Who wants city officials coming to your door because of your neighbor’s whispers? Not I, but I live in a neighborhood unlikely to be one in the VRBO listings. Even if we were in such a neighborhood, there are complaint mechanisms for noise and neighborhood disruption.
(What are the licensing requirements, anyway: for 30 days and under, but not for longer periods? An occasional rental to a friend or a house exchange? The rule should be abandoned since it can not reasonably be enforced and so does nothing but brings out the tattlers or would-be tattlers …and disrespect for the law.)
Yes, most of us do want to live in neighborhoods where offenders are spied upon and turned in for zoning ordinance violations. That is called protecting our investments. Once you stop demanding others give you housing in this town just because you want it and purchase your own, your thoughts will change.
I live next door to one. My concern is in an emergency who is going to help these renters. There is no support for them in case of fire or earthquake. Will they then relay on the neighbors to take care of them. Will the management company be able to contact them all in case of evacuation? The fire department does not know when they have been duplexed and have VRBO’s staying there. We have had problems with them and the law. Fight about spouses and threats. What happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. It is destroying our neighborhoods.
City of SB carefully plans out its resources for the known population: water, traffic, city services, employment opportunities, infrastructure needs, waste management and schools according to the number of legal housing units.
When capacity is informally increased by this unaccounted short-term rental population, demands are placed upon the existing infrastructure planning that are intended for the known population.
When a household known to have two residents using water everyday, increases to 3 additional underground residents using water every day, the city did not plan for 5; only 2. Who pays and how does this increased actual demand get met.
Police and fire come to evacuate two residents and find out there are five of them. Multiply this impact times how many illegal rentals exist in this city. This is why this is all of our problem and not that we are just noisy neighbors.
One can slip through, a few more can slip through but today I suspect we are talking about thousands of unacknowledged black-market renters who impact our existing resources severely.
This means all of us here legally suffer from the selfish excesses of the few who skirt not only the law, but go underground when it comes to city resource planning leaving the rest of us with the short end of the stick. Thanks a lot, greedy landlords.
Typical…….. I ‘ve got mine, now go get yours. Who cares? Santa Barbara has always been ground zero for the illegal rental. The garage conversion. The attic conversion. The shed conversion. Police and Fire continue to show up during an emergency. That person living in that illegal unit pays rent to the homeowner. He in turn pays his/her mortgage. They go to the store and buy things. They buy stuff for their units. They pay bigger water/electric bills due to increase usage. Santa Barbara can absorb the unaccounted population just like they do during Fiesta, Solstice,etc. The Piper gets paid, only when and if the property changes ownership. And then only after the inspectors come and leave ,the illegal stove, fridge,removed and pipes capped…guess what happens all over again in short time? All those nosy next door Goody-Two Shoes are only going to end up with an ulcer. Gee…and we haven’t even addressed foreign exchange students living in our mist.
Boo, hoo. I got mine playing by the rules, saved, worked hard, bought what I could afford and finally paid it off.
Boo, hoo. You want to get yours in just the opposite way. Break the law, do it under the table, degrade the neighborhood, and resent everyone who did it the right way.
Whatever.
Nice article. Problem is that your utopian idea of neighbor bunches of old historic small bungalows that have work at home or semi retired middle aged women ( and sometimes men ) living harmoniously together, either sitting on the porch waving at each other while drinkin their hot cups of Folgers coffee….is not ever goings to happen. What you fail to see if that many of these vacationers are probably hard working people who slaved to earn their own house and property, and have looked to spend some of their disposable income onto the SB economy. Owning a house in the downtown one should expect diversity ( both the bad and the good )
You miss the point. Do your vacation rentals legally, with all the restrictions other hotel/motel operators have to face.
If you don’t like the current zoning restrictions, change them through lawful process. Let the entire community weigh in on your proposed changes to turn all residential neighborhoods into commercial hotel/motel zones.
And then honorably, abide by the results.
I have to offer one correction to the article on vacation rentals. The city of Santa Barbara does not prohibit vacation rentals. It does, however, require that such businesses have a license and collect the 12% transit occupancy tax, just like the hotels in town. Our own vacation rental contributes many thousands of dollars a year to the city’s coffers. The total receipts to the city from vacation rentals must be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. And I doubt there are very many unlicensed short-term rentals. City officials can, and do, read the ads on Craigslist and VRBO as well as anyone.
Tourism is Santa Barbara’s major industry. Vacation rentals make it more affordable for families to visit our town; renting a two bedroom house can be cheaper than a hotel room. These visitors go on to spend in our shops and restaurants. Rather than depriving the city of anything, vacation rentals contribute a great deal to Santa Barbara’s economy.
And BTW, we give our phone number to our neighbors and ask them to call if there are any problems.