Santa Cruz County moves to rein in vacation rentals

The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to support a slate of new restrictions on short-term rentals aimed at curbing the growth of vacation homes in a region grappling with a severe housing crisis.

The proposed changes would cap the number of “non-hosted” vacation rentals in the county — those where the owner doesn’t live on the property — to 270. Hosted rentals, where the owner lives on-site, would be limited to 250. A report from last fall by Supervisors Manu Koenig (D1) and Justin Cummings (D3), who jointly led the effort to reform the county’s vacation rental laws, found that 665 of the 841 vacation rentals available in the county were unhosted.

Currently, there are no restrictions on the number of vacation rentals in large sections of the county. Such restrictions apply in only three areas encompassing communities such as Live Oak, Seacliff, Aptos, La Selva and Davenport. The new rules would establish an overall countywide cap on short-term rental properties.

Under the planned new rules, online vacation rental platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo would be required to remove illegal listings or face penalties, and landlords would be forced to pay six months of rent to tenants who are evicted if property becomes a vacation home. As of last fall, about 70 units in the county marketed on vacation rental platforms did not have permits. 

The county would create a hotline for residents to call to report complaints about vacation rentals. The new rules would also limit the number of rentals in any one neighborhood, as well as the number of permits for vacation homes that a single landlord or rental company could own.

The proposed new restrictions still need to be reviewed by the county planning commission and the California Coastal Commission before heading back to the board of supervisors for a final vote. 

“We’re using this really as a starting point for how we can further address the impacts of short-term rentals on our community,” Cummings said.

However, supervisors said they also worried about the effects to the region’s tourism economy from limiting the number of properties aimed largely at nonresidents coming to the area for short-term stays. So the board voted Tuesday to ask county staff to explore ways for to expand the region’s hotel capacity.

 “Anything that we do should not destabilize our tourism industry,” Koenig said.

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