Heeding the old adage, if at first you don’t get it right, the City of San Diego will once again try to persuade short-term rental hosts to apply for a license required under new regulations that go into effect on May 1.
It will reopen next week the application period to obtain a two-year license for hosts wishing to rent their entire home short-term for more than 20 days a year. The move comes more than two weeks after the application deadline passed without enough submissions to reach the city’s cap of 5,416, not including the community of Mission Beach. City officials had anticipated needing a lottery due to expected high demand for a limited number of licenses, but the flood of requests never materialized.
This was not the case for Mission Beach, which has a separate cap of nearly 1,100 licenses, which represents 30% of the community’s housing. The city received 200 more applications than available licenses, which necessitated a lottery. Candidates will know the result of this lottery by Friday.
City officials said this week that the application process for whole-home rentals outside of Mission Beach will reopen next week, though they are still weighing how long it will stay open.
Venus Molina, chief of staff to City Councilwoman Jennifer Campbell, whose office initially helped broker a compromise plan to regulate short-term stays, said city staff, in consultation with the district attorney’s office the city, is considering various options to ensure that everything is done fairly and legally.
“We’re meeting internally to figure out next steps to make sure we’re doing it right,” she said. “Are we doing this for a set period or until we hit the cap?”
In total, the city received 3,110 vacation rental inquiries from across the city, excluding Mission Beach, said San Diego communications director Rachel Laing. For whole-home rentals in Mission Beach alone, application submissions totaled 1,291, she said.
Under city regulations for vacation rentals, an unlimited number of licenses are allowed for hosts who rent a bedroom or two while they are in the house or in cases where they rent their residence for less than 20 days. per year.
Last year, the City Council approved San Diego’s first-ever set of regulations for short-term rentals, which largely operated without specific rules except for the requirement for a property tax certificate. transient occupancy (TOT).
Revenue from the required license fee, which amounts to $1,000 for a two-year license, will be crucial to fund the administration and enforcement of the new regulations. City officials previously estimated that applications for the first round of all types of short-term rentals could generate more than $7 million. This funding could be insufficient if the city fails to attract many more applications.
The city previously said it plans to hire an IT consultant to help identify unlicensed listings for all home-sharing platforms like Airbnb and VRBO. The city’s law enforcement team will also respond to complaints they receive, in addition to taking action to remove nuisance properties.
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