Revising my stance on vacation rentals

As many people who follow my blog know, I'm fighting a battle against short term vacation rentals since my neighbor decided to kick out a family and turn his property into a mini-hotel with people staying for a few days at a time. I've been scouring local regulations and reading everything I can about this topic.

Last week I spoke with a few attorneys about my legal options and listened to what they had to say. After these meetings as well as having another group of transients next door (with 1 call to the police), I think I have figured out my major complaint with the short term rentals. That complaint is that the property next door is being used as a mini-hotel and isn't in the spirit of a neighborhood. Some people who support vacation rentals argue that they should be able to rent out their houses when they go on vacation to earn some extra money. While I don't plan on doing this myself, I realize that I don't have a huge problem with this if it is only done occasionally and not as a primary use of the property.

So while some may think I've softened my position on vacation rentals, I'm really just fine tuning it in a way such that what I want has a chance of being addressed by the city council. Taking a hard line stance completely banning vacation rentals has a very tough time passing given that the city collects tax revenue from visitors staying in these properties.

My new proposal is:

In order to promote neighborhood quality, character, and livability, the SDMC should be amended to allow short term rentals in RS zones with a minimum stay of 7 days only as an accessory use of a property. As an accessory use of the property, the owner must reside in the property for at least 10 months of the year.

This would address my needs of not having a mini-hotel next door and would let home owners earn extra cash. What it would do is prevent people from turning neighborhoods into rows and rows of mini-hotels. The proposal is similar to San Francisco's new ordinance about rentals, but San Francisco's ordinance doesn't apply to single family residences.

The good news is that the city council's subcommittee on smart growth and land use is taking up vacation rentals at its April 22nd meeting. You can submit feedback to Ryan Purdy by March 2nd. While I have no idea what will happen, the fact that the subcommittee is looking into this is a step in the right direction.

Access to Politicians

Now that I've started my fight against vacation rentals, I've been trying to get a meeting with my city council representative, Lorie Zapf. At a recent Town Council meeting, she indicated that she was going to setup "office hours" where the public could arrange a time to speak with her. I haven't heard any more about this and have asked via email if I could setup a meeting. While I was down at city hall today, I decided to see if I could schedule a meeting in person as I'm impatient and haven't heard back to my email.

I went to the 10th floor of city hall, walked out of the elevator to a nondescript waiting area with a lady behind a window. The waiting area was uninviting and all the doors around said "authorized personnel only". I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this seemed like an experience worse than a doctor's office. I asked the lady behind the window if I could get a meeting and she called back to someone and asked me to wait.

One of the councilwoman's people came out, asked where I lived and then went back to see if the area rep could meet with me. She came back, said he was busy and took my name, email address and phone number to setup a meeting. I've previously sent email and haven't heard back, so maybe my physical presence downtown today might change that.

While I understand that we live in a representative democracy, it would be nice if I could express my concerns in person to the person that represents me. I've never been particularly interested in politics as it didn't really affect me. Hopefully I can get a meeting with someone from my councilwoman's office and plead my case.

Misinterpreting Property Rights

In my battle to limit vacation rentals, those that are either for them or not opposed to them keep claiming "property rights" such that the owner of a piece of property can do whatever he or she wants with the property. This is a very naïve view of the world and factually untrue in our modern society. We live in a society of laws and regulations which dictate what a person can and cannot do with property he or she owns.

For instance, while I own my house and property under it (OK, the bank owns part of it right now), I can't build a farm on it, I can't park cars in my front yard, I can't build a gas station on it, I can't build onto it without a permit, I can't tear down my house and build condos (it is zoned as single family residential), etc.

So for anyone to claim that vacation rentals are a property right is mistaken. While the interpretation of the current regulations (I saw interpretation because the city attorney of San Diego has a different view on what constitutes a business than others do) doesn't prohibit them, property rights doesn't guarantee that they are allowed.

Enforcing San Diego Trash Regulations

Some may be asking why I'm so interested in trash regulations. It's quite simple, if the city won't regulate vacation rentals, the more I can find and do to make vacation rentals less profitable, the more likely the vacation rental next door will go away.

Today I received confirmation that my analysis of trash regulations with respect to vacation rentals was correct. However, there are a number of problems in enforcing it:

• Terminating trash collection for those with a Transient Occupancy Registration Certificate unfairly rewards those that don't have the certificate and haven't been operating within the law. That's a pretty poor excuse. What I'd suggest is work with the city treasurer to enforce the TOT registration by issuing a subpoena to AirBnB, VRBO.com, etc. for records of all listings in the city. Then overlay that data with the registered ones and cite those without the certificate (and collect back tax). In addition, encourage neighbors to report vacation rentals. I'd be more than happy to work on data crunching to assist in finding people skirting the law.

• If the city picks up the cans from the vacation rentals, nothing is stopping the owner from going to Home Depot, purchasing a trash can for automated collection and using it. The drivers don't know who is supposed to get service and who isn't. Again, this is an excuse. If the trash vehicles are equipped with GPS systems, work with the vendor to integrate a POI system that would alert the driver of properties to skip. If the vehicles aren't equipped with GPS systems, it is about time they were as studies have shown that fleet vehicles like this can improve fuel economy with more efficient routes guided by GPS.

• For areas like Mission Beach where the houses are rented out most of the year to students 9 months of the year and 3 months of the year used as vacation rentals, would the city stop and start service? Look at the regulations; they don't say that a "transient occupancy facility" has to be one the entire year. So, if it is ever used as a vacation rental, stop trash collection completely.

• If vacation rental owners have to get private trash service, there will be a big environmental impact of having additional trash vehicles on the street. Trash trucks not only have an environmental impact, they do numbers on the streets. I don't have a solution for this problem.

• How does this get enforced? That's another easy one to answer. Encourage neighbors to report their neighbors; offer rewards under whistleblower statutes using money from fines. I'm sure neighbors would be more than happy to report vacation rentals next door.

Basically unless the Environmental Services Department is instructed to enforce the regulations by the mayor, they won't do anything. I've sent a letter to the mayor and city attorney requesting that the trash service be discontinued for my neighbor; that doesn't help anyone else, but it is a start. Will I get a response from the mayor? I have no idea.

Can I sue the city to get them to enforce the current regulations? I have no idea and I'd need an attorney to do pro-bono work for me as I can see the cost going up pretty quickly.