The city of San Diego was planning on conducting a lottery to limit the number of licenses for short-term whole-home vacation rentals that were available for more than 20 days per year. Now, however, it seems possible that everyone who applied will receive a license.
The city of San Diego passed new rules that would require all short-term vacation rental hosts to get a license even if they only planned to rent their home or part of their home for one day per year. The city was planning on conducting a lottery for licenses for hosts who wished to rent out their entire home on a short-term basis for more than 20 days per year and for people who wanted to have a short-term vacation rental in Mission Beach. The goal was to limit the number of short-term vacation rentals in the city to 1% of the 540,000 housing units.
Short-Term Rental News
“We have a housing crisis in San Diego,” said Venus Molina, chief of staff for Councilmember Jennifer Campbell. “It’s very expensive, and we don’t have a lot of houses for rent or to buy, so we wanted to make sure that we put housing back on the market for people who want to live here. We wanted to control this particular platform because it was out of control, you know? People were just doing whatever they wanted, so we wanted to make sure there was some control.”
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Prior to the new rules, the city auditor had estimated there were approximately 16,000 whole homes that were being used as short-term rentals for more than 20 days per year. The city planned on limiting the number of licenses for short-term vacation rentals for more than 20 days per year to 5,400.
The deadline for applications to get the licenses is Wednesday at 5 p.m. As of the day before the deadline, though, there were less than 5,400 applications, Molina said, so it was unclear whether the city would even have to conduct a lottery.
“Well, right now, our applications are not as high as we thought, so everybody might be able to get a license,” Molina said.
Molina said she wasn’t sure why the application numbers were so low; she suspected many people were not aware they needed a license. However, Molina had a warning for hosts that there will be consequences for not having a license.
“If people don’t, you know, get a license and they still operate, we have agreements with Airbnb, Expedia and the platforms, so they will be dropped from the platforms and they won’t be able to operate,” Molina said.
The enforcement of the new short-term vacation-rental rules won’t begin until May 1, 2023. The city can issue warnings, citations of $1000 or civil penalties of up to $10,000 for violating the rules. Applications for licenses to rent out a room in a home on a short-term basis or an entire home for less than 20 days per year will be accepted by the city on a rolling basis. All licenses are valid for two years.
If a lottery for whole-home short-term vacation rentals for more than 20 days per year is conducted, it will take place on Dec.16. Preference will be given to hosts who have been operating on the platforms with few complaints for a long period of time.
