SAN DIEGO — With several beach homes being used as vacation rentals, a new bill could limit how long owners are able to rent out their properties on Airbnb and other sites.
Bill AB 1731, by North County Assemblywoman Tasha Boerner Horvath, cleared the state Assembly in May. Should the Assembly bill make it through the legislative process, each of the vacation rental platforms, the largest of which are Airbnb, HomeAway and VRBO, would be limited to listing a residential property for no more than 30 days a year unless the full-time resident were present. Year-round rentals would be permitted for traditional home-sharing in which residents rent out a spare bedroom or a granny flat on their property. The short-term rental of second homes and investor properties listed on the home sharing platforms would be prohibited.
The bill would only last three years, after which a study could be conducted to determine whether the tighter controls had any meaningful impact on the availability of coastal homes to buyers.
“In years two and three of that pilot program we’re really going to be able to get an understanding of what it’s doing for the entire state of California on how to address this component of our housing crisis,” Horvath said.
Horvath said she specifically targeted the hosting platforms, arguing that they have contributed to the meteoric growth of short-term rentals that she says are depleting cities’ diminishing stock of long-term housing, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
In San Diego County’s coastal cities, there are nearly 14,000 housing units currently listed as short-term rentals on the Airbnb and HomeAway platforms, according to the home sharing data analytics firm Airdna.
The bill still has two more senate committees to pass, the Senate's Natural Resources and Water Committee will consider the bill next, followed by the Governance and Finance Committee before it could advance to the full legislative body.