The first decades of the 21st century have been hailed as the beginning of what many are calling the “sharing economy” — a new form of trading based on “peer-to-peer” sharing of goods and services. Aspects of this new economy, marked by the popularity of websites like Chegg and apps like Uber, have had some unintended consequences here in Malibu.
Using your home as a vacation rental, long a popular way to make some extra cash while traveling over the summer, has now become so simple, streamlined and popular that many residents complain their neighbors no longer live in their homes, but rather rent them out year-long for weekend bashes that often bring police and code enforcement officers knocking on the door — weekend after weekend after weekend.
“It sounds like other than the sober homes and the rehab homes, we now have people who are looking at buying a house and turning a residential area into more of a commercial area, a hotel area — a hotel home,” Council Member Joan House said at the Monday night Malibu City Council meeting.
House presented a request to city staff that they come forward with an ordinance to place limits on these types of rentals, found on websites like Airbnb and VRBO. Included in House’s suggestions for the ordinance were an outright ban on short-term vacation rentals or an ordinance similar to Santa Monica’s Home-Sharing Ordinance, which allows rentals under 30 days as long as a regular resident of the house is present on site during the stay.
Many members of the public came to speak in support of House and to air their own grievances over rentals in their neighborhoods.
“This is more than hotels on your street,” Planning Commissioner John Mazza said. “This is party central. Two weekends ago, we had a party that hit TMZ with 500 people.”
Mazza suggested a limit on the number of people permitted to stay in a rented house.
“We should also put a limit on how many people they can rent to,” Mazza suggested. “When you lease your house for a weekend and 500 people show up, that needs an event permit.”
Residents from Ramirez Canyon voiced complaints that they have been “inundated” with short-term rentals.
“These many hotels can quickly become a nightmare,” homeowner Katheryn Holguin, president of the Ramirez Canyon Road Association, said, later adding, “regulation and enforcement is necessary.”
Council Member Skylar Peak was especially outspoken in support of the ban.
“It’s nonsense that someone in our community complains about something like this and nothing gets done,” Peak said.
Later, he called for a complete ban.
“We could just ban it, that would be easy,” Peak suggested.
Mayor Laura Rosenthal played devil’s advocate, reminding the frustrated crowd that there are cases where homeowners are respectful of neighbors.
Rosenthal said that regulations forcing homeowners to stay on the property during short-term rentals could hurt residents who are “house rich and cash poor.”
“My concern is, if we say, ‘Sorry, you have to be there,’ it actually takes away the ability for a lot of people to actually go on a vacation,” Rosenthal said, “because the money that they make renting it out to somebody for one or two weeks once a year or a couple of times a year really enables them to go away.”
Rosenthal said her family has often rented out their home for one or two weeks in the summer to go on vacation.
At the end of the discussion, council agreed to direct city staff to draw up an ordinance limiting short-term rentals. Suggestions included “getting some teeth behind code enforcement,” which would make code enforcers able to levy fines against renters, necessitating a license and/or regulating how many people are permitted to stay in a residence at one time.
“We want to be able to reward the law abiders and we want to have something strong enough to deal with the people that are really causing havoc in our community,” Rosenthal said.
Residents with complaints or suggestions for the ordinance are encouraged to reach out to House at jhouse@malibucity.org and City Manager Reva Feldman at rfeldman@malibucity.org.