The City of Long Beach will now allow as many as 350 unsupervised short-term rentals of homes and apartments along its beaches.
Under pressure from the state’s Coastal Commission, the Long Beach City Council voted to approve the hundreds of unhosted short-term rentals along its coast with the stipulation that the total number of similar rentals across the city doesn’t exceed 800 units, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported.
The California Coastal Commission had sought to increase public access to the Long Beach waterfront. It said restricting the number of un-hosted short-term rentals of the sort that Airbnb popularized could not only limit coastal access but also lead to fewer resources and higher prices for visitors.
If the city had chosen not to accept the Coastal Commission’s recommendations that included allowing up to 350 short-term rentals, its existing regulations in coastal areas could have been thrown out.
Short-term rentals are properties rented out for fewer than 90 days. Un-hosted rentals, where there is no direct supervision of renters, are the target of most Long Beach rules.
Long Beach passed citywide rules for short-term rentals in 2020 and began enforcing them last year.
The rules say property owners can rent their primary residences as short-term rentals on an unlimited basis, as long as they’re present during a guest’s stay. If they aren’t present, they can rent them for up to 90 days per year.
In addition, owners can only rent out one property that is not their primary home, as long as someone can respond to neighborhood complaints within an hour. There is no cap on how many days a secondary property can act as a short-term rental.
Long Beach caps short-term rentals at 800 citywide and provides residents a method of banning such rentals by census block. City officials were adamant that the city not exceed its cap of 800 on un-hosted short-term rentals, despite the 350 now required along the coast.
[Long Beach Press-Telegram] – Dana Bartholomew
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