After years of delay, County finally prepares to regulate short-term rentals.

County officials knew they had to do something about the rising trend of short-term rentals before you’d even heard of VRBO or Airbnb. While the practice of renting out private residential homes for short-term vacationers wasn’t invented by these internet platforms, they helped the practice expand rapidly and by 2015, the County of Monterey convened a Short-Term Rental Working Group.

More than nine years later, the initial premise – that something must be done – is finally on its way to becoming reality. The Monterey County Planning Commission held a public hearing on May 29 on a proposed ordinance regulating short-term rentals in the unincorporated county, and to certify a final environmental impact report associated with it. The commission is set to reconvene on Wednesday, June 12 to deliberate and vote. Their recommendation will then go to the County Board of Supervisors.

If adopted, the regulations as proposed would not only finally put to bed this longstanding, unresolved issue. They would thread the needle of how to manage a complicated issue.

Depending on who you ask, short-term vacation rentals are the only way property owners can afford to keep their homes. Or they are also a get-rich-quick scheme for out-of-towners taking housing off the market, running commercial enterprises – basically unpermitted hotels – in residential neighborhoods.

These divided perspectives were on display at the Planning Commission hearing, as they have been throughout the entire process. Commissioners heard from people who said vacation rentals have ruined the neighborhood. “My area is zoned low-density residential but the house across the street from me is a mini hotel,” said a resident of Yankee Point in the Carmel Highlands.

There were also stories from STR owners who rely on the income to pay the bills. In one case of a Royal Oaks home inherited from her mother, a woman talked about trimming trees for fire safety. “What we’ve done with every dime is improve the county – we have put so much money into this house,” she said. “We are not some business, we are people.”

The comments poured in, both spoken and written – letters were submitted in real time as the hearing unfolded.

“One correspondent suggested that STRs allow seniors to have needed income and I’m not arguing with that,” one Pebble Beach senior wrote. “What has not been addressed is that seniors also want to feel safe and secure in their homes.” She went on to describe vacationers in the STR next door repeatedly peering over the fence – making her feel unsafe and insecure.

So it went, for hours, as the commissioners listened. “I feel for you having to hack your way through these regulatory thickets,” said Kay Austen of the Monterey County Vacation Rental Alliance. Then she added: “Thickets that you have created.”

The nine-plus years of work to contain this evolving landscape of short-term rentals landed with a proposed ordinance that, if adopted, would do a good job of addressing the disparate needs. Most importantly, it would distinguish between commercial short-term rentals that are, in effect, hotels, and hosted rentals, in which somebody lives in a place and rents out a room. It would also distinguish between repeat businesses and an occasional side hustle in which a home is rented out up to three times a year – the latter is not changing the fabric of a neighborhood. Staff from the County’s Housing and Community Development Department wisely propose making these nuanced but significant distinctions.

Their proposal also reduces a cap on the portion of single-family homes used as commercial short-term rentals from 6 percent of the total to 4 percent.

“Residences are for people to live in – that’s the point of residential zoning,” said Martha Diehl, Planning Commission chair. “It’s not in fact to support someone having a second home, it’s not in fact to support someone with an investment. We have a housing shortage, and everything we do I want to make sure I run through that [question]: Is this helping people to find places to live?”

A proposal that allows this business – for some families, a lifeline – to continue, while also protecting neighborhoods is a good compromise.

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com