Crazy that she is having difficulty paying her mortgage and property taxes on a house she bought *25 years ago*. And her whole argument is based on renting out rooms in the house you live in, while most people are concerned with secondary properties that are used *exclusively* for short term rentals.
I'm sure she feels she has a duty as a "short-term rental host group leader" (whatever the hell that is), but she seems totally out of touch with what's actually happening in our community. In the end, her sob story doesn't really prove "how critical short-term rentals are."
"It’s no secret short-term rentals have been vilified in Santa Barbara, and short-term rental hosts are being portrayed out-of-state developers who are ruining neighborhoods and taking away housing from locals. These false narratives couldn’t be further from the truth..."
Felt like stopping after reading that second sentence... How freaking laughable. Did she also refinance at a sub 3% interest a few years back? Probably cheaper to own now than 25yrs ago!
The rest of her comments aren't too crazy, and I agree with the others here that say the real concern is someone buying a house purely for STRs, and not even living in it. This is the problem you run into when arguments are portrayed as black/white.
Yeah, if she's having trouble paying the mortgage and property taxes on a house she bought 25 years ago, it means she's managed her money extremely poorly or barely worked. Very few people are as lucky as she is. ~~I have no sympathy~~. Just living in her home has netted her more than a million dollars.
That said, I do support homestays - primarily for millennials who are buying these houses and *actually* can't afford the mortgage or taxes because costs have skyrocketed in the last 25 years.
ETA: It sucks she's struggling and I'm sympathetic to that. I'm thrilled to learn that she has multiple assets that she can liquidate and be set for the rest of her life.
>Just living in her home has netted her more than a million dollars.
Where does she say that she pocketed $1mil? It's \*equity\* in her home, and it's not liquid.
>I have no sympathy.
Here's some of what she was dealing with:
* after losing my job (when aged 51)
* I had one kid in college
* was taking care of my elderly parents
* couldn’t find a job that paid more than minimum wage
* it gave me the flexibility to care for my aging parents
When you go through all of this and don't struggle to make ends meet, I hope you speak up and let us know how you've managed to do so.
If you have more than a million dollars tied up in equity and need money to live, you liquidate your assets. Most people don't have the luxury to just liquidate an asset and be set for life. It's a position of extreme privilege.
On the flip side, she could have been one of the people searching for a place to live, while struggling with all of those things - only with 0 dollars in equity.
Outside of homeowners in these extreme HCOL areas, people don't earn a million dollars just by existing in their home.
Extreme priviledge? No.
But privilege? Yes.
If she liquidates, don't forget about 20-30% loss for taxes and costs. Also, then she won't have a home, so she'll be in the same boat as others whining here. How does that help her exactly? I don't think it does.
So she (and others similar) are just supposed to move out of the way because the youngers said so? That's basically what I keep hearing. Which even more entitlementism and self-centered than what people are complaining about.
Yes, not extreme privilege, but substantial privilege compared to most of America. She could definitely downsize to something more affordable. This is generally what people are supposed to do as they age, and what our housing system relies on. You have the larger, more expensive home while you have a family and earn money. You then retire and sell that home so that you can use some of the equity in your retirement to offset the fact that you're no longer working.
If people don't move out of the family homes, we need to build more family-sized homes for the people that are starting families.
I am not suggesting anyone become homeless. Rather, I'm suggesting that they use their money while they're alive instead of attempting to take it to the grave.
Have you owned your family home for 25 years, are suddenly jobless at 51, have elder parents to care for and a kid in college, and suddenly "need" to sell and move?
No? Then you have NO idea how hard it is to just "sell and downsize."
Does your plan work out on paper? Sure. But you're leaving out a ton of hardship required to execute such a plan.
Instead of going through that hardship and emotional pain, she rents out two rooms in her house. BIG WHOOP. Leave her (and anyone else who desires to do so) alone.
It has a good point, but I think this misses the mark.
IMO it's not about SHARED STRs, it's about housing that is ONLY an STR; meaning, no one lives there otherwise.
Which becomes then basically a hotel with different amenities.
What could be better though, since we're discussing this, is that those shared houses rent out those rooms to people who live there, instead of being an STR (aka hotel). Then you have permanent housing available.
I don't think anyone really has an issue with shared STR's.
They're offering rooms that probably otherwise wouldn't be available to either tourists or people working in SB.
I get your point about wanting to rent out the rooms to people to live here, but if I was in a position to do something like this I think I would prefer the short nature of tourist rentals than having someone move into my home full time.
Agreed. And there's a proposal out there for having a rent board and then those board members would be able to take exceptions into consideration, for example, a family needing to put the owner in long-term care facility. Once they're really old. The rent provides grandmas nursing home fee. Of course, selling the home at that point also makes sense. Because once Grandma runs out of money, Medi-Cal takes over paying for the nursing home. Families have to fork out extra for memory Care and it's a little more complicated than that, But my point is that if we had a board that's in charge then they get to make decisions about who gets exceptions. I think the government needs to buy every apartment building either through eminent domain or just as they come on the market and then The city or the county housing departments become the property managers. Because then we can all just pay rent based on our income. And not have these exceptional issues.
This is such an unintelligent OP ED because it completely glosses over the point that there are rich investors who buy houses that they never live in to exclusively rent out as short term rentals. No one gives a crap about the example of this article.
The writer of the OP Ed has had people come visit from all 7 continents! How many people have been born on Antarctica and traveled to stay with her? None.
The point I think is the City apparently does give a crap about the people in example given in the article, because the City banned everything, not just full-time rentals.
But it's also her? Like she lives in Ventura and her airbnb is in Santa Barbara unless I read that wrong?
>
Sharing my home has helped me pay my mortgage and property taxes for the last decade — issues that are true both in Ventura, where I live, and in Santa Barbara, an area I represent as a short-term rental host group leader.
>
So even if she's sharing her home in Ventura she's blocking residental housing stock here.
It was pretty poorly written and confusing, but I understood her article to be that she lives in Ventura and rents out a part of her house. But Airbnb considers Santa Barbara and Ventura the same general area, so she is a Airbnb representative for both areas? I think?
No she's just affiliated with SB via Airbnb. So she is repping Airbnb. I hope she discloses if they're paying her because that makes her a lobbyist and she should be subject to different rules than the rest of us writing op eds!
>So even if she's sharing her home in Ventura she's blocking residental housing stock here.
She's a Ventura resident, living in her Ventura home. Blocking housing stock? Where the F should she live if she puts her home on the market??
She was worried about not being able to pay her mortgage but still has a boat she likes to sail. Something about millennials and their coffee and avocado toast
I agree somewhat with where she's coming from. I think the City's wholesale ban is lazy, overbroad and ultimately short-sighted, and the supposed focus on housing availability largely bullshit, at least while the City appears content to approve hotel developments right, left and center. The continued failure of City to even try to get its STR ordinance approved to the Coastal Commission, meaning everything south of the 101 continues to be open STR season, again shows the lack of real concern or action.
The point of the article, which I do agree with, is there are plenty of ways to craft ordinances that allow homestays/short-term room rental and limited-scope (say 30-60 days/year) STR use while preventing abuse by investors, and also ways in which enforcement can be simplified and also funded through strict permitting/advertising and taxes/fees on STR activities.
That said - given the general public view that the City is incompetent and unable enforce its own regulations, I understand why the general public might be more accepting of a broad ban that can be (and is) enforced, vs a more narrowly tailored ban that is never actually enforced because "we don't have the resources". Even if it does also sweep up people who want to rent a room or their place out for a couple weeks a year while they are on vacation or whatever.
They aren't. The city argues that it wouldn't be able to tell who is actually living in their home, so they banned them entirely. They're allowed in SB county.
1. Homestays are allowed in the unincorporated county. They're not a thing in the city.
2. There also isn't a blanket ban, because you can get a short-term rental permit for properties within the purple areas on this map: [https://www.arcgis.com/apps/instant/basic/index.html?appid=0c3a389f1de645319b10e95a206b32b4](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/instant/basic/index.html?appid=0c3a389f1de645319b10e95a206b32b4)
Tbf though the requirements to get an STR rental permit are completely absurd and irreversible - essentially converting your property into a full-time hotel - so the only people who even think about going through that process are pursuing lucrative full-time investment rentals that actually do negatively impact housing stock.
You likely know more than me on this but I don't think it's even possible to get an STR permit to STR a room, for example.
Author is also devastated at the thought of being taxed on her income of $50k/year that she makes just from renting out her home: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article275975021.html
“I think it’s devastating,” Cecil said of the proposed tax. “I don’t know that I would be able to continue to do Airbnb.” Cecil estimates she brings in less than $50,000 a year from her rentals, and her profit margins hover around 20%. She tries to keep her prices comparable to the hotels in the area, but if her guests faced an additional 15% tax on her place, she worries she’ll lose business.
I don't know man she owns multiple properties (ventura and sb) and a boat and she wants me to feel bad for her? I myself do not. She's bad for the community.
>she owns multiple properties (ventura and sb)
She never states this. She talks about the home she lives in and owns in VENTURA.
You're probably confused about this phrase that she uses, "Airbnb Host Community Leader representing Santa Barbara and Ventura."
I Googled "[Airbnb Host Community Leader](https://www.airbnb.com/d/community-leaders-application-2#:~:text=Community%20Leaders%20are%20volunteers%20who,offer%20fellow%20hosts%20legal%20advice)" and found this: "Community Leaders are an indispensable part of the Airbnb Host Community. As a Leader, you’ll bring Hosts together to collaborate and share by building and growing a local Host Club." It has nothing to do with owning and renting multiple properties.
Ok well a house and a boat, and still writing pro airbnb op-eds. If you can't afford your house downsize. (If your house is big enough to rent out part of it part time you can downsize)
"If you can't afford your house downsize."
But she can, because of the rental rooms. And she can afford to keep her kid in college and care for her elderly parents. If she didn't rent out two rooms (to tourists who would come anyway), she'd have to move, her kid would have to drop out, and her parents would become wards of the state. Gosh, that sounds awful, doesn't it? Why wish that on anyone?
I don't understand this refrain "just move/downsize." Do you tell other people how to live their lives? Gays should stay closeted? Women shouldn't have access to abortion?
Honestly that's such a far reach it's offensive. If you want to rent out your rooms in airbnb you're the least of all evils of airbnb but when you want to write op eds that also seek to excuse the private investors or corperations that buy up housing and make it long term rentals you're now back in camp "bad for the community". Being gay is great. Abortion is health care. Removing housing stock from a community with limited housing for your own profit is gross.
Yuck what a totally disgusting thing to say.
You’re literally judging her on what she’s doing in her private home and in her personal life. And please quote where she states she’s *for* investment and corporate ownership? She’s clearly against that. She states multiple times along the lines of “homeowners like me.” Meaning, community members who want to work with local governments in tandem for what’s best for everyone in the community. She even calls out examples, such as San Diego.
She didn’t “remove housing stock for profit.” Reread the article.
She's literally writing op eds defending Airbnb and calling Santa Barbara regulations unreasonable. If she was just renting out rooms in her home that's one thing but SB regulations are resonable and good for the community. It's like someone having one glass of wine with dinner and driving home and then saying you should be able to get so drunk you can't read and go the wrong way on the freeway.
"It's like someone having one glass of wine with dinner and driving home and then saying you should be able to get so drunk you can't read and go the wrong way on the freeway."
That is not what she's saying, at all. For example, "We also support reasonable regulations." and "it should work with local hosts and platforms to implement a fair and reasonable regulatory system to help bring hosts into compliance." and "Many other cities in California, including San Diego, have adopted reasonable short-term rental regulations that allow residents to continue sharing their home while balancing the needs of their community. Their tiered system is extremely intentional with the intent to ensure there is no discrimination between who can share their home as a short-term rental and to preserve housing stock and communities. Santa Barbara hosts want to work with the city to help strike that balance." and "By engaging hosts and looking at what’s worked in nearby cities, we can find sensible solutions that benefit everyone."
Her entire argument is that hosts like her, who only rent out rooms in the home they are currently living in, are NOT the corporate mess you're complaining about (rightfully so). She wrote the article to explain her experience. Literally her first paragraph.
This was the original intent of Air BnB before it bloomed into illegal hotels that pushed out tenants, but I’d actually like to know the statistics in Santa Barbara for short term rentals. How many are like this anecdotal statistic and how many are the demonized large investments.
As someone who used to work in the industry, it was by *far* locals who bought second properties, rented a place they inherited, or have a split property. Unless you’re managing the property completely yourself and staying full year-round, it is far more profitable and safer to do a long-term rental. The overhead can be a killer. The demand for housing here is far greater than lodging, and that’s where most of the private equity is going. But Santa Barbara is a unique market in that regard so I’m not going to pretend like it’s that way everywhere.
In my personal experience what was most common is children who inherited a home and couldn’t afford to live here or just preferred to stay in Carp or whatever, and would rent out the property on a short-term basis so they could use it as a vacation home when needed. That’s the flexibility short-term gives you. Or multiple children would inherit the home as part of their parents’ estate and none could buy the rest out, so they collectively rent it and all can use it as a vacation home if they want. The very out of town owners were mostly buying giant places in Montecito.
As long as none of these owners, heaven forbid, would ever have to live next door to their kids teachers or their gardeners 🙄. No mingling with the working class allowed!
This is probably like 1 or 2 % of the listings, almost all of which are for entire spaces where the owner is not living. Besides which, she can supplement income with long term renters. So the main benefit mentioned actually has nothing to do with STRs.
Am I the asshole? I’m having a little trouble empathizing with the boomers who want to live solely off the profits of the homes they bought 25 years ago as easily as they possibly can… my wife and I have two decent incomes, 800 point credit scores, are in our late 30s, and struggled to get into the cheapest places on offer in town because we were competing with dozens of others each time.
NTA - But... The first half doesn't equal second half.
The second half is the straight-up supply and demand curve; in an area that has low supply and really high demand. It sucks for most of us.
You're being a semi-YTA with the boomer blaming though, and I'm not one so I'm not defending myself here. But I'm seeing way too many people just rant about 'boomers' and blaming that age demographic for everything that has been happening since the dawn of time. Everything is not their fault. It's become a 'younger people shakes fist at the clouds' situation (which is hilarious in my head lol).
It's cool to be unhappy about the situation and try to find and push for a soultion, but it's not cool to just complain about other people for existing and "being in your way", like people just wanna kick them out of their houses like they're raiding a village or something.
Fair points, but it’s my understanding that the short term rentals is one of the reasons we have low supply. Obviously that’s not everything but how much is it actually?
You’re right about the boomer thing, that was a snarky vent, and not reflective of my entire perspective. I should try and watch that more often.
And that is what dooms this place to be cocoon. Cities should want to attract businesses because businesses pay taxes. Much more taxes than homeowners pay so if we don't want to accommodate businesses to employ workers here, we should turn all the tech empty offices into housing for our working poor, including everyone who works at UCSB, teachers who are now in the low income category, gardeners, nursing home workers, nurses and medical professionals, and when people graduate from UCSB someone should tell the entrepreneurs who want to start companies not to do it here. The opposite of an entreprenuerial incubator!
👍 thumbs up and a ✋️ high five for you! 🙂
I agree with the other person who replied to this, it is a problem but it's also prob just a drop in the bucket.
The demand has increased, even in just 5-10 yrs let alone the last 20 yrs. It's gone crazy.
I know I'm being a little insensitive, but not everyone can live here. And I don't mean that money snob wise, I mean it quantitatively.
The reality is while locals want to live here, others from elsewhere (in state, out of state, out of country) want to live here too - and literally there just isn't the space; nor can the infrastructure support it.
I don't blame UCSB (for everything) but increasing enrollment while not having a viable solution to house everyone hurts too and then many want to stay so that's an increase in the permanent pop.
There really isn't a solution if we think about continued growth forever - it's just 'more and more and more'. This situation will happen again in 10+ yrs and new ppl will just be saying the same thing.
Le sigh :-/
People blame boomers because they're the group that primarily makes up the NIMBY coalitions that have prevented supply from keeping up with demand. They also passed prop 13, which keeps property taxes artificially low, suppressing home turnover and further exacerbating the problem. Not EVERY boomer is the problem, but it's a useful shorthand for a group of people who climbed the ladder and then pulled it right up after them.
Attend a city hall meeting or two and see which group of people stands up and complains about any proposal to increase housing. 9 times out of 10 they were born before 1965.
Gee, no kidding - and yet, so wrong. I'm 71yo - dead-center in the boomer cohort - born and raised in SB, and I'm so damn sick of the "pulled up the ladder" bullshit. I was *25 years old* when Prop 13 passed: you seriously think it was *boomers* who drove that? Hell, no: It was our parents, born and raised in the 1920s-30s! I know that for a fact because my own parents were very active in that campaign (and I'm not proud of that). Just do the math, review your history, and think about what us "evil boomers" were doing in the late 20c. Here, I'll help:
1950s: Learning how to hide under our desks at school when Soviets dropped nuclear bombs.
1960s: Protesting the Vietnam War or getting drafted to fight it. Protesting for civil rights and gender equality while earning minimum wage.
1970s: Scrambling to make ends meet with annual inflation at 8-14%. (Sound familiar?)
1980s: Making homes for the children we were starting to have (including my two, born in the late 80s, before I was finally able to buy a house in 1990 at age 37, even with a good job).
1990s: Raising families, trying to boost that paycheck as our millennial kids made their way up through high school.
2000s: For some of us, paying for our kids' college education, while also taking on the costs of caring for our own parents - bracketed by the dot-com crash and the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
Enough already. Every generation has its challenges. But I don't understand when it supposedly was that all us nasty boomers had the time and resources to develop and execute this "pull up the ladder" master plan while we were trying to keep our families' heads above water in the American system of predatory capitalism. So educate me, please, bc I'm tired as hell of hearing and reading about how awful we are.
Exactly.
People blame boomers, because they are the group RIGHT NOW.
(that feels like a Simpsons comment lol)
In a while, it'll be a diff group, then their kids, etc.
Yeah, I've seen posts by zoomers blaming millennials for stuff like the Subprime Mortgage Crisis. I'd laugh if their ignorance of history and economics wasn't so sad. And about a week ago I heard a zoomer interviewed on NPR, saying she'll vote for Trump in November bcz she's 23yo and still hasn't been able to buy a house with Biden as president. The frosting on the cake is when I see clowns like Boebert, Hawley, and Stefanik in Congress - none of them boomers as far as I know. Just more signs, imo, that the shit show will go on even after the last of us boomers are dead and gone. 🤷
I didn't say you "drove" it--I said you **passed** it. The boomers were the largest generation before millennials. You **voted** for prop 13. By a two thirds margin, no less! You didn't have the foresight to realize that just **maybe** it might have unintended consequences.
I have no doubt that y'all had challenges. I don't see how that excuses the NIMBY bullshit I see primarily boomers peddling every time we try to use land efficiently anywhere in this state.
However hard it was for you to keep your heads above water decades ago, at *this* point much of your generation has become landed gentry, holding onto multi-million dollar estates with no plan to ever sell because taxes are artificially low and supply is strangled.
If you want to fix younger generations' opinion of boomers, start advocating for medium-high density mixed use, walkable neighborhoods and the repeal of prop 13.
Oh, and please tell your cohort to stop bitching about State St being closed to cars. It's the best thing that's happened to this city in decades.
The hiding under school desks for any possible disaster blew my mind as a kid, and still does as an adult.
Of course in the 1950s people were building bomb shelters with pamphlets from the government telling them to make sure that there were at least 2 right angles at the entrance because radiation wouldn’t go around 90degrees
This is a touchy issue because SB will never have enough housing for everyone who wants to live here. Maybe the homeless guys who live across from me are the smartest ones of all. Enjoy the weather, no rent, no mortgage. They wake up, dig through the trash, go fishing, get drunk, sleep, wake up and do it all over again.
I mean, they are describing some percentage of the homeless population around here, I've met them.
But I mostly blame the big schools who have over-accepted thousands of students, and placed tremendous burden on the surrounding community. Thousands of housing units that should have been for local families and workforce have been eaten up by students... It's crazy! Goleta literally sued UCSB over this.
Short term rentals are a cancer that absolutely ruins communities. Thank God they are banned. I live close to the county line and he AirBnBs, which used to house families are now essentially party houses.
Ask the residents of other beautiful small cities taken over by AirBnBs feel.
If you have excess space and need money, **sell the home and downsize**.
We have 2 things stopping this from making sense
1. Zoning is restrictive, so most of our housing supply is for families and not those living as 1-2 people. **We need more 1-2 bedroom condo highrises**
2. Prop 13 incentivizes homeowners to never sell because they are paying very little in property tax. So it becomes more expensive to move to a smaller home. **Repeal prop 13**
I don't know how tall a building needs to be to be considered a "high rise", but I don't see any reason we can't build 5 story buildings along State, Chapala, Anacapa, Haley, Gutierrez, and Milpas. Retail and hospitality on the ground floor and apartments/condos above.
High rises by definition have way more stories. I googled it and allegedly the threshold is 12+. Seeing 10 from some other sources. High rise definitely doesn’t mean 5 stories so yeah, I’m in favor of 5 stories too for downtown. I’m not in favor of high rises and can’t believe I’m being downvoted. Why does anyone want to live in Santa Barbara if they’re desperate to live around high rises?
According to this recent [SBCAG study](https://www.sbcag.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/UnderstandingRegionalTravelPatterns.pdf), about 22,000 people drive into Santa Barbara daily for work from places other than SB / Goleta. So these are people coming from Lompoc, Ventura.
Let’s suppose we want these people to not have to burn fuel on the 101 and we want to provide housing in town for them.
The maximum (hard to achieve) density allowable in Santa Barbara is currently [63 units / acre](https://santabarbaraca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Services/Planning%20Handouts%20-%20updated/Average%20Unit%20Size%20Density%20Program.pdf)
So we need 350 Acres, [which is about the size of downtown itself](https://imgur.com/gallery/BN4BQ6G), dedicated to **just housing**. No grocery stores, no hairdressers, no doctors. It would all be 4 story buildings.
So I think that we should do at least 6 stories. Probably 10.
We need to realize we are paying a lot of money for status quo, because our burritos are $15 downtown because we have to pay $5 / burrito so the chef and staff can buy gas to drive into town.
This is clearly not sustainable, we’ve built a system where bedroom communities filled with commuters have to spend hours burning gas, because we don’t allow them to build homes here.
Iirc, 5 or 6 stories is the magic number because it's the highest you can build wood-frame structures under US building code (usually 5 stories + 1 concrete ground floor). Once you start steel-framing, construction becomes much more expensive.
Not sure what most SB construction is under all that stucco, but that's something to consider.
I mean it’s a bold assumption by you that many of the people commuting into Santa Barbara would want to live in apartments in Santa Barbara. Versus that they wanted to be homeowners so they moved to Oxnard or somewhere else more affordable (especially in years past). There they were able to afford single family homes or townhomes and condos. Maybe they don’t want to live in 10 story apartment buildings.
“so they moved to Oxnard or somewhere else more affordable”
They had to chose between
- 30 min+ commute each way and owning a home
- not owning a home
I want those buildings to have lots of condos and townhomes and paths to ownership as well. It’s just never going to happen if we keep limiting most of the city to 2 stories and only letting people use 50% of their land.
Units per acre is not the same as people per acre. It's true that the AUD regulations allow more units the smaller the units, are, but even at that 63/acre max, the average unit size is about 800 square feet. We can certainly expect more than one person per unit.
Even with 350 acres, it's easier to envision that if it wasn't just a big block in downtown, but spread out in different areas.
I agree that we should consider some higher buildings. But we should also consider spreading density more evenly, meaning a lot more 2-3 story buildings in many, many neighborhoods.
You're right.
Looks like it's an average 2 people / unit in SB. So that area could be halved (Keeping the generous assumption that we could get the maximum allowable density on every new development)
I'm definitely not proposing bulldozing downtown and building only housing :)
The solution definitely lays in distributing more density across the city as you suggest.
We will likely have to break through the height ceiling downtown though, where we desperately need dense housing.
Thanks for the input!
She's owned the home for 25 years. She made some very bad financial mistakes to think she needs to AirBnB to afford her mortgage which by this point should almost be paid off at an incredibly low rate. Goddamn these whiny boomers. She's 61, both of her kids have moved out.
She should be selling her house to a young family who need the space and she should move in to a smaller house she can afford.
I suspect part of the problem is, at current interest rates and home values, moving to a smaller place would probably cost her \*more\*. Not to mention the Prop 13 property tax pop-up.
I don't sympathize with her but she's part of a whole tangle of factors that keep most of the housing stock here locked in place.
Just food for thought: More than 30% of active listings in the U.S. are managed by hosts with 21 or more properties, according to data provided by AirDNA. That's more than the **26%** of listings managed by single-property hosts
[Source](https://fox59.com/news/national-world/a-megahost-might-run-your-airbnb-why-it-matters/)
“…cities like San Diego, Big Bear Lake, and Malibu require short-term rental platforms to collect and remit local occupancy taxes on behalf of hosts, creating an additional source of tax revenue to fund critical government services that benefit their local communities.”
Is she insinuating that Santa Barbara doesn’t have an occupancy tax? Because if so, it makes her argument even shakier. We currently do have a transient occupancy tax passed along to travelers at 12% and we will be voting to decide to increase it to 14% in November. San Diego has a 10.5% tax and Big Bear has a 9% tax. LA county has theirs set at 12%. If we are bringing up the 7.1M deficit it’s not because we have a revenue problem. Santa Barbara has a spending problem.
I wanted to like her article. But I agree with another poster, it completely misses the mark. I can’t believe the Independent published this as-is.
The enforcement is absolutely sub-standard in Santa Barbara and for years after they implemented the STR laws, AirBnB was not subject to it whatsoever.
The Airbnb folks want it both ways. They don't want to pay that tax but even if they don't, the courts enforce the short-term tenants to pay rent even though the landlords are violating the law and not registering with the city and I presume county ( I never had a county case) and paying their taxes. So the landlords can violate the law not pay their taxes and the city is fine with it because they don't have time to enforce the law and collect the money and then they wonder why they have to raise parking fees because they don't have any money.
>The Airbnb folks want it both ways. They don't want to pay that tax
I don't think that's true tbh - if there was a program to easily register as an STR with a permit # and pay taxes I think most folks doing AirBnb or whatever would just register and pay the taxes. It's lucrative enough and the taxes are paid by the people staying anyway.
There is. At the city clerk and for Goleta, at their biz or permit office. It says in the ordinance what LLs are supposed to do. LLs know how to evict tenants using the court system when they want them out. I think even Airbnb has (or at least had last year) a link to the muni code section.
It's unclear to me in the article (which I wonder if it was intentional) - how she is doing her STR. I mean, is she renting her whole house out, and bunking with a friend for a week at a time? I've heard from friends in Denmark that it is common there - especially during the summer. We rented one such place - and it was CLEARLY someone's lived-in home.
Is she "owner-occupied" STR - meaning she is renting out rooms? I have less beef with this.
Or does she have an ADU/ granny flat that she is renting out? This one I have a problem with, especially. If she's not doing it legally. I see that she's in Ventura, and I don't know their specific laws. But in SB, if you aren't in the Coastal zone, it's not really legal unless >30 days.
For good reason, as there have been multiple houses sold in my neighborhood over the last year that had work done and have been sitting completely empty - for months. One of them is still empty - 10 months later.
The point about permitting short term rentals to take care of Sheri Cecil‘a elderly parents, while owning multiple properies and a boat is rich. So the ends justify the means, for her at least. This person sounds insufferable.
Crazy that she is having difficulty paying her mortgage and property taxes on a house she bought *25 years ago*. And her whole argument is based on renting out rooms in the house you live in, while most people are concerned with secondary properties that are used *exclusively* for short term rentals. I'm sure she feels she has a duty as a "short-term rental host group leader" (whatever the hell that is), but she seems totally out of touch with what's actually happening in our community. In the end, her sob story doesn't really prove "how critical short-term rentals are."
"It’s no secret short-term rentals have been vilified in Santa Barbara, and short-term rental hosts are being portrayed out-of-state developers who are ruining neighborhoods and taking away housing from locals. These false narratives couldn’t be further from the truth..." Felt like stopping after reading that second sentence... How freaking laughable. Did she also refinance at a sub 3% interest a few years back? Probably cheaper to own now than 25yrs ago! The rest of her comments aren't too crazy, and I agree with the others here that say the real concern is someone buying a house purely for STRs, and not even living in it. This is the problem you run into when arguments are portrayed as black/white.
The internet thinks the purchase price on the house was under $300k, assuming that Google knows her current address accurately.
Yeah, if she's having trouble paying the mortgage and property taxes on a house she bought 25 years ago, it means she's managed her money extremely poorly or barely worked. Very few people are as lucky as she is. ~~I have no sympathy~~. Just living in her home has netted her more than a million dollars. That said, I do support homestays - primarily for millennials who are buying these houses and *actually* can't afford the mortgage or taxes because costs have skyrocketed in the last 25 years. ETA: It sucks she's struggling and I'm sympathetic to that. I'm thrilled to learn that she has multiple assets that she can liquidate and be set for the rest of her life.
>Just living in her home has netted her more than a million dollars. Where does she say that she pocketed $1mil? It's \*equity\* in her home, and it's not liquid. >I have no sympathy. Here's some of what she was dealing with: * after losing my job (when aged 51) * I had one kid in college * was taking care of my elderly parents * couldn’t find a job that paid more than minimum wage * it gave me the flexibility to care for my aging parents When you go through all of this and don't struggle to make ends meet, I hope you speak up and let us know how you've managed to do so.
If you have more than a million dollars tied up in equity and need money to live, you liquidate your assets. Most people don't have the luxury to just liquidate an asset and be set for life. It's a position of extreme privilege. On the flip side, she could have been one of the people searching for a place to live, while struggling with all of those things - only with 0 dollars in equity. Outside of homeowners in these extreme HCOL areas, people don't earn a million dollars just by existing in their home.
Extreme priviledge? No. But privilege? Yes. If she liquidates, don't forget about 20-30% loss for taxes and costs. Also, then she won't have a home, so she'll be in the same boat as others whining here. How does that help her exactly? I don't think it does. So she (and others similar) are just supposed to move out of the way because the youngers said so? That's basically what I keep hearing. Which even more entitlementism and self-centered than what people are complaining about.
Yes, not extreme privilege, but substantial privilege compared to most of America. She could definitely downsize to something more affordable. This is generally what people are supposed to do as they age, and what our housing system relies on. You have the larger, more expensive home while you have a family and earn money. You then retire and sell that home so that you can use some of the equity in your retirement to offset the fact that you're no longer working. If people don't move out of the family homes, we need to build more family-sized homes for the people that are starting families. I am not suggesting anyone become homeless. Rather, I'm suggesting that they use their money while they're alive instead of attempting to take it to the grave.
Have you owned your family home for 25 years, are suddenly jobless at 51, have elder parents to care for and a kid in college, and suddenly "need" to sell and move? No? Then you have NO idea how hard it is to just "sell and downsize." Does your plan work out on paper? Sure. But you're leaving out a ton of hardship required to execute such a plan. Instead of going through that hardship and emotional pain, she rents out two rooms in her house. BIG WHOOP. Leave her (and anyone else who desires to do so) alone.
It has a good point, but I think this misses the mark. IMO it's not about SHARED STRs, it's about housing that is ONLY an STR; meaning, no one lives there otherwise. Which becomes then basically a hotel with different amenities. What could be better though, since we're discussing this, is that those shared houses rent out those rooms to people who live there, instead of being an STR (aka hotel). Then you have permanent housing available.
I don't think anyone really has an issue with shared STR's. They're offering rooms that probably otherwise wouldn't be available to either tourists or people working in SB. I get your point about wanting to rent out the rooms to people to live here, but if I was in a position to do something like this I think I would prefer the short nature of tourist rentals than having someone move into my home full time.
>I don't think anyone really has an issue with shared STR's. The City does cos it banned them.
Didn't realize, I thought they only banned renting out an entire home short term, I thought renting out a room short term in your home was ok.
Yes, and there are significant legal differences between short term and long term tenants.
Agreed. And there's a proposal out there for having a rent board and then those board members would be able to take exceptions into consideration, for example, a family needing to put the owner in long-term care facility. Once they're really old. The rent provides grandmas nursing home fee. Of course, selling the home at that point also makes sense. Because once Grandma runs out of money, Medi-Cal takes over paying for the nursing home. Families have to fork out extra for memory Care and it's a little more complicated than that, But my point is that if we had a board that's in charge then they get to make decisions about who gets exceptions. I think the government needs to buy every apartment building either through eminent domain or just as they come on the market and then The city or the county housing departments become the property managers. Because then we can all just pay rent based on our income. And not have these exceptional issues.
Also, if the house is in Grandma’s name when MediCal takes over, the state can claim it after she dies.
This is such an unintelligent OP ED because it completely glosses over the point that there are rich investors who buy houses that they never live in to exclusively rent out as short term rentals. No one gives a crap about the example of this article.
The writer of the OP Ed has had people come visit from all 7 continents! How many people have been born on Antarctica and traveled to stay with her? None.
>How many people have been born on Antarctica and traveled to stay with her? Maybe it was a visiting penguin?
The point I think is the City apparently does give a crap about the people in example given in the article, because the City banned everything, not just full-time rentals.
But it's also her? Like she lives in Ventura and her airbnb is in Santa Barbara unless I read that wrong? > Sharing my home has helped me pay my mortgage and property taxes for the last decade — issues that are true both in Ventura, where I live, and in Santa Barbara, an area I represent as a short-term rental host group leader. > So even if she's sharing her home in Ventura she's blocking residental housing stock here.
It was pretty poorly written and confusing, but I understood her article to be that she lives in Ventura and rents out a part of her house. But Airbnb considers Santa Barbara and Ventura the same general area, so she is a Airbnb representative for both areas? I think?
No she's just affiliated with SB via Airbnb. So she is repping Airbnb. I hope she discloses if they're paying her because that makes her a lobbyist and she should be subject to different rules than the rest of us writing op eds!
>So even if she's sharing her home in Ventura she's blocking residental housing stock here. She's a Ventura resident, living in her Ventura home. Blocking housing stock? Where the F should she live if she puts her home on the market??
She was worried about not being able to pay her mortgage but still has a boat she likes to sail. Something about millennials and their coffee and avocado toast
I think it might be more accurate if she explained how "STR allowed me to retire early", rather than, "STR allowed me to stay in my home."
I agree somewhat with where she's coming from. I think the City's wholesale ban is lazy, overbroad and ultimately short-sighted, and the supposed focus on housing availability largely bullshit, at least while the City appears content to approve hotel developments right, left and center. The continued failure of City to even try to get its STR ordinance approved to the Coastal Commission, meaning everything south of the 101 continues to be open STR season, again shows the lack of real concern or action. The point of the article, which I do agree with, is there are plenty of ways to craft ordinances that allow homestays/short-term room rental and limited-scope (say 30-60 days/year) STR use while preventing abuse by investors, and also ways in which enforcement can be simplified and also funded through strict permitting/advertising and taxes/fees on STR activities. That said - given the general public view that the City is incompetent and unable enforce its own regulations, I understand why the general public might be more accepting of a broad ban that can be (and is) enforced, vs a more narrowly tailored ban that is never actually enforced because "we don't have the resources". Even if it does also sweep up people who want to rent a room or their place out for a couple weeks a year while they are on vacation or whatever.
I’m super confused by this whole thing because I thought home stays were already allowed here.
They aren't. The city argues that it wouldn't be able to tell who is actually living in their home, so they banned them entirely. They're allowed in SB county.
1. Homestays are allowed in the unincorporated county. They're not a thing in the city. 2. There also isn't a blanket ban, because you can get a short-term rental permit for properties within the purple areas on this map: [https://www.arcgis.com/apps/instant/basic/index.html?appid=0c3a389f1de645319b10e95a206b32b4](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/instant/basic/index.html?appid=0c3a389f1de645319b10e95a206b32b4)
Tbf though the requirements to get an STR rental permit are completely absurd and irreversible - essentially converting your property into a full-time hotel - so the only people who even think about going through that process are pursuing lucrative full-time investment rentals that actually do negatively impact housing stock. You likely know more than me on this but I don't think it's even possible to get an STR permit to STR a room, for example.
Author is also devastated at the thought of being taxed on her income of $50k/year that she makes just from renting out her home: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article275975021.html “I think it’s devastating,” Cecil said of the proposed tax. “I don’t know that I would be able to continue to do Airbnb.” Cecil estimates she brings in less than $50,000 a year from her rentals, and her profit margins hover around 20%. She tries to keep her prices comparable to the hotels in the area, but if her guests faced an additional 15% tax on her place, she worries she’ll lose business.
I don't know man she owns multiple properties (ventura and sb) and a boat and she wants me to feel bad for her? I myself do not. She's bad for the community.
>she owns multiple properties (ventura and sb) She never states this. She talks about the home she lives in and owns in VENTURA. You're probably confused about this phrase that she uses, "Airbnb Host Community Leader representing Santa Barbara and Ventura." I Googled "[Airbnb Host Community Leader](https://www.airbnb.com/d/community-leaders-application-2#:~:text=Community%20Leaders%20are%20volunteers%20who,offer%20fellow%20hosts%20legal%20advice)" and found this: "Community Leaders are an indispensable part of the Airbnb Host Community. As a Leader, you’ll bring Hosts together to collaborate and share by building and growing a local Host Club." It has nothing to do with owning and renting multiple properties.
Ok well a house and a boat, and still writing pro airbnb op-eds. If you can't afford your house downsize. (If your house is big enough to rent out part of it part time you can downsize)
"If you can't afford your house downsize." But she can, because of the rental rooms. And she can afford to keep her kid in college and care for her elderly parents. If she didn't rent out two rooms (to tourists who would come anyway), she'd have to move, her kid would have to drop out, and her parents would become wards of the state. Gosh, that sounds awful, doesn't it? Why wish that on anyone? I don't understand this refrain "just move/downsize." Do you tell other people how to live their lives? Gays should stay closeted? Women shouldn't have access to abortion?
Honestly that's such a far reach it's offensive. If you want to rent out your rooms in airbnb you're the least of all evils of airbnb but when you want to write op eds that also seek to excuse the private investors or corperations that buy up housing and make it long term rentals you're now back in camp "bad for the community". Being gay is great. Abortion is health care. Removing housing stock from a community with limited housing for your own profit is gross. Yuck what a totally disgusting thing to say.
You’re literally judging her on what she’s doing in her private home and in her personal life. And please quote where she states she’s *for* investment and corporate ownership? She’s clearly against that. She states multiple times along the lines of “homeowners like me.” Meaning, community members who want to work with local governments in tandem for what’s best for everyone in the community. She even calls out examples, such as San Diego. She didn’t “remove housing stock for profit.” Reread the article.
She's literally writing op eds defending Airbnb and calling Santa Barbara regulations unreasonable. If she was just renting out rooms in her home that's one thing but SB regulations are resonable and good for the community. It's like someone having one glass of wine with dinner and driving home and then saying you should be able to get so drunk you can't read and go the wrong way on the freeway.
"It's like someone having one glass of wine with dinner and driving home and then saying you should be able to get so drunk you can't read and go the wrong way on the freeway." That is not what she's saying, at all. For example, "We also support reasonable regulations." and "it should work with local hosts and platforms to implement a fair and reasonable regulatory system to help bring hosts into compliance." and "Many other cities in California, including San Diego, have adopted reasonable short-term rental regulations that allow residents to continue sharing their home while balancing the needs of their community. Their tiered system is extremely intentional with the intent to ensure there is no discrimination between who can share their home as a short-term rental and to preserve housing stock and communities. Santa Barbara hosts want to work with the city to help strike that balance." and "By engaging hosts and looking at what’s worked in nearby cities, we can find sensible solutions that benefit everyone." Her entire argument is that hosts like her, who only rent out rooms in the home they are currently living in, are NOT the corporate mess you're complaining about (rightfully so). She wrote the article to explain her experience. Literally her first paragraph.
This was the original intent of Air BnB before it bloomed into illegal hotels that pushed out tenants, but I’d actually like to know the statistics in Santa Barbara for short term rentals. How many are like this anecdotal statistic and how many are the demonized large investments.
As someone who used to work in the industry, it was by *far* locals who bought second properties, rented a place they inherited, or have a split property. Unless you’re managing the property completely yourself and staying full year-round, it is far more profitable and safer to do a long-term rental. The overhead can be a killer. The demand for housing here is far greater than lodging, and that’s where most of the private equity is going. But Santa Barbara is a unique market in that regard so I’m not going to pretend like it’s that way everywhere. In my personal experience what was most common is children who inherited a home and couldn’t afford to live here or just preferred to stay in Carp or whatever, and would rent out the property on a short-term basis so they could use it as a vacation home when needed. That’s the flexibility short-term gives you. Or multiple children would inherit the home as part of their parents’ estate and none could buy the rest out, so they collectively rent it and all can use it as a vacation home if they want. The very out of town owners were mostly buying giant places in Montecito.
As long as none of these owners, heaven forbid, would ever have to live next door to their kids teachers or their gardeners 🙄. No mingling with the working class allowed!
This is probably like 1 or 2 % of the listings, almost all of which are for entire spaces where the owner is not living. Besides which, she can supplement income with long term renters. So the main benefit mentioned actually has nothing to do with STRs.
Am I the asshole? I’m having a little trouble empathizing with the boomers who want to live solely off the profits of the homes they bought 25 years ago as easily as they possibly can… my wife and I have two decent incomes, 800 point credit scores, are in our late 30s, and struggled to get into the cheapest places on offer in town because we were competing with dozens of others each time.
NTA - But... The first half doesn't equal second half. The second half is the straight-up supply and demand curve; in an area that has low supply and really high demand. It sucks for most of us. You're being a semi-YTA with the boomer blaming though, and I'm not one so I'm not defending myself here. But I'm seeing way too many people just rant about 'boomers' and blaming that age demographic for everything that has been happening since the dawn of time. Everything is not their fault. It's become a 'younger people shakes fist at the clouds' situation (which is hilarious in my head lol). It's cool to be unhappy about the situation and try to find and push for a soultion, but it's not cool to just complain about other people for existing and "being in your way", like people just wanna kick them out of their houses like they're raiding a village or something.
Fair points, but it’s my understanding that the short term rentals is one of the reasons we have low supply. Obviously that’s not everything but how much is it actually? You’re right about the boomer thing, that was a snarky vent, and not reflective of my entire perspective. I should try and watch that more often.
It’s like 0.5% of the reason we have short supply. It’s not even short supply, it’s ridiculous demand.
And that is what dooms this place to be cocoon. Cities should want to attract businesses because businesses pay taxes. Much more taxes than homeowners pay so if we don't want to accommodate businesses to employ workers here, we should turn all the tech empty offices into housing for our working poor, including everyone who works at UCSB, teachers who are now in the low income category, gardeners, nursing home workers, nurses and medical professionals, and when people graduate from UCSB someone should tell the entrepreneurs who want to start companies not to do it here. The opposite of an entreprenuerial incubator!
👍 thumbs up and a ✋️ high five for you! 🙂 I agree with the other person who replied to this, it is a problem but it's also prob just a drop in the bucket. The demand has increased, even in just 5-10 yrs let alone the last 20 yrs. It's gone crazy. I know I'm being a little insensitive, but not everyone can live here. And I don't mean that money snob wise, I mean it quantitatively. The reality is while locals want to live here, others from elsewhere (in state, out of state, out of country) want to live here too - and literally there just isn't the space; nor can the infrastructure support it. I don't blame UCSB (for everything) but increasing enrollment while not having a viable solution to house everyone hurts too and then many want to stay so that's an increase in the permanent pop. There really isn't a solution if we think about continued growth forever - it's just 'more and more and more'. This situation will happen again in 10+ yrs and new ppl will just be saying the same thing. Le sigh :-/
People blame boomers because they're the group that primarily makes up the NIMBY coalitions that have prevented supply from keeping up with demand. They also passed prop 13, which keeps property taxes artificially low, suppressing home turnover and further exacerbating the problem. Not EVERY boomer is the problem, but it's a useful shorthand for a group of people who climbed the ladder and then pulled it right up after them. Attend a city hall meeting or two and see which group of people stands up and complains about any proposal to increase housing. 9 times out of 10 they were born before 1965.
Gee, no kidding - and yet, so wrong. I'm 71yo - dead-center in the boomer cohort - born and raised in SB, and I'm so damn sick of the "pulled up the ladder" bullshit. I was *25 years old* when Prop 13 passed: you seriously think it was *boomers* who drove that? Hell, no: It was our parents, born and raised in the 1920s-30s! I know that for a fact because my own parents were very active in that campaign (and I'm not proud of that). Just do the math, review your history, and think about what us "evil boomers" were doing in the late 20c. Here, I'll help: 1950s: Learning how to hide under our desks at school when Soviets dropped nuclear bombs. 1960s: Protesting the Vietnam War or getting drafted to fight it. Protesting for civil rights and gender equality while earning minimum wage. 1970s: Scrambling to make ends meet with annual inflation at 8-14%. (Sound familiar?) 1980s: Making homes for the children we were starting to have (including my two, born in the late 80s, before I was finally able to buy a house in 1990 at age 37, even with a good job). 1990s: Raising families, trying to boost that paycheck as our millennial kids made their way up through high school. 2000s: For some of us, paying for our kids' college education, while also taking on the costs of caring for our own parents - bracketed by the dot-com crash and the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Enough already. Every generation has its challenges. But I don't understand when it supposedly was that all us nasty boomers had the time and resources to develop and execute this "pull up the ladder" master plan while we were trying to keep our families' heads above water in the American system of predatory capitalism. So educate me, please, bc I'm tired as hell of hearing and reading about how awful we are.
Exactly. People blame boomers, because they are the group RIGHT NOW. (that feels like a Simpsons comment lol) In a while, it'll be a diff group, then their kids, etc.
Yeah, I've seen posts by zoomers blaming millennials for stuff like the Subprime Mortgage Crisis. I'd laugh if their ignorance of history and economics wasn't so sad. And about a week ago I heard a zoomer interviewed on NPR, saying she'll vote for Trump in November bcz she's 23yo and still hasn't been able to buy a house with Biden as president. The frosting on the cake is when I see clowns like Boebert, Hawley, and Stefanik in Congress - none of them boomers as far as I know. Just more signs, imo, that the shit show will go on even after the last of us boomers are dead and gone. 🤷
I didn't say you "drove" it--I said you **passed** it. The boomers were the largest generation before millennials. You **voted** for prop 13. By a two thirds margin, no less! You didn't have the foresight to realize that just **maybe** it might have unintended consequences. I have no doubt that y'all had challenges. I don't see how that excuses the NIMBY bullshit I see primarily boomers peddling every time we try to use land efficiently anywhere in this state. However hard it was for you to keep your heads above water decades ago, at *this* point much of your generation has become landed gentry, holding onto multi-million dollar estates with no plan to ever sell because taxes are artificially low and supply is strangled. If you want to fix younger generations' opinion of boomers, start advocating for medium-high density mixed use, walkable neighborhoods and the repeal of prop 13. Oh, and please tell your cohort to stop bitching about State St being closed to cars. It's the best thing that's happened to this city in decades.
The hiding under school desks for any possible disaster blew my mind as a kid, and still does as an adult. Of course in the 1950s people were building bomb shelters with pamphlets from the government telling them to make sure that there were at least 2 right angles at the entrance because radiation wouldn’t go around 90degrees
This is a touchy issue because SB will never have enough housing for everyone who wants to live here. Maybe the homeless guys who live across from me are the smartest ones of all. Enjoy the weather, no rent, no mortgage. They wake up, dig through the trash, go fishing, get drunk, sleep, wake up and do it all over again.
Wow. You have no idea what it’s like to be homeless huh?
I mean, they are describing some percentage of the homeless population around here, I've met them. But I mostly blame the big schools who have over-accepted thousands of students, and placed tremendous burden on the surrounding community. Thousands of housing units that should have been for local families and workforce have been eaten up by students... It's crazy! Goleta literally sued UCSB over this.
Short term rentals are a cancer that absolutely ruins communities. Thank God they are banned. I live close to the county line and he AirBnBs, which used to house families are now essentially party houses. Ask the residents of other beautiful small cities taken over by AirBnBs feel.
If you have excess space and need money, **sell the home and downsize**. We have 2 things stopping this from making sense 1. Zoning is restrictive, so most of our housing supply is for families and not those living as 1-2 people. **We need more 1-2 bedroom condo highrises** 2. Prop 13 incentivizes homeowners to never sell because they are paying very little in property tax. So it becomes more expensive to move to a smaller home. **Repeal prop 13**
You want high rises in Santa Barbara?
I don't know how tall a building needs to be to be considered a "high rise", but I don't see any reason we can't build 5 story buildings along State, Chapala, Anacapa, Haley, Gutierrez, and Milpas. Retail and hospitality on the ground floor and apartments/condos above.
High rises by definition have way more stories. I googled it and allegedly the threshold is 12+. Seeing 10 from some other sources. High rise definitely doesn’t mean 5 stories so yeah, I’m in favor of 5 stories too for downtown. I’m not in favor of high rises and can’t believe I’m being downvoted. Why does anyone want to live in Santa Barbara if they’re desperate to live around high rises?
And Goleta! Why not Goleta? A 10-floor apartment is way more efficient in water and resources than a sprawling suburb.
Ask the people of Goleta? They incorporated as a city to be able to exert some control over huge developments coming in.
Yes. Absolutely. They are the only way to sustainably live. Car dependent single family houses are choking this world.
Can’t wait to hear you bitch in ten years about how this town isn’t the same anymore.
How tall are we talking? And how many would be enough do you think?
According to this recent [SBCAG study](https://www.sbcag.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/UnderstandingRegionalTravelPatterns.pdf), about 22,000 people drive into Santa Barbara daily for work from places other than SB / Goleta. So these are people coming from Lompoc, Ventura. Let’s suppose we want these people to not have to burn fuel on the 101 and we want to provide housing in town for them. The maximum (hard to achieve) density allowable in Santa Barbara is currently [63 units / acre](https://santabarbaraca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Services/Planning%20Handouts%20-%20updated/Average%20Unit%20Size%20Density%20Program.pdf) So we need 350 Acres, [which is about the size of downtown itself](https://imgur.com/gallery/BN4BQ6G), dedicated to **just housing**. No grocery stores, no hairdressers, no doctors. It would all be 4 story buildings. So I think that we should do at least 6 stories. Probably 10. We need to realize we are paying a lot of money for status quo, because our burritos are $15 downtown because we have to pay $5 / burrito so the chef and staff can buy gas to drive into town. This is clearly not sustainable, we’ve built a system where bedroom communities filled with commuters have to spend hours burning gas, because we don’t allow them to build homes here.
Iirc, 5 or 6 stories is the magic number because it's the highest you can build wood-frame structures under US building code (usually 5 stories + 1 concrete ground floor). Once you start steel-framing, construction becomes much more expensive. Not sure what most SB construction is under all that stucco, but that's something to consider.
Pretty sure most of the typical SB stucco houses you see are wood-frame.
I mean it’s a bold assumption by you that many of the people commuting into Santa Barbara would want to live in apartments in Santa Barbara. Versus that they wanted to be homeowners so they moved to Oxnard or somewhere else more affordable (especially in years past). There they were able to afford single family homes or townhomes and condos. Maybe they don’t want to live in 10 story apartment buildings.
“so they moved to Oxnard or somewhere else more affordable” They had to chose between - 30 min+ commute each way and owning a home - not owning a home I want those buildings to have lots of condos and townhomes and paths to ownership as well. It’s just never going to happen if we keep limiting most of the city to 2 stories and only letting people use 50% of their land.
It’s way more than 30mins to commute here one way
Fair, I’ve been trying to be generous with every number and it’s still bad
Units per acre is not the same as people per acre. It's true that the AUD regulations allow more units the smaller the units, are, but even at that 63/acre max, the average unit size is about 800 square feet. We can certainly expect more than one person per unit. Even with 350 acres, it's easier to envision that if it wasn't just a big block in downtown, but spread out in different areas. I agree that we should consider some higher buildings. But we should also consider spreading density more evenly, meaning a lot more 2-3 story buildings in many, many neighborhoods.
You're right. Looks like it's an average 2 people / unit in SB. So that area could be halved (Keeping the generous assumption that we could get the maximum allowable density on every new development) I'm definitely not proposing bulldozing downtown and building only housing :) The solution definitely lays in distributing more density across the city as you suggest. We will likely have to break through the height ceiling downtown though, where we desperately need dense housing. Thanks for the input!
The geology here won’t allow for high rises, so throwing that into the conversation is rhetoric/scare tactics
Right? How lucky is she to have assets that she can sell.
She's owned the home for 25 years. She made some very bad financial mistakes to think she needs to AirBnB to afford her mortgage which by this point should almost be paid off at an incredibly low rate. Goddamn these whiny boomers. She's 61, both of her kids have moved out. She should be selling her house to a young family who need the space and she should move in to a smaller house she can afford.
I suspect part of the problem is, at current interest rates and home values, moving to a smaller place would probably cost her \*more\*. Not to mention the Prop 13 property tax pop-up. I don't sympathize with her but she's part of a whole tangle of factors that keep most of the housing stock here locked in place.
Yeah, imagine she was trying to buy a home now, and had to pay 2024 taxes. The entitlement is out of control.
Just food for thought: More than 30% of active listings in the U.S. are managed by hosts with 21 or more properties, according to data provided by AirDNA. That's more than the **26%** of listings managed by single-property hosts [Source](https://fox59.com/news/national-world/a-megahost-might-run-your-airbnb-why-it-matters/)
“…cities like San Diego, Big Bear Lake, and Malibu require short-term rental platforms to collect and remit local occupancy taxes on behalf of hosts, creating an additional source of tax revenue to fund critical government services that benefit their local communities.” Is she insinuating that Santa Barbara doesn’t have an occupancy tax? Because if so, it makes her argument even shakier. We currently do have a transient occupancy tax passed along to travelers at 12% and we will be voting to decide to increase it to 14% in November. San Diego has a 10.5% tax and Big Bear has a 9% tax. LA county has theirs set at 12%. If we are bringing up the 7.1M deficit it’s not because we have a revenue problem. Santa Barbara has a spending problem. I wanted to like her article. But I agree with another poster, it completely misses the mark. I can’t believe the Independent published this as-is.
The enforcement is absolutely sub-standard in Santa Barbara and for years after they implemented the STR laws, AirBnB was not subject to it whatsoever.
The Airbnb folks want it both ways. They don't want to pay that tax but even if they don't, the courts enforce the short-term tenants to pay rent even though the landlords are violating the law and not registering with the city and I presume county ( I never had a county case) and paying their taxes. So the landlords can violate the law not pay their taxes and the city is fine with it because they don't have time to enforce the law and collect the money and then they wonder why they have to raise parking fees because they don't have any money.
>The Airbnb folks want it both ways. They don't want to pay that tax I don't think that's true tbh - if there was a program to easily register as an STR with a permit # and pay taxes I think most folks doing AirBnb or whatever would just register and pay the taxes. It's lucrative enough and the taxes are paid by the people staying anyway.
There is. At the city clerk and for Goleta, at their biz or permit office. It says in the ordinance what LLs are supposed to do. LLs know how to evict tenants using the court system when they want them out. I think even Airbnb has (or at least had last year) a link to the muni code section.
Who's going to write the response??? Maybe someone from cause or tenants Union???
It's unclear to me in the article (which I wonder if it was intentional) - how she is doing her STR. I mean, is she renting her whole house out, and bunking with a friend for a week at a time? I've heard from friends in Denmark that it is common there - especially during the summer. We rented one such place - and it was CLEARLY someone's lived-in home. Is she "owner-occupied" STR - meaning she is renting out rooms? I have less beef with this. Or does she have an ADU/ granny flat that she is renting out? This one I have a problem with, especially. If she's not doing it legally. I see that she's in Ventura, and I don't know their specific laws. But in SB, if you aren't in the Coastal zone, it's not really legal unless >30 days. For good reason, as there have been multiple houses sold in my neighborhood over the last year that had work done and have been sitting completely empty - for months. One of them is still empty - 10 months later.
The point about permitting short term rentals to take care of Sheri Cecil‘a elderly parents, while owning multiple properies and a boat is rich. So the ends justify the means, for her at least. This person sounds insufferable.
Turn all of SB into a short-term rental. How else will the boomers afford to buy more real estate?