Speaker 1: Motion carries a zero.
Speaker 0: Thank you. So I believe we're at item number 21. Clerk Please read.
Speaker 1: Communication from Councilmember Pierce, Councilwoman Gonzalez, Councilman Andrews and Vice Mayor Richardson. Recommendation to request the city manager to work with the city attorney to review the regulation of short term rentals and other municipalities and report back to the City Council in 30 to 60 days.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Pearce.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Can you guys hear me okay? Yeah. Okay. This item has come to our attention over the last several years, and it's an item that a lot of cities have started their research on. A lot of cities have passed ordinances. Yeah, I can wait.
Speaker 0: You know, we're going to just hold off for a moment before we start the next item so everyone can exit. We'll just pause for 30 seconds.
Speaker 4: I wasn't looking over the. Don't drop on the fish. Where did the fish going? I don't. You know, I have a zoo in the back I could take your fish to. Okay. I know. I can't see across his flowers. Please keep them.
Speaker 0: Okay. So we're going to proceed. And before we do, I'm going to ask that everyone keep the conversation at a minimum and please respect the meeting. So please keep the conversation a minimum as you exit. You want to go ahead and proceed?
Speaker 4: Councilmember Yeah, I'll go ahead and proceed. I put together a PowerPoint, which is, you know, going after some other great people. So bear with me for a moment. This is a really important issue. It's really complex. And so I wanted to make sure that we really took took the time to lay it out. All right. So. My photo is not going to come up. Okay. There's a photo of sharing guinea pigs up there. Yeah. All right. Okay. The sharing economy, the practice of sharing homes is not a new idea. But in the past, whether through newspaper ads, fliers and on billboards, it's represented a genuine peer to peer marketplace. Home sharing has many benefits for guests and for many cities, expands the choice of accommodations for many travelers and can be an efficient use of vacant rooms can also be a great source of revenue for cities. Currently our code essentially does not allow short term rentals with does not call out short term rentals and entire units and homes of non primary residents are prohibited according to our municipal code. So this just lays out a little bit of what is currently allowed under 30 days. How many stars are in Long Beach. So to be clear, when we're talking about short term rentals, we're talking not just about Airbnb but many other platforms as well. Currently, we have over 728 units listed on Airbnb, which typically accounts for about 65% of short term rental listings. At a first glance, that would give us about a total of 1100 units in Long Beach. And this is, I believe, on the low end after talking to staff. I believe this number is going to be a lot higher. Oh. It's a big question. I'm sorry. They can't see all the details on here. Oh, it's host household versus and a single unit that is just on the market by itself. But what you see on this map is that the majority of the units are in downtown. They're in my colleague's district in Belmont Shores. And there typically are areas that are higher income. It's probably my favorite slide and this is the aha slide that when you're sitting here thinking Do we how many people are really using short term rentals? How many places are actually on the market? And so I'm going to just read these out loud for you guys. Right now, about 58% of the entire apartment units are the entire ones in our district. In our city are apartment units. 38% are private rooms and 2.7 are shared rooms. So we think about the snapshot of short term rentals in our city and the idea of a shared economy. The beginning of that concept was around I have a home and I want to share a room in my home, not I'm going to purchase a whole building and use that only for short term rentals and not put that out on the rental market. 71% are available to rent on average of 291 days. 291 days. 71% of these are available to rent. 38% were booked on average for 200 nights a year. Again, when we look at these numbers, we have to think about the realities in our district, in our city and how tight our housing market is right now. Units that are one of multiple listings within a city means that the host of that listing has multiple other units listed as an STR within the same city. We found a single host and Long Beach have anywhere between two and 19 listings in the city limits two and 19. Being a single person or a company that owns 19 units and is renting those out. That's the reality of our short term rental market in Long Beach. Host with multiple businesses, with multiple listings, are likely to be running a business and not sharing a room as we would hope that they would be doing. Currently, short term rentals are not allowed in the city. The standard practice in our city, from my understanding, is that we have to have two people go out and verify that this is in fact happening. We then send code enforcement out, then we will issue a cease and desist letter. Only once, according to the city attorney, if I remember correctly from our conversation, have we gone all the way to court on one of these issues. And so right now, we really lack the resources to enforce what we currently have on the books. And that's really important for us to remember. The Case for Star Oversight. Right now, it takes valuable rental units off the market, can drive up rent and worsen our housing crisis. It creates a safety and quality of life concerns for many Long Beach residents. Everything from parking to nuisance behavior to high gas turnover and really drawing a difference in between commercial zones and residential zones. And of course, as many of us are looking for new revenue sources, we're also losing out on rightfully owned transit occupancy tax revenue , which currently our hotels do contribute to our city. We currently have a 2 to 3% vacancy rate in Long Beach, 2 to 3%. That is not a healthy vacancy rate. And so when we are taking 1000 units or 2000 units off the market, that's going to have a direct impact on our affordable housing stock. We would also like to discuss the fact that the transit occupancy tax could be used to offset or to go into creating new affordable housing. And really thinking about this conversation today as a second step to the mayor's study session and the fact that we talked about generating new housing stock. We're not going to be able to build our way out of our housing crisis. So we need to make sure that we're not only looking at building opportunities, but we're looking at opening up some additional housing units. Right. Again prevent the loss of rental stock systematic. Oh, so sorry. When we look at what makes them successful as our policy and we are fortunate in the sense that we're kind of behind the game on doing this because we've had other cities that have had to go back and rewrite their ACR policy three, five different times. So we really have the opportunity to have our staff study what are some best practices out there and to be able to come up with a policy that fits. Long Beach So we want to make sure we're preventing the loss of rental housing stock, that there's a systematic registration process to ensure accountability and transparency that we're capturing Scottie and that the platform is doing its part to help us enforce. I kind of went over a little bit of this already. The point I want to highlight here is just that we need to add over 7000 units by 2021 to keep up with the demand and population growth in our city. 7000 units. Right now with our current housing stock. So this is one avenue that we're going to be able to, again, free up some of that. We want to make sure that we have the opportunity to require host registration. And I want to make sure that staff is looking at all the options that other cities have done, whether it's a business license or registration fee. What are the best practices throughout the country? We also want to make sure that we're capturing those tots and that we also have some best practices for how we can divert that fund, not just to the general fund, but diverting that specifically for housing. We want to make sure that the SDR platforms are doing its part of enforcement. And I want to really stress here that this is probably one of the most important parts that cities have learned their lesson in where we've passed policies and ordinances in other cities, but we haven't done our part to make sure that that the ACR platforms are providing us the information so that we know what we should be getting. When we look at some cities that have had to rewrite their ordinances several times, we look at San Francisco, Portland, Hollywood, North Hollywood, sorry, West Hollywood, New York City. After a year in San Francisco passed its regulations, only 130 out of the 5000 host had set appointments with the planning department. In Portland, 93% of its hosts were not in compliance. And so no matter what we put on the books, we really need to make sure that this part is something that city staff is able to spend some time digging into. When there's no enforcement, there's no reason for hosts to comply with the city. We know that platforms such as Airbnb have technical capacity and are able to assist in enforcement. So let's do it right the first time. So this is next steps. I want to make one clarifying thing. We want to have staff come back with a report on some of these. So that would actually be number three. From number three, we would then draft an ordinance. We in Long Beach have a unique opportunity to again look at what other cities have done. Best practices. We are a great city that people want to come to. They want to our visitors are going up every single year. We want to continue to make sure that we have a enforceable store policy where we're partnering with some of the CCR companies, but that we're doing that in a responsible way that doesn't have a negative effect on our neighborhoods and our residents. So I want to really think all my colleagues that have signed on to this, for those that have asked questions for everybody that put in calls to my office and sent emails, and we know that this is a complex issue. And so we really want to make sure that we're taking the time to do it right. So thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember. And I'd like to speak to my second here. So first, I want to thank you for your approach in taking a look at studying this first and and giving some very clear directions and timeline on how we proceed. When I travel, I enjoy using, you know, HomeAway short term rentals. I enjoy it. And I, you know, sometimes you have a little bit more flexibility in terms of how many rooms you're looking forward to fit different families, different needs for the kids, barbecue grill, stuff like that. And it's, you know, it's a it's a good tool. But at the same time, I do expect a certain level of health and safety standards when I do utilize these services. So I think we want to embrace the sharing economy. We want to make sure we uphold the public trust through, you know, some level of oversight. From a public health standpoint. We want to make sure that the process does capture what resources are needed in order to fund, you know, a responsible, modest oversight process. So I think that has that should be, you know, an element to this. And and, you know, we don't want to and through this process, we have been mindful not to stifle the shared economy. So, you know, we should keep all those things in mind. And I think we can achieve some of the public policy outcomes that Councilmember Price outlined. So so I'll be happy to second this motion and happy to to move forward and support this. Next is Councilwoman Price.
Speaker 6: Thank you. And just as a quick correction, it was Councilwoman Pearce who made the recommendations, but it.
Speaker 2: Appears that Price.
Speaker 6: Got our name. That's okay. I didn't want to take her credit. I want to thank Councilmember Pearce for bringing this item forward and my colleagues who signed on. This is, in fact, a very significant issue in the third district. If you go on to any and I know I have at least one resident here, but if you go into any website, online website for these rental homes and you type in Belmont Shore or the Peninsula, you're going to get a ton of of homes. And it's a problem for the residents in the third district, mostly because of quality of life and public safety issues. And there's you know, it's great that Long Beach is and continues to be an attractive place for tourism. We have a vibrant community, great music and beaches and amazing people. But we don't want these positives that we have to create problems for our residents as a result of the short term home rentals. Currently, as Councilmember Pearce stated, the ban is difficult for the city to enforce. Problems with loud late night party noises in residential neighborhoods, adding groups of visitors into parking impacted neighborhoods. These are difficult to enforce, and neighbors often don't have a contact for the owners. And code enforcement is not properly staffed to have the oversight needed to address these issues. The rentals aren't currently permitted by the city, so we're unaware of where they are and when they're operating, which makes it even further difficult for us to enforce. Proving the locations are operating illegally is also often difficult and time consuming for city staff and a huge burden on our residents. I know I've met with numerous residents in the third district and they're almost, you know, acting as investigators out there, trying to gather enough information to provide for the city. And it really places them in an uncomfortable position. They're out there taking pictures, they're, you know, trying to contact the owner. And it really isn't fair to the residents who live in those neighborhoods that their quality of life is impacted and they don't have anyone to contact in order to make sure that they they get some semblance of regularity back in their lives. We see rental vacancies at historic lows in the city of Long Beach, making it even harder and harder for people to find a place to live in the city. And eliminating housing stock by using these properties for short term rental only increases and enhances this problem. I think it's important for the city to be able to have information also on who is renting out their properties and that the companies share information with the city of who's operating the rentals and where, so that we can ensure they're in compliance with any regulations that we might adopt. So in light of this report and I agree with all the things that Councilmember Pearce has requested, but in addition, there are a few items that I would like to be included in the report and perhaps I can offer those as a friendly. I'll I'll list them and see what Councilmember Pearce thinks about them. Specifically, I'd like the report to include an assessment of whether what maintaining the ban on short term rentals would do and what we would need to more effectively enforce the ban, like implementing measures for cost recovery to fund additional code enforcement and possibly city prosecutors from the are the attorneys city attorney's office. I'd also like to know about the possibility of shutting off utilities as a penalty or punitive sanction to encourage hosts back into compliance when there are quality of life or public safety issues that are coming up. This has been done by by some cities. It's really only done in particularly severe cases where there's neglectful behavior by the property owner and it's causing a nuisance for the neighborhood and regards to quality of life and public safety. I'd like the report to include what some other cities have done to regulate these areas. For example, some cities have required that property owners provide all neighbors with a 24 hour contact number to report problems or issues directly.
Speaker 4: Or or of.
Speaker 6: Funding an overnight code enforcement officer to respond to issues raised by short term rentals or possibly including the requiring host to either have a parking space at the property or make arrangements for the tenants to be using parking spots in impacted areas. Now, again, this is what some cities have done, but a lot of our rentals are in parking impacted areas. So requiring additional parking may be difficult because the residents that live in that area may not have proper parking sufficient for the homes that are located in that area to begin with. But again, it's something I'd like to be included in the report in terms of options. Enforce violations on guests and hosts so that the the host or the owner of the property has some liability financially or administratively if there are violations. Possible host screening process that would include a background check or good neighbor training for property owners who are going to rent out their homes and a cap or limitations on the number of rentals or the days of the rentals throughout the city, either by neighborhood or council district. I think for our and these are all just these. I'm not advocating any of these things. I'm asking that the report include information on them so that we can educate ourselves on them and their based. These recommendations are based on what other cities have done. So not having educated myself on what these particular policies look like and how they're able to be enforced, it's it's really too soon to weigh in on what would work or would not work. But I can say that the residents that I've talked with for the most part have found a lot of problems with short term rentals in their community. And it has been very difficult for us as a city to be able to enforce any of our ordinances in regards to the hosts. So I think this is a very timely item and I think requesting information will be beneficial to all of us, especially those with a large number of short term rentals in our districts. So thank you very much for bringing it. And those were all offered as a friendly thank you.
Speaker 0: How do you want to handle the friendly?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll accept the friendlies as information gathering, I think. Sure. There are definitely some questions about background checks and some other things, but I do think that they're good research for us to have as we move forward.
Speaker 0: Great. So that friendly is accepted, Councilwoman Mongeau?
Speaker 4: Yes. I want to echo the comments that this is a great opportunity to gather some information. I think that it's important to note that all inventory is good inventory in helping with the housing crisis. But realistically, in my little bit of research, when I started piling through some of this information about what is available to rent, a lot of these are multimillion dollar homes on ocean or on the bigger areas of town that I would not be supportive of the low income community. Some of these have significant financial deposits and significant cost per night. And so I think that there'd be also some value in figuring out what price range are the units that we're talking about, because if we are able to find some that would help in this way, I think that it would be good to know. But also to the point I made last week, all housing in the market added into the vacancy changes the market slightly for everyone. And so that's a definite positive. I don't know exactly how to phrase it, except that I guess off the cuff kind of saying. An assessment of the current Airbnb type properties. Stars of the acronym The Stars. What percentage fall in what categories if they were an annual list unit? What would we be talking about? I mean, are these 1200 dollar a month units or are we talking about $4,000 a month units? Because at least some of the ones that I was looking at on Ocean. Their monthly rental far exceeds the mortgage of my home and most other people's homes. And so I'm just talking through what that looks like. And then also. Kind of comparing and contrasting. How many days a year are of hotels at capacity? I know that about five, six years ago there were some conferences that used to come to Long Beach that no longer could come here because they did not have enough hotel nights available in the city. And there was some dialog and discussion in some of the associations on whether or not that's TR market in the community would supplement for the convention business. And perhaps we wouldn't lose some of that convention business if there were enough staffers to supplement it. And then specifically that those staffers, depending on the convention, would need to be either if the convention was being hosted at the Grand. I know we have a couple of smaller ones that there are some staffers that supplement the Marriott Marriott Hotel, Holiday Inn community, but then in the downtown community to supplement the downtown model and then what that looks like and how can we tie that back into a bigger, broader ability to market ourselves as a city, both to visitors and to our convention. So if you're open to adding a little bit of information on of the anticipated 1200 that are on the initial thought process, where do they lie and how do we , through public outreach, talk to those landlords about the opportunities in putting themselves back into that market? I'm also interested in for the noncompliance. I think a lot of the comments made by Councilman Price related to the other cities in the creative ways that they've put people back into compliance is also very valuable for the discussion because I think that not acknowledging that it's here is a is a big challenge.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember not. Thank you.
Speaker 9: I'd just like to ask for one more friendly. Just kind of piggybacking on the items that Councilman Price was mentioning. If we could do some type of assessment for calls, for service for police on existing units or what? Again, best practices from other cities. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Sounds like that was accepted. Is there any public comment on this item? Please come forward. Please state your name. You have 3.
Speaker 2: Minutes. Hi, this is Dr. Jason Cantor from Park Avenue near Ocean. Before I start, I just want to thank Susie Price for meeting with myself and another concern neighbor a couple of weekends ago. Suzy is extremely informed on this and I really can't add much to what she's already said and suggested. But a few weeks ago I came here and I listened to a lot of people telling us what it was like to live under the airport with all the planes flying in and out. And so perhaps you'd like to know what it's like to live next to an Airbnb or perhaps may maybe I should say have an Airbnb living next to you. I've lived here. I lived in my house for now 30 years. I purchased it in 1986. In that time, four different families have lived there. They've had. I've had families with children. Couples without children. The house has always had peaceful renters and owners. The neighborhood has a good mix of rental housing, homeowners. We have a very peaceful neighborhood, very low crime. We don't call the police very often. It's very peaceful. But in late last spring, in a very sneaky way, my neighbor sold the house to some people whose intentions were obviously to open it up as an Airbnb. Since then, it's been hellacious. The entire summer was basically coming home after work and having a revolving fraternity house living next door to me. Most often we'd have groups of eight or ten people, eight or 12 people coming in, renting it for a weekend or several days, taking up four or five, six parking spaces on the street, interfering with driveway access. We had some instances of some of the renters urinating on the property. One of my neighbors actually had a cell phone picture of it. We've had instances of trash being dumped in the alley. And basically, I just want to say the houses are very close in Belmont. Sure. I have three feet separation from this house. And when the windows are open, the back patio is open. There's an open deck on the top. It doesn't they don't have to make noise after 11:00 at night. They make noise all, all day long. All weekend long. Morning. Afternoon. They drink it. I'm not saying their alcohol is alcohol is probably being drank and the behavior is very rowdy. And in summary, I just want to say, I don't think regulating it is the key. I think banning these short term rentals is the key. We need to do what the city of Anaheim did. They banned them. Why? Why interact? This is a very critical neighborhood problem, quality of life problem. And I think banning it and as Suzie said, she didn't advocate this. But one option has the city of Anaheim is doing shut off the gas. Shut off the water. That's it. That's the end of the problem. Sorry. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 0: Thank you for your time. Next speaker police.
Speaker 2: Hi. My name is Steven. Fine, thank you.
Speaker 9: Council and Vice Mayor for listening to me.
Speaker 2: I live on the 11th floor of 100 Atlantic.
Speaker 9: We have a rooftop. Recently, the unit across the hall from me got bought by a lady who doesn't even live in Long Beach. She lives in Las Vegas. She fixed it up and they started having renters in the.
Speaker 2: Unit on a daily basis. Our our buildings cars do not allow daily rentals, and.
Speaker 9: Monthly rentals are only by need. There must be an emergency in your family where you have to leave town for.
Speaker 2: Long enough to make that worthwhile. A couple of weeks ago, there was a party going on in the unit. It was loud, boisterous.
Speaker 9: I tried everything to stop that I had no.
Speaker 2: One to go to.
Speaker 9: I called the city. I found that I could make a complaint because they're illegal, but nothing can really be done. I called our security company. They couldn't get them to stop. They were making noise into the midnight and past. Some of the people were down in our pool making noise. They were on the roof pool and the roof are off limits after 10:00.
Speaker 2: But they don't seem to care. And I really want to see something done about it that that's about all I have to say.
Speaker 0: Thank you for your time. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 9: You being vice mayor? Members of the council. My name is René Castro. I am the director for community engagement at Century Village. Is that Cabrillo? We applaud the Council's efforts and thank Councilwoman Pierce and Richardson and Andrews and Gonzales for bringing this forward. We think this is a really important issue that deserves concerted attention and really appreciate your intentionality and the PowerPoint. I think there's not much more I can add to that, but just share that. Obviously, a century we house 1300 and we're very pleased to be Roberto Ringer's district, 1300 formerly homeless veterans and families. And due to the extremely low vacancy rate across the city, we're definitely seeing historic highs in our occupancy rates of 97% across the campus, which is really high for us. So we applaud your efforts to look at this issue seriously and also any efforts to divert funding on transit occupancy tax to the mayor's affordable housing fund. So thank you so much.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 2: Vice Mayor Richardson, city council members want to give a little bit of a different take on this. My name is Paul Barry, and I've been a director of a program that helps folks who are experiencing homelessness get homelessness, get back on their feet. There's one issues that probably is a top concern for most of you. You probably hear from constituencies that the challenge of homelessness seems to be on everyone's mind. There are different ideas about how to do it, and there's different ideas about where to do it. But generally, there's no debating that people want Long Beach to solve this problem. Now, Long Beach has a number of excellent programs and excellent services from the Multi-Service Center to the Quality of Life Team the police runs to Mental Health America, to the downtown Long Beach Alliance and others. And staff work extremely hard to figure out how to solve this problem. Just let me take 20 seconds just to give you an idea that that process of getting to people who are homeless includes building a relationship offer, offering some sort of immediate assistance to build trust, to help give a person a vision that homelessness is not the only option, and to figure out how to get funding so they can pay for housing. It's usually SSI, it's section eight. In the end, though, if there are no homes to get, no apartments available, no place that will take what SSI. And Section eight offers all the efforts and all the resources of all these people, and the money spent by the city will have been spent for nothing. The short term residential rentals drive supply down and prices up. If managing the stars will ultimately increase vacancy rates by making low income apartments more available to residents, we have to do this. Otherwise, in our fight to end homelessness, we're at best treading water and probably more realistically sinking.
Speaker 0: Thank you for your time. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 9: Hi. Good evening, Vice Mayor and City Council. My name is Walker Rivera, program director of Leave Rail Long Beach Residents Empowered. And it gives me great pleasure to be up here and to support the Councilwoman motion to investigate for this further for an ordinance so that we can be able to regulate, monitor and enforce these short term rentals. About a month ago at the affordable housing study session, we learned a lot about sort of like the current housing crisis in Long Beach. We learned that the rental market, as councilwoman pointed out, is about a 2% vacancy rate. We learned that about 60% of our population are renters. And we also learned that we have fallen far behind the recommended production of affordable housing for low income families. And although not official yet, we are seeing a lot of increasing concerns around our population that are living on the streets without homes. With over about 30,000 applications for Section eight in just a short two week period of time. I think I think we see a great need for for the community, for the city, for housing, for residents. And as much as I appreciate that we are a to a tourist economy and that we should definitely try to find some ways to work with our folks that are coming in to conferences and things like that. I think our priority should definitely be on our residents and with our current housing crisis, taking out additional units from the rental market is just exacerbating the issue. So I think it's really important for us to regulate and find ways to be able to to solve this multi pronged, complex issue of housing crisis. And I think this is one great way of doing so. We need as many available units on the market as possible. And if rental units are being taken off the market while people are struggling to find rental housing, it just seems wrong on so many different levels that we support this. A We we should really put a hold on it. There's a lot of cities, as Councilwoman Pearce have mentioned, that have already investigated this. And we should learn from what what they've already implemented, what what's worked and what hasn't worked. And we can really take the time to implement a strong ordinance that regulates these short term rentals and actually makes more homes available for the people that really need it. And and just stop adding to the exacerbation of the current housing crisis. Let's let's take it take a take an approach and and get some solutions where we can. And this seems like a really reasonable one and something that we can do within our means. So again, I thank Councilwoman Pearce and everybody else that authored this this motion. And we we fully support it. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 2: Yes. My name is Hala Stewart. I live in what's called the Walker Building, a building of rather nice loft and things like that down at Fourth and pine. And I support the idea of this study because right now, if you live in a building controlled by an HRA like ours with lofts and somebody researchers, someone decides to start renting their place out instead of living in it. If short term, you find a problem. There's charged always. There's sometimes worse than that. People don't respect the fact that most of us living there are live there all the time. Quite often some of the people come. I don't know how to characterize their. Their activities, but it's bad. They've tried to get me and yanked the door open when they tried to get in and either forgot their fob or their. There are code number and they tried to get me to make them come in and I've had to tell them no because you know, we've been invaded by people before and we don't know who is supposed to be there. When something changed almost a day to day basis in a building like ours, this is not good. So I think all the health and safety things and also the thing that there needs to be responsibility so that we can contact somebody with a police department or someone else from the city to say, come on out here in that particular unit, we've got a problem. Because right now, you see, we're left training with an agency, trying to figure out how to deal with these things. And it's hard to do because it's hard to watch it every day to see if it's the same people coming in and out of a unit. So I really believe that this is a good step to look into this, and I think it really is a very good idea to look at how we can stabilize our market. I'm not against business, but I do believe that there has to be a respect for the quality of life of the people who live here. You're around in Long Beach. I don't like going outside my building now and finding where. After Saturday night or Friday night. There's things I don't want to step in out there and I don't like to live that way. And so please get this study done. Try and give up some ways to make some improvements to our rules on short term rentals or get some rules, as has been said by a couple of the council members. It's hard to know what's going on because the people who are renting out don't register with them in any way at all. So therefore, you don't know what is going on. And like I said, living in a loft, I don't like to challenge people at the door, especially when I'm 77 years old and they're like in their twenties, late twenties and thirties. I don't like to be the person to challenge them because I know I know that that could be dangerous to me. So thank you. Good. Good job, Ines. We'll be watching and we'll try to be helpful in any way we can. Good evening.
Speaker 7: Hi. My name is Evangel. Never Meet is. I have been living in this city for the last 24 years. I live at the sixth district. And as a mom of two children. I had been looking for an apartment for the last three months and I still don't want any. My best friend, Concepcion Garcia. She was then. I'll stick with cancer on December. She moved to live with her sister. His sister is living in a single apartment. In that single apartment they're leaving three persons in is because they cannot find. And apparently they are looking everywhere like me. We are applying and applying and applying. It's not been there for us in. I'm supporting this recommendation because I feel like it's an insult to me to hear that they are empty units while people like me and like my friend are having trouble to find a home and on a beach. I love Long Beach. I have been living in this city for the last 24 years. I have two kids that are on the University College Day, Long Beach. Another one. Another thing. It's really, really hard to see. Many of my friends that they are moving from Long Beach in is hard to see how many. People is leaving homeless. A friend of mine is sleeping in her car inside the church. They should. There is a nine on Atlanta because they are giving the parking space to the park in the car. They are sleeping there. So what happened with this city was. I don't know. Something is wrong here. But I believe in that thing. That's impossible. If you do what you have to do. And that's why I'm here supporting this recommendation. And I hope you do something to change this city, because I love I love Beach. And I know many people love Long Beach, too. And I know we don't want to from here, we won't continue living here, but. And that way I don't know what is going to happen. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Good evening, Vice Mayor. City Council people. My name is Brenton Dooley. My family owns a duplex down in the Belmont Shore area. My parents purchased the home in the late 1970s after we actually rented a short term rental in the 1970s, pre-internet, pre Airbnb. It was still available back then. Our family fell in love with the Belmont Shore area at that time. We since purchased this home among other homes in the Belmont Shore area. My parents, my father here tonight has been in love with the Belmont Shore area. Recently, though, my mother came down with dementia. And when I had to take control of our parents duplex, which is the only home we owned down here, now, the downstairs was empty. That's a long term rental. Had left the area. The upstairs is still a long term rental. My dad. Informed me that he enjoyed taking my mother down there to visit the home that they used to live in. And I said, Well, to be able to have her still go down there and visit the home, I can also rent it out and make some income and help my parents afford her dementia care. So I understand some of the other aspects that people are bringing forth. But I also want to have you see our point of view. It is helping our family pay for my mother's dementia care. It's helping my family to visit the Long Beach area, to stay in our vacation home for free when we want to stay down there. This short term rental that we offer is only the downstairs. The upstairs. We still have a fantastic long term renter. I have contacted all of our neighbors. They all have my phone number. Every rental that we have has to sign a complete rental agreement. They have to email it back to me. I have complete smoke detectors in there. I have everything in there. I get five star ratings every time that I have a person come down there to rent. When we first started to open this rental up, we actually went down to the city, to the business office. We were told we needed a business license. My wife and I came to the city, Long Beach, to acquire this business license so the city could collect the tax. We were both astonished when we were told by the city employee that a license is not required for anything less than four units. Here we were trying to do our effort what we thought we had to do, and the city didn't know what we had to do in return. We still wanted to do our short term rental correctly. So we hired a property manager who works on Second Street and Belmont Shore. He's there 24 seven in case anybody needs anything. We also hired a local Long Beach resident to help clean our short term rental. He earns much needed income for him and his family. My wife and I also invested over $14,000 in new furniture and an ongoing upkeep to our duplex. Our short term rental takes pride in our home, and this pride assures a respectable neighbor. In closing, I urge the City Council to continue and allow short term rentals to all respectable homeowners. I also offer my service. If you guys need me, please contact me. I'd love to open. Keep an open end communication with you and see what we can come to do together. All right. Thank you. Hi.
Speaker 3: Good evening, Vice Mayor and Honorable City Council.
Speaker 2: My name is Alex Montano. Yes, I'm with the Filipino Migrants Center. I live in the sixth district, but I work in the seventh district. So all I just wanted to say is I just want to thank Councilwoman Pierce and everybody who's putting together this. I think it's really important that.
Speaker 3: There's oversight on short term rentals. For me, working in the Filipino community, mostly out of.
Speaker 2: The seventh District, two of the top concerns I've been hearing from residents and families and youth who we work with are housing, as well as the homeless issue that has continued.
Speaker 3: To grow over the last six years.
Speaker 2: I've been with the Filipino Migrant Center, so it is really important that we regulate this. It is really important that we have oversight over this because there are a lot of families.
Speaker 3: Who are looking for places.
Speaker 2: To live and also in the Filipino community. And please make sure that there is a transient occupancy tax where that revenue can.
Speaker 3: Be actually put towards finding more affordable housing for our communities. We really want to make sure.
Speaker 2: That Long Beach is a city where the families who live and work and contribute to this great city actually have a place to live. So thank you. We completely support what you're doing.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 4: Good evening. My name is Suzanne Brown. I'm a senior attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles here in the Long Beach office. We are also happy to see this item introduced. Housing advocates have been seeking for a dedicated local source of revenue for affordable housing since over a decade ago, when we fought for the Housing Trust Fund. And at that time, we were looking at top money as a potential local dedicated source. So we're happy to see that this item could lead to that happening. Finally. Lastly, I just want to say that a successful short term rental ordinance can't happen without the platform doing its fair share of enforcement through monitoring and removal of illegal listings and providing booking data to the city. So with all ordinances and policies, the devil's in the details and monitoring and enforcement is key. So we hope that we learn from our brother and sister cities who have gone before us, who didn't have monitoring enforcement and had to go back and amend it. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 7: Well, my name is Nader Tushnet, and I live in the third district. And I'm going to speak about more about the monitoring and enforcement than anything else. Before my retirement, I was a researcher and I researched policy implementation. So without.
Speaker 8: Enforcement and monitoring.
Speaker 7: And the buy in of the people who are engaged in the activity. A policy is just a piece of paper. There's some great books. Whatever happened to great ideas in Washington when they got to Oakland and whatever happened to great ideas that happened on in city council when they get to the community? And so what we need for this policy to succeed is a way to put into effect enforcement that involves both the people on that who control the platform and the people who are the renters as well as the people who are renting. And that and collecting money is a good way to get there. So thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 9: Good evening. Josh Butler, Executive Director Housing. Long Beach Housing. Long Beach has been sounding the alarms of the rental housing crisis for many years now. We've known for over a year that our vacancy rates have dipped under 3% and may very well be near to 2% or below in many of our neighborhoods. At the same time, the residential commercial real estate market is red hot. A year end report by real estate industry group Costar shows that the fourth quarter of 2016 was, quote, scorching hot for Los Angeles County. $10 billion was spread evenly throughout the county, including the Beach City, San Gabriel Valley, southeast Los Angeles and downtown Los Angeles . Long Beach recorded an individual sale of greater than $30 million alone. And mind you, this is a city where nearly one quarter of our neighbors live in poverty, the city where a quarter of our residents are spending more than half of their income on rent and the conversion of apartments that could otherwise serve as homes for a senior, a person with a disability, people of color. Makes this problem even worse. As rents continue to spike, our communities across the city are being displaced. Long Beach is a renters city. The renters we work with care about this city. They volunteer their time, participate in neighborhood associations, attend community watches, and volunteer to give food to our ever growing homeless population. These are things that are invaluable to a community and things that a vacationer in a short term rental will not contribute. 60% of our residents are renters, while Long Beach is also the largest population of renters up and down the West Coast with no renter protections, which has made us targets for real estate speculators seeking to profit from our most vulnerable, many of whom end up couch surfing, sleeping in cars or sadly, sleeping on the sidewalks. Many of those who end up on the streets or living in their cars do so because they have been displaced or threatened with eviction. Matthew Desmond, the author of Evicted, has a study that shows 50% of Milwaukee's homeless population cite eviction or other rental housing problems as a cause for their homelessness. We have an opportunity to learn the lessons of many cities who have dealt with short term rentals before us and work to protect our existing supply of housing as our primary goal. Short term rentals, if they are to be permitted, should be paying a fee that goes to the housing trust fund, which still remains a decade on . With no permanent source of funding. We could also move forward with a policy here that was close to what Santa monica does, which requires people to be on site for that rental, which greatly, greatly restricts people using Airbnb as a model. Cities such as San Francisco, Portland, West Hollywood, New York have all established regulations and have faced varying challenges. Long Beach needs to learn from that. However, I would be remiss if I didn't say that those four cities, along with others who have regulations in place, also have basic renter protections such as just cause for eviction, rent stabilization or both. Regulating short term rentals isn't only about our existing stock, but it's about our existing community. And I encourage the Council to take measures tonight and beyond to protect our low income communities.
Speaker 0: Thank you for your time. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 7: Hello. I'm Sylvia Contreras. I'm from District eight and.
Speaker 8: I'd like to address Ms.. Mongeau.
Speaker 7: I liked your comments very much. I'm pretty much a person.
Speaker 8: Who works with stats, so one of the things that was discussed was.
Speaker 7: Parking Impact Park. And on the.
Speaker 8: Flip side is this where I live, we have parking impact. And what I've noticed is when one of the apartment units was empty, wonderful parking, when two apartment units were empty, these are like four units, six units, apartments. The whole street was practically empty and then it was okay. But then what I think what I'm thinking is causing the impact. It's not we don't have R&B in being our area, but it's not the Airbnb problem. What I see is a lot of families are doubling up and tripling up in apartments in the city, doesn't know it or the owners don't know it. So I'm not sure that the parking impact is the real big issue with Airbnb because those are transient people. They come and go. I don't think they rent two cars for the weekend.
Speaker 7: I doubt it. I don't know. The other thing too is if you.
Speaker 8: Want to have stats. The fact that this is illegal to have Airbnb or all these other short term rentals is if you want to get stats of those people that are hosts, what if they don't want to come out because they're afraid of what they're finding out that it's illegal? So how are you going to compare stats that you don't have any from? You're just going to assume that it's being rented for 290 days out of the available, you know, 290 days that are being available for rent. But we don't do.
Speaker 7: We know how many.
Speaker 8: Days each host actually is.
Speaker 7: Renting throughout the year out of the 1700 or whatever that big number was? I was curious about that to address a.
Speaker 8: Gentleman here that has had issues with. Airbnb, people coming in, loud noises, partying. I get that because I get that from regular neighbors. But maybe if we have complaints from those people that know that it's Airbnb or short term rentals, if they call the police and say, You know what, I'd like to report a party, I forgot to call it a party, something or other, that if they address that, then the owner can say, okay, you know, go back to the owner, we're going to shut off your water. And that'll probably take care of that. I'm really sorry about the homeless people here.
Speaker 5: I.
Speaker 8: I, but then as well as me, I don't know how many landlords can rent to a homeless who doesn't have income. So how do you address landlords? Help the homeless who don't have an income to pay the rent. And so transit occupancy, I think that would be a good idea. Thank you very much.
Speaker 0: Thank you for your time. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 2: I agree. Being Vice Mayor Richardson and city council members. I'm Donald Segarra and I'm a property owner in in Long Beach. I just want to point out a couple of things that are related to this topic. A letter dated December six, 2016 to Community Development Directors. The chair of the California Coastal Commission reminded cities that vacation rentals are to be allowed and encouraged in the coastal zones as an affordable option for accessing the beach and doing otherwise unduly limit public recreational access opportunities inconsistent with the Coastal Act. In fact, they cite that the vacation rental regulation in the coastal zone must occur within the context of your local coastal program or be authorized pertinent to a coastal development permit. I share this information with you so you have more facts in order to make a complete discussion of the issue. According to the Long Beach Convention and an event bureau, tourism and meetings in Long Beach bring in over $300 million annually to local economy, most of each of which is located on or near the beaches. Being able to rent a furnished home for any number of nights in these areas is a natural, fit and boost to the local economy. Including their added contribution to spending at local restaurants, retail events and markets, especially along Sacco Street and Belmont Shore. Homeowners are very proud of their homes and have high incentive to scrutinize potential guest as well as keeping homes at the highest possible level for the next guest. With screening, the vast majority of vacation rental guests are respectful and responsible. Of the homes in the neighborhoods in which they stay. Instead of looking at cities that severely limit vacation rentals as examples, please look at cities that have permitted vacation rentals and look at their best practices as well as the data in regards to the benefits to the city and enforcement. Let's let the facts drive the conversation, not fear or misinformation. In conclusion, I agree with the proposal to legalize all types of short term rentals, create regulations that encourage registration and tax compliance, allow for stays of any length, not to limit it to primary residences, and ultimately provide for immediate consequences when rules are broken. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Next. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 2: Good evening, Vice Mayor. Council Staff Jeremy Harris, senior vice president of Orbital Area Chamber of Commerce Winter Stand. This issue is a complex one, but we are.
Speaker 9: Excited to see this particular issue come up with a broad understanding that it is complex and many different items need to be discussed when looking at.
Speaker 2: Short term rentals, particularly with our hospitality and hotels here in Long Beach. So we welcome that further discussion to top how that is being impacted or lack thereof with stores.
Speaker 9: In place here in.
Speaker 2: Long Beach. So we appreciate that. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. So we'll take it back behind the rail.
Speaker 4: Councilmember Pearce Yeah, I just wanted to say one last time. Thank you for everybody that came out tonight to begin this conversation. Obviously it's complex. We know that there are a lot of cities that have regulated this and it being currently illegal, making regulating it and finding a way that we can regulate it that is in partnership with some of our hotel leaders as well as our housing leaders, I think is really important in finding that middle ground. So I just wanted to ask everybody for your support today. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Mongo.
Speaker 4: I want to thank everyone who came to speak today. It's a very complex issue and a lot of different perspectives that I think are really important to be considered. And while I also, through listening to your comments, reflected on a particular unit that's on my street and has been available for rent for two years and is vacant . And so there's also challenges that come with someone who doesn't rent that property at all because of their unrealistic expectations. And I actually would probably prefer in that case, if a few days a year someone was there because it just gets so rundown. So there's other considerations as well. So from the code enforcement standpoint on both sides of the issue, I think that there's a lot to hear. So thank you all for your comments. And I really bring in about some some thoughts among all of us. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. And see no further comments. Members, please cast your vote.
Recommendation to request City Manager to work with City Attorney to review the regulation of short term rentals in other municipalities and report back to the City Council with a review of next steps required to create an ordinance, along with zoning code changes, and a timeline for these next steps in 30-60 days. 

The findings in the report would explore options for an ordinance that would include, but are not limited to: 

•	Estimated total number of STR's and Transient Occupancy 
	Tax revenue potential. 

• 	The requirements set forth in LBMC 21.51.270, including 
	the requirement that the owner must live in the unit, and 
	explore other types of residencies such as back yard 
	homes. 

• 	The entire unit/home may be rented for a total of 
	90 nonconsecutive days per year. 

• 	A cost-recovery fee structure for an annual inspection 
	of the rental unit and the administration of the regulation 
	program. 

• 	Transient Occupancy Tax collection on all room rentals 
	under 30 days. 

• 	Report on how cities have allocated tax revenue from 
	short-term residen