Group Defends Short-Term Vacation Rentals

Continuing its counterattack against Santa Barbara’s opposition to short-term vacation rentals in residential neighborhoods, advocacy group Save the Rentals has released a pair of reports claiming that the impact of short-term rentals on long-term housing and neighborhood tranquility has been overstated.

While one report concludes that shutting down short-term vacation rentals would only produce a half-percent increase in the long-term rental stock, the other finds that, based on complaint records, short-term rentals “do not result in heightened nuisance issues.”

Both reports, available at STRSantaBarbara.org, were authored by the California Economic Forecast, whose Mark Schniepp presented the data to city council members during a public hearing on Tuesday. Councilmember Cathy Murillo questioned the integrity of reports bankrolled by an industry group seeking favorable light. “We are trying to bring facts to a conversation where anecdotes [have dominated],” responded the group’s Theo Kracke, who also runs a vacation rental company called Paradise Retreats. “A complete prohibition is not the solution.”