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We’ve been hearing for weeks San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s staff is putting the finishing touches on a proposal to produce a city policy on short-term vacation rentals.
Now, it will go to the City Council July 16, Faulconer’s chief of staff Aimee Faucett confirmed to VOSD.
The outlines of the deal will likely be close to the ones we saw almost prevail last year: Owners would have to rent for more than just one night (to minimize transitions), they would have to pay a fee and get special permits for big homes. Mission Beach may be carved out as an area with minimal restrictions.
The big questions the Council will have to decide on is whether to limit how many vacation rentals one owner could have, and just how many nights the minimum stay will be.
In a column Monday, the U-T’s Logan Jenkins may have perfectly articulated what’s going on in a lot of people’s minds: He wrote that has not yet experienced any actual inconvenience from a new vacation rental next door to his home, but he is consumed by the idea that he may, some day.
In his piece is a collection of all the fears coming out in the debate among neighbors: the fear that you never know who may visit next, that housing is being lost, that maybe nothing illegal or that obnoxious is happening – but it could.
A few months ago, we hosted a roundtable on the issues and some of this came out. Neighbors can always call the cops if a party gets out of control but not for more trivial annoyances that people often bring up as part of this discussion – like noisy luggage being walked past homes, or someone clicking the remote key on their car too often.