Juanita 
Sonoma County is temporarily freezing new getaway rentals like Airbnbs and Vrbo properties in its unincorporated parts.
On Tuesday evening, the county board of supervisors voted unanimously to suspend approvals on new shorter-term rentals for 45 days in an energy to mete out permits a lot more democratically as it wades via a surge of new allow applications from Sonoma owners in search of to lease our their houses in rural getaways.
The county has issued much more than 1,800 limited-term rental permits overall. In the previous two months, demand from customers has soared — and the county has obtained much more than 115 allow programs subsequent the announcement of a slate of proposed family vacation rental laws that could just take influence afterwards this year. They involve a licensing method for potential rental hosts and restrictions on the quantity of allowable vacation rentals in specific neighborhoods — typically capped at 5% of total housing stock.
Supervisors could approve those people guidelines afterwards this summer time.
At the peak of the pandemic in summer time 2020, Sonoma County authorized an crisis ordinance to cap the selection of vacation rental permits in the unincorporated county. Afterwards officials rolled it again to encompass only certain parts of Sonoma Valley and the Russian River, in accordance to the Santa Rosa Push Democrat. The strategy was to then observe up with a “comprehensive” procedure of principles for taking care of getaway rentals all over the county.
Supervisors are also looking at whether to extend a temporary cap on holiday vacation rentals in West Sonoma places like Guerneville and the Russian River that is set to expire in August. The Sonoma coast, even so, follows different procedures as it falls underneath the jurisdiction of the California Coastal Commission, in accordance to the county.
“While family vacation rentals participate in an crucial job in Sonoma County’s tourism economic climate, they also have the opportunity to bring about detrimental impacts and pose a possibility to the general public basic safety, overall health and welfare of the county and its inhabitants,” according to a Wednesday press release from the county administrator’s place of work.
Tourist destinations throughout California have been grappling with a 10 years-long expansion in quick-time period rentals — that is, houses rented for significantly less than 30 days at a time — pursuing the explosion in level of popularity of on the web marketplaces like Airbnb and Vrbo, which make managing renters and acquiring rentals reasonably brief and simple.
Under strain from citizens, lawmakers all-around the condition — including those people in San Francisco, Lake Tahoe and Marin County — have tried to rein in the proliferation and operations of these homes, which some locals believe that tilt their neighborhoods to transient tourism zones exactly where households perform additional like motels. California’s workforce housing scarcity and affordability problems also element into the argument to regulate brief-expression rentals.
Restrictions differ put to area, but lots of locations have settled on the variety of permitting process and rental limits under consideration in Sonoma County.
Gregory Thomas is The Chronicle’s editor of life style & outdoors. E-mail: [email protected]. Twitter: @GregRThomas
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