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.”