Voting with unusual unanimity, the Santa Barbara City Council made it emphatically clear Tuesday night it will not be legalizing the booming short-term vacation-rental market anytime soon. Instead, the council indicated it would initiate a wave of enforcement proceedings against home-hospitality entrepreneurs operating outside the confines of City Hall’s zoning codes.
Those hoping the council would yield to the popularity and seeming inevitability of the sharing economy — by choosing to regulate rather than to ban — left disappointed. So, too, did those hoping the council would mull the matter over in a year’s worth of deliberations.
In an accommodating gesture to what’s become a large and lucrative cottage industry, the council indicated it would explore zoning changes to allow “home sharing” operations. Those are short-term vacation-rentals in residential homes occupied by the owner, not to be confused with “vacation-rentals” in which the owner is not present.