# Santa Barbara council backs short-term rental rules before final vote Santa Barbara's council backed two short-term rental ordinances on 6 October 2026. Where a licence can be issued, who may hold one, the fees and the dates. --- Santa Barbara's City Council unanimously approved two ordinances on Tuesday 6 October 2026 that licence short-term rentals in the Californian city, one for its inland area and one for its coastal zone, the Santa Barbara Independent and Noozhawk both reported on 7 October. The city's own agenda report for that meeting, prepared by its Community Development Department, lists the item as an ordinance introduction, the first of two votes, and sets out what the two texts do. The ordinances do two things at once: they create a licence that did not exist, and they draw a map outside which no licence for a whole-home rental can be issued. That map leaves out the inland residential zones, the coastal zones for single-unit and two-unit homes, and every High Fire Hazard Area.

2 nightsminimum stay for every booking

1licence per owner in the draft ordinances

US$3,334city fees for a new licence

City of Santa Barbara, Council Agenda Report on the Short-Term Rental Program Ordinances, meeting of 6 October 2026.

## What the council voted on The agenda report asked the council to introduce two ordinances. The first adds short-term rental rules to Title 30 of the municipal code, the Inland Zoning Ordinance. The second adds a new Chapter 28.91 to Title 28, the Coastal Zoning Ordinance. With them came a resolution approving an amendment to the city's Local Coastal Program, a resolution adding the programme's fees to the city's fee schedule, and a finding that the programme falls within the programme environmental impact report prepared for the city's housing plan. The report notes that amendments to the zoning ordinance need five affirmative council votes under the City Charter. The city uses two words for two different things. A short-term rental is the rental of a whole residential unit, or part of one, for 30 consecutive days or less, and the city's project page says it is assumed to be non-hosted. A homeshare is the rental of part of a home that is the primary residence of the owner or of a designated host, who is present during the stay. Two points were left to the council by the report: whether to require additional insurance from applicants, and whether to keep a limit of one licence per owner. The Independent reports that the ordinances went through without major changes, with no added insurance requirement, and with the one-licence limit and the two-night minimum both kept.

Not yet final

The 6 October vote was the introduction of the ordinances

The agenda report asked the council to introduce the ordinances and adopt them later. The city's project page lists the return to the council for final adoption on 27 October 2026. The coastal ordinance then still needs certification by the California Coastal Commission.

## Where a licence can and cannot be issued Until now, Santa Barbara has treated a short-term rental as a hotel. The city's project page explains that such rentals are allowed where hotels are allowed, are prohibited in the single-unit and two-unit residential zones, and require an owner to go through a change-of-use process. The agenda report counts about 25 inland residential units converted to hotel use that way since 2017. The new ordinances replace that route with a licence area. Inland, the agenda report says short-term rentals and homeshares would be allowed only in an area made up of non-residential zones, and records that the council's Ordinance Committee, which reviewed the drafts on 14 April and 9 June 2026, asked for inland short-term rentals to be limited to commercial zones. The draft inland ordinance the city published for the hearing first set for 15 September 2026 marks both uses as allowed in the office and commercial zones named O-R, O-M, C-R and C-G and in the M-C manufacturing zone, and as not allowed in the M-I zone. On the coast the map is wider for whole-home rentals and wider still for homeshares.

Where each kind of rental would be licensedAs described in the city's agenda report of 6 October 2026

Area	Short-term rental	Homeshare
Inland, non-residential licence area	Allowed with a licence	Allowed with a licence
Inland, residential zones	Not allowed	Not allowed
Coastal licence area: non-residential and multi-family zones	Allowed with a licence	Allowed with a licence
Coastal single-unit and two-unit zones	Not allowed	Allowed with a licence
High Fire Hazard Areas, inland or coastal	Not allowed	Not allowed

Coastal homeshares are excluded from the M-1 light manufacturing zone. The coastal rows apply only once the Coastal Commission has approved the ordinance.

The agenda report counts the parcels behind the map: 953 inland, 596 in the coastal licence area and 1,738 coastal parcels where only a homeshare could be licensed, 3,287 in all, a figure the report calls the maximum number of eligible parcels. Assuming that between 5 and 20 per cent of eligible properties apply, city staff estimate roughly 165 to 657 licences. ## Who may hold a licence, and for which home The detailed conditions below come from the draft inland ordinance that the city published for the hearing first set for 15 September 2026. The agenda report of 6 October confirms the main lines, including the bar on corporate licence holders, the 24-month test and the exclusion of accessory dwelling units. According to that September draft, a licence may be applied for by the property owner, or by a designated host who lives at the property as a primary residence and has the owner's written authority. It may not be issued to a real estate investment trust, a corporation or a limited liability company that has a corporate member. One licence is allowed per person or entity, affiliates included, and one per unit. On a lot with several units under common ownership, only one unit qualifies, with an exception for separately owned condominiums. Several kinds of home are excluded whatever the zone. The September draft lists accessory dwelling units and the primary home attached to them, units under a recorded covenant as affordable, employee, live-work or caretaker housing, units without a final building inspection or a valid certificate of occupancy, and recreational vehicles and tents. A further test looks at the home's recent history. A unit cannot be licensed as a short-term rental if it was let for more than 30 consecutive days at any time in the previous 24 months, or if a tenant was displaced, evicted or bought out in that period to make way for the rental. Homeshares are exempt from this test. ## House rules, fees and penalties The operating standards in the September draft apply to every licensed stay: - a minimum stay of two consecutive nights, with hourly and same-day rentals prohibited; - quiet hours from 10 pm to 7 am; - for a short-term rental, up to ten overnight guests in no more than five sleeping rooms, and for a homeshare, four overnight guests in no more than two, in addition to the host's household; - a property manager reachable by telephone at all times for a short-term rental, and an on-site response within 30 minutes of a request from the city; - the licence number, occupancy limit, quiet hours and parking count shown on every listing; - a business tax certificate, registration for the transient occupancy tax, and payment of any tax owed for the past three years. No additional parking is required, the agenda report says. The same report sets the fees, identical inland and on the coast. A new licence costs US$3,334 in total: US$789 for the application, US$1,985 for compliance monitoring, US$225 for a building and safety inspection, US$228 for the neighbour mailing list, and US$107 in three smaller charges. A renewal costs US$2,897, or US$3,203 with the late fee of US$306, which applies when the renewal is not filed at least 30 days before the licence expires. Under the September draft, licence applications are decided by staff without a public hearing. The agenda report says a renewal would be refused after more than three verified violations in a licence term, or more than five within two years. The September draft sets administrative fines of up to US$1,500 for a first violation, US$3,000 for a second within a year and US$5,000 for each further one within a year, and fines for booking platforms of up to US$1,000 per unlawful listing per day. ## The timetable and the Coastal Commission For the inland ordinance, the agenda report gives two dates. The text takes effect 30 days after adoption, and it becomes operative on 11 January 2027, The report describes a six-month grace period counted from that operative date. The September draft words it as a maximum of 180 days during which operators without a licence may continue, unless a licence is issued sooner, and states that having paid tax or held a business licence gives no vested right. The coastal ordinance follows a slower path. It changes the city's Local Coastal Program, so it takes effect only after the California Coastal Commission has certified it, which the agenda report expects in 2027. In a letter to coastal planning directors dated 6 December 2016, the Commission's then chair wrote that vacation rental rules in the coastal zone must be made through a Local Coastal Program or a coastal development permit, and that the Commission had not historically supported blanket bans. Santa Barbara has tested that boundary before. In a decision of 4 May 2021 in case B300528, the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Six, held that the city's 2015 move to treat coastal vacation rentals as hotels was development under the Coastal Act and needed a permit or a certified amendment first. The opinion records that short-term vacation rentals in the coastal zone fell from 114 in 2015 to 6 by August 2018. According to the agenda report, Commission staff have already voiced concerns about the prohibition in the single-unit and two-unit zones, noting that some jurisdictions issue a limited number of licences there by lottery. The Independent reports that Councilmember Meagan Harmon, who chairs the Commission, said the ordinance sits within the range of rules the Commission has supported elsewhere. ## Tax revenue and the housing policy behind it The city gives housing as its reason. Its notice of the hearing says the rules are meant to favour long-term housing over transitory use, under Program HE-19 of its 2023-2031 Housing Element, which the agenda report titles "Short-Term Rental Framework and Ordinance". The cost is set out in the same report. Short-term rentals have paid a growing amount of transient occupancy tax over the last three fiscal years. The report lists separately the tax that came from enforcement activity: US$0.8 million in fiscal year 2024, US$1.8 million in 2025 and US$1.3 million in 2026.

Occupancy tax paid by Santa Barbara short-term rentalsUS$ million, by city fiscal year

City of Santa Barbara, Council Agenda Report, 6 October 2026. Transient occupancy tax from short-term rentals.

Staff estimate that the number of short-term rentals paying the tax would fall from about 265 to perhaps fewer than 65, the number of sites that pay it today and lie in the proposed coastal licence area. They put the resulting loss at about US$2.3 million to US$3 million a year once the ordinance is certified in the coastal zone. The report says the Ordinance Committee considered that loss and concluded that preserving long-term housing was a priority. ## What is still open The final ordinance texts are due for release on 22 October 2026, five days before the adoption vote, according to the city's project page. One request from the hearing was set aside for later. Noozhawk reports that a council member asked staff to study allowing more than one short-term rental on a parcel in the West Beach area only, and that the city administrator said this and other changes could be looked at once enforcement mechanisms are in place.