By Brooklynn Wong
Joining what has become a trend in several area cities, Anaheim has pondered at the last couple of City Council Meetings whether to keep allowing short-term rentals, such as AirBnBs.
It’s a prime place to have such properties, with the constant flow of tourism, and people searching for cheaper alternatives to hotels.
However, a few bad apples may ruin the deal. The city continues to receive complaints about noise and other disturbances at such properties.
At last week’s City Council Meeting, no fewer than 90 residents showed up to speak during oral communication, most of them about this issue.
Most were owners of short-term rentals in the city who are concerned about what would happen if the city were to enforce a closure of all such properties. But there were a number who wanted to see the end of short-term rentals in the city because they had been negatively impacted by them.
The situation is a complicated one in Anaheim. Per the city, staff has been dealing with complaints about noisy and/or poorly-run short-term rental properties since 2015. The year after that, the City Council banned short-term rentals and told current owners of them that they had 18 months to phase them out and shut them down.
But this has been contested, and the city has received so many appeals and requests from owners—and has been navigating a related lawsuit—that it has been wading through the paperwork and shouldering costs ever since.
Neighborhoods that have HOAs can make their own rules, and some, like Sherwood Village, have adopted their own bans.
And as it stands now, those in such communities that have banned them, have until December 2022 to close or relocate their short-term rentals.
Deputy City Manager David Belmer acknowledged that there are benefits to having such properties in the city, however, there have been a “few situations” of note where there is what he called “incompatibility” between the properties and those who live there permanently. And this has merited the city taking a long, hard look at whether to continue to allow them.
Mayor Harry Sidhu said the city needs to find “a workable way forward.”
At the June 4 City Council Meeting, the Council voted 4-2 to overturn the previous vote that had banned rentals. Council Members Jordan Brandman and Denise Barnes dissented, and Councilman Jose Moreno was absent.
However the discussion continued last week, on June 18. Dozens of short-term rental (STR) owners spoke, saying their properties are a good thing, and that they give TOT tax income to the city, like a hotel. Some spoke of having short-term rentals banned as a violation of their property rights.
But one woman spoke for many others on the other side of the argument, when she said the AirBnB in her neighborhood is loud and disruptive. She said the vacationers are often even good about being quiet during city-regulated “quiet hours,” but the noise at other times is too much. She also spoke of Ubers constantly pulling up to transport the vacationers.
Some wore t-shirts with “Ban STRs” printed on them. One of them, a man named Bobby Donelson, said there are illegal STRs in his neighborhood.
“Let them stay in the resort; the people of Anaheim paid for the resort,” Donelson said.
But when all was said and done, the Council voted 4-3 to reverse the 2016 ban. Council Members Barnes, Brandman and Moreno dissented.
So, for now, it’s an all-clear for Anaheim STR owners, so long as they ensure that they and their renters follow city rules.
