Santa Cruz County to look at short-term room rental regulations

Santa Cruz County leaders are opening up an online survey in order to get the public’s help in creating new rules for short-term room rentals, according to Jason Hoppin, a spokesperson for Santa Cruz County.

“We have a regulatory framework for whole-home vacation rentals but we don’t have something for hosted rentals,” said supervisor Zach Friend, “So what we wanted to do is create a basic regulatory framework but with input from the community to see what works best for all of us.”

According to Hoppin, regulations would likely put rules on food service, length of stay, the number of guests allowed, minimum safety requirements, noise, pets and signage.

Greg Dougherty has lived in the same Aptos neighborhood for nearly 30 years and says he hasn’t seen any problems with short-term, single-room rentals and questions why there needs to be regulations.

“I have ambivalence towards the regulatory environment trying to control that,” said Dougherty.

Friend says the county has received complaints about short-term, single room rentals from various people, with most concerns coming from the rural areas.

“They may have rural dirt roads. They may have private roads and now they are living next to a commercial enterprise they didn’t anticipate,” said Friend.

Nothing is set in stone just yet. Friends says once the county has the results of the survey, it will likely take another year or more before regulations are completed.

Here is a link to the survey.