Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 5.77, related to short-term rentals, read and adopted as read.  (Citywide)
Thank you. Moving on to the next item that motion carries, that was item. Now we're going to go to item ten. Madam Kirk, did you have an announcement before we go? Item ten. This is a reminder to all the public speakers. Please stay on topic to the item that you are addressing. We will be cutting off public speakers who are not speaking on the topic or the item that they have signed up to speak on. Thank you. Okay, please. Item ten. Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to declare ordinance amending Title five of the Long Beach Municipal Code related to short term rentals. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading and adopt a resolution to submit the ordinance amendments to the California Coastal Commission citywide. Thank. Thank you, Mayor. This is city attorney Charlie Parker, and I will turn it over to Monica Kalina, deputy city attorney for the staff report. Good evening. At sample recall this matter is before you on January 19th and again on May 19th of this year for the City Council's direction on May 19th, we have prepared a further revised ordinance regarding regulations on short term rental. Under the revised ordinance, all unhosted as cars would be prohibited citywide, although hosted ACR would be permitted subject to the regulations contained in the ordinance as directed by Council. City staff will work with hosting platforms and other regulatory agencies, including the city's health department, to develop cleaning and sanitizing protocols specific to the operations of NCR, with an emphasis on standards for Unhosted speakers, should the Council later amend the ordinance to permit such operations as per the direction of Council? Unhosted ACR will be prohibited for at least six months and will remain prohibited until city staff present the report to the Council to reconsider amending the ordinance to permit the operation of Unhosted, ACR and Council requests and approves such amendment. It is important to note that the provisions related to the petition process to prohibit Unhosted esprits within a census group have been completely removed from the proposed ordinance because Unhosted speakers would no longer be authorized at this time. It should also be noted that unlike most ordinances adopted by the Council, which become effective in 30 days, this ordinance will not become effective for 120 days, which will give staff the time necessary to develop appropriate administrative guidelines to ensure a smooth rollout of the new regulations. Although not specified in the ordinance, any operation of a hosted ACR would be subject to all relevant Long Beach, COVID 19 health orders and any related protocols, as is currently the case with other business activities in the city. Finally, as with all ordinances that have city wide effect, this ordinance will not become effective in the coastal zone areas of the city until it is first certified by the Coastal Commission as being compliant with the city's local coastal program. Thank you. And that concludes my report and we are available for questions. Thank you. I have emotion. Councilmember Pierce, I think you're going to have Councilman Price. It's either the second or the second. Got some repairs? Thank you. I want to thank staff for their work on this. I know that it's been several years. I appreciate that the process. Is has been laid out, as you mentioned. That this would come back in six months, that the staff could come back to the council with the report and at that time evaluate whether or not to an unhosted. And I also want to clarify that I've had conversations with city staff today around the health orders and recognize that those health orders are temporary and recognize that the city staff supports this motion today so that they can be able to move forward to bring on the consultants and start the hard work that we've been waiting on. So I really appreciate everyone's efforts and I ask for a yes vote today. Thank you. Price point. Q I support this item as well. I do have an email from a constituent that I wanted to get further clarification on, and it involves large scale special events. I think we discussed it in the January meeting. Tom Massa, Deputy City Attorney, to clarify for us a little bit of what her understanding is of what the ordinance would allow in terms of large scale special events. Councilmember. This is I believe we have staff from development services on the line for that question. Yes. Lisa Powell Development Services will answer the question. Good evening. Members of the council. Yes, the. Um. Currently, there are the large scale. Events, but those events will be won't occur until the ordinance becomes effective. And there are guidelines are the health health protocols and guidelines will allow such events. Okay. But that's going to be the second phase, which would come after six months when we have a discussion on the topic about on posted, correct? No, it would come after the four months when the ordinance becomes effective, as long as the health protocols and all of those sorts of things are put out by the health department would allow such events. Okay. And can you describe for me a little bit what what those events would look like? What are the parameters of such events? So those events will be required to get what is called an occasional event permit. They would have to describe the event, how many people they anticipate having, and they would be tracked as to the limit of how often that they could occur. And would there be a discretionary process as to the granting of permits for each of those events? At this point in time, very visioning that that occasional event permit process will follow the same process that is used for occasional events that go on on public property. And and this is Linda Tatum. I just wanted to weigh in and describe that process slightly. That is, that process is issued its through the special events in the city manager's office, but it's also reviewed by the business license office and it's brought it to other departments such as development services. My understanding also the police department, so that based upon the nature of the event, appropriate security or precautions or conditions put in place to ensure that there is no negative or to minimize any potential public impacts. So is there any noticing requirement for that? Ms.. Tatum There is no noticing requirement, but those are what we call the ops. They are limited to six events per year per address. Okay. And so those EPS would be granted if all of the departments that are reviewing it recommend they be grants granted under the circumstances. Yes, they all get to weigh in and it is required that they be that all of the concerns that those various department reviews recommend are appropriately addressed. Okay. Because my concern is obviously and I share this with a constituent who reached out to me special events in residential neighborhoods where there's a lot of density and parking impacts that I'm sure this is not what's envisioned in this provision. But if you read the four corners of it, it doesn't preclude EPS in specific neighborhoods, for example. So I just want to make sure that obviously the intent of this is to minimize impacts on residential communities, the intent of all of this legislation that we've talked about at length. And so that that would be something that would be taken into account as part of the intent of allowing staffers in the city. That is correct. Okay. Thank you. I support moving forward tonight. Thank you. And I second things about you. Next up on the list is Concern Mango. Yes, I appreciate the discussion. I heard Councilman Pierce's comment related to the governor's order. I just thought it was important to kind of outline what that order is and staff are. Is your understanding of the governor's order that he believes or the state believes that? Unhosted. Short term rentals are actually safer than hosted. Therefore, the unhosted are currently allowed and hosted are not. This is Tommy. So correct. The current health order does not allow for hosted stars where somebody is in your home and there's the ability to interact and touch items that the person would also touch. It is currently allowing for unhosted. That just came out. We also do see changes to the health order regularly. So this is the first one that we've seen on this year and I would expect that to adapt and change over the next couple of months, if not earlier than that. So this just kind of goes to my previous point that I didn't feel that the comments made by Councilman Pearce last meeting really aligned with what I had understood with the health concerns. Specifically, I mentioned that a lot of the short term rental platforms have requirements and guidance for cleaning. And while hotels also of requirements and guidance for cleaning, the difference, I feel, at least in my reading of the information, is that if a short term rental unit deemed by those rules, they would be suspended from the platform. And we don't currently inspect on a room by room basis, city wide the standards. And while I recognize that a lot of the major brands have those standards rolling out, we really rely on community members to inform us when businesses aren't abiding by the coronavirus initiative. And I know, Mr. Modica, you and I spoke earlier in the week about a couple of reports of violations. And it's always important to remind the community when hearing items like this that if they know of violations to the ground virus standards, that there's a number that they can call 562570. Which one is it, Mr. Mullica? It is 2633. That's 5702633 is the code enforcement task force. And expression is once this is approved by council, does this need to go to another commissioner body or is it a go once development services is. Comfortable? Once the ordinance is approved by the city council, the next step is that four month period for staff to begin the implementation procedures and to bring the consultant online. But the next step is that the because the item is or it requires an amendment to the city's local coastal program. This entire packet would have to go to the Coastal Commission for for review and approval. And what is the wait time on something like that. The the time period for council to respond. It varies anywhere from three months to 12 months. It really depends upon the council's. The Coastal Commission's staffing at any point in time. However, what staff would propose to do would be to submit it to the Coastal Commission immediately after council's ratification, so that during that four month period, while staff is ramping up, preparing the administrative regulations and getting the consultant on board, we will have already submitted it to the coastal so that so that there we don't waste additional time or we get at least a four month lead time for the council to review it and get back to the city. Ms. TAYLOR. But we need to then go back to the Coastal Commission again. If the Council decides to expand this to. And hosted in the fall? That is correct. Any time we change any of the city's zoning code provisions that would apply in the coastal zone, they do need to be ratified by the Coastal Commission. Okay. So I feel like the wording and dancing around of the way in which this has taken place in terms of using the stay at home order to kind of state that that was the reasoning behind going with hosted and hosted. All of that to me just doesn't seem like really in alignment with the current. Data that's coming from the state. And so I would hope that we would then reconsider and join them together, even if it meant starting both of them six months from now instead. Because what I see now is an additional staffing process and an additional delay that will happen in going to the Coastal Commission twice. So that would be my thoughts on the item. And so I'm not supportive of the way that it is today. I'm just from a procedural reason. I think that it doesn't it also strips neighbors of income that they've relied upon for quite some time. And the two neighbors that I talked to, that coast stars in in our communities, they are on hosted stars and that helps them pay their mortgage and when they're not there. And so that that's just a concern for me that we're taking away the income of people in our communities during the time when they've needed this kind of income to kind of get them through. Well, business is not that great. One of them specifically is an employee of the convention center, and it doesn't have any hours right now. And so it's it's just a big concern that we're taking away people's income and approving a C.R. clause that's not even currently allowable by the state. So I wish it could have gone a different way. Again, I support Councilman Price's. Information related to what we can do to restrict and ensure that the communities are safe and that these are good players. And we've talked to do that for months and months. It's just unfortunate that we've split it this way. So I won't be supporting Adam tonight. Thank you. Councilmember Price. Thank you, Mr. Meyer. Mr. Miller, I appreciate those comments. Councilwoman Mango, a couple of things on that. This is an issue that, like you, many of us have worked really hard on involving our residents and trying to get feedback. We're trying to do the way it's I don't know the wording it use. But look, this way, I think is what you said. The way the reason for this is because we are trying to support the numerous residents who have hosted stars and many of them are seniors, and they depend upon the income that they get from renting out a room or renting out a back house or renting out some portion of their property as a hosted ACR. We're trying to support them and we're trying to support them while we explore the options and the practices and procedures and work with the providers to hone in and figure out what works best for our city in terms of future enforcement. So I do support moving forward with that piece of it. As a council member who represents the coastal district, I know I can speak for myself and Councilmember Pearce. The fact that it has to go to Coastal Commission for ratification is not at all a concern that I have or I think Councilmember Pearce has. Coastal commissioners focus has always been access to the coastal zones. So us allowing additional access through additional short term stays and hotels and anything that allows for access in the coastal zone is not going to be an issue that I anticipate. We're going to get a lot of resistance from, from the Coastal Commission and I don't expect the process to be so burdensome that we have an efficiency argument to make because of the nature of the task in regards to this particular ratification request. So, you know, sometimes when we're talking about working with Coastal Commission and getting approval from Coastal Commission, we want to make sure that we're efficient in our ask so that we include as much as we can in the ASC so that they can evaluate something in its totality. In this circumstance, we're trying to approach this prudently and we're trying to approach it in phases. And I think that that's not something that's going to have a negative impact on the ultimate ratification decision by Coastal Commission, because ultimately the goal is to enhance access to the coastal areas. But we're doing it in phases because that is what works for our city. So I would urge council to support this item. I do believe that I do anticipate that we will move forward with allowing the UNHOSTED, but we'll have to take a look at the number. We'll have to take a look at the conditions. We'll have to take a look at some of the practices that have been in play for the first six months where we have the hosted scars. And I think those experiences and those opportunities that we have will better inform the decision in terms of what we allow at the next time we vote on this in six months. So I'm supportive of it. I do appreciate that this allows also our residents who live in highly impacted residential communities with parking impacts and such, to have an opportunity to see how we are able to enforce the first phase of this ordinance, which is the hosted stars, because enforcement is going to be a critical piece and I think residents will be much more likely to embrace this program if they see that the city has an enforcement mechanism in place, an enforcement mechanism in place that they can deploy as needed. And having the six months will allow us to develop that infrastructure in the city so that we're able to follow through and execute that in the way that we're promising residents, where sometimes we promise them enforcement, but we really don't have the enforcement infrastructure set up, so we can't follow through. This phasing allows us to do so. So while I appreciate that there are some residents who depend on short term rental income. That's a little bit disappointing for me to hear because they're relying on income based on. An operation that currently is not allowed in the city. So I think if you're relying on income doing something that's prohibited in a city, you kind of take the risk that at some point what you're doing is not allowed and may not be allowed to continue. My hope would be for those folks that they would partner with us so that we could move towards phase two and they can have compliance with what the city ordinance will be because if they've been relying on income running and hosted us here. They're running an operation that's not allowed in the city. So you kind of you take that with some risk. So hopefully the six months departure and allowing us to say is in will allow them to also participate and make sure that they are one of the ones that gets licensed when the time comes. But I think the comments are very, you know, very, very thoughtful. And I think they do take into account a category of folks who rely on income but rely on income for prohibited activity. And so hopefully as we go into phase two, they're able to recoup that income in a way that is legal and lawful through the city. So I would ask my colleagues to support this motion. Thank you. Councilman Muggeridge, you back up again. Is that a second Q or no? Councilman Mongo. Yes. I appreciate that. I guess a lot of these individuals started before we had banned short term rentals. And then when we did, we kind of talked about. And allowing certain organizations to continue to operate until we got some things in order. And we as a city have kind of had to take a lot of time because this is an evolving market that we don't know a lot about. And I do appreciate that there are less than there are hosted. There are less posted. Participants in the city than Unhosted. I also have heard from a lot of people who felt that after the meeting two times ago when we spoke about this, that we were on a track where Councilman's and De Haas had really taken the lead on lifting it to 1000 within the city. And they had hope in all of these things. And then. The city changed direction. And I know that the whole world has kind of been on its head, but I guess that that's why my discussion related to I'm at the last meeting kind of talked about well. Homes that are safer. And that's just not what has come about. And again, I recognize, especially in our communities that hosted our really the primary, but then students are also now not in school, so they don't need those. So I think a lot of things have changed. I appreciate your feedback and I will reconsider and think it over for a few minutes before I thank you. So, Mayor Council, this is Tom. If I can add one thing. Councilman Austin Mayor when I get a second, if you can add if I can add some clarity. Absolutely. So one thing that we talk about in our lingo is hosted versus UN hosted and the state order actually talks about occupied and unoccupied. So I just wanted to make sure that that was clear. What the state order for COVID is trying to do is prevent people coming together in a shared space. So that would prevent people from coming into your home, from being in any place where you as the resident are interacting with them. It would allow a hosted STR where there's no interaction, where it has a separate entrance, where it has, you know, if it's a duplex, if it's in your backyard. So I just wanted to make sure that was clear. Those would still be allowed under the health order, even though they're hosted. They're just they're unoccupied. Same thing as if the resident were to leave and not be there. That is then considered an unoccupied unit rather than occupied. Thanks. Thank you. That helps a lot. Councilman Austin. Oh, yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and I appreciate the conversation. I definitely appreciate all of the very detailed work put into this item by our city staff. I appreciate the process that we have gone through to get to this item coming before us this evening. It has been many, many months and, you know, a lot of back and forth between the stakeholders. I'm not sure that we were able and have been able to get to a place where people can 100% agree on the approach moving forward. But I do appreciate the efforts and the level of compromise that has gone into getting us to where we are. I will have to agree with Councilmember Mongo. I do believe that the dynamics have changed, obviously considerably. COVID 19 has really forced everyone in every situation really rethink our matters. I'm concerned with, you know, Long Beach. I'm concerned about what is the best move for our city in terms of, you know, a total strategic thought on this. I want to know, how are we set up to enforce this this ordinance of citations and whether or not we're creating a situation where we're now encouraging property owners in our city to have invested in our city, to go now underground in terms of subleasing their they're their spaces. And so I'm a mom, although, like I said, I'm appreciative of the process. This doesn't feel like it's it's 100% right. And I do have my concerns. I'm likely to support the item before us this evening because I think, you know, six months from now coming back to talk about the Unhosted platform uses is is. It's something that we have to do. We definitely have to do that. And so I just wanted to share my concerns just initially in my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Please go ahead and do any public comment. Madam Kirk. We have one public comment. Victor Boosie, you have 3 minutes. So. The two boozy cold nights at a away. So you all just spent all this time talking about process. All this work went into FDI, short term, short, short term rentals. Now it's Airbnb. Call it what you want. It's a $38 billion company. You're putting all this effort in for more capital when the capital needs to go. One place economy. Housing is a human right. People shouldn't be making money off of housing again. Housing is a human right. So you guys spent all this time and effort. For Airbnb, a $30 billion company. But work on all these rules so people could make more money off of human rights. That's disgusting. Literally disgusting. The money should go to de-fund BTD. That's it. We're coming for your jobs. Either resign, retire, or get voted out. De-Fund the idea of my time. Thank you. That's the end of public comment for this item. Okay, thank you. With good Casper votes. And a reminder as we do that that item will be back in six months for additional obviously council dialog on so. Madam Court. District one. I. District two District three I District four. I. District five. I. District six. I. District seven. By District eight. Hi. District nine. I ocean carries. Be. Thank you. Let's see, try to do some of the council items first here that we had a request for. Let's go ahead and do item 15 than 18 because I think our council items.