Recommendation to direct staff to work with the City Attorney to amend Title 5 of the Long Municipal Code to allow un-hosted short-term rentals.  (Citywide)
Great. Thank you very much. Next item we have that was asked to be moved up. Sorry, we're going to do item 66. Report from developed and services recommendation directed staff to work with the City Attorney to amend Title five of the Long Beach Municipal Code to allow Unhosted short term rentals citywide. Okay. I'm going to turn over to staff. We will have the development services director, Oscar Orsi introduce the staff to present this item. Thank your members and members of the City Council as requested by the City Council. We are bringing this matter back to you for your consideration as well as additional information that you had requested concerning our short term rental hosted versus Unhosted, as well as a few other items. With that, Lisa Farr will give you a brief presentation. Good evening, Mayor and Council. But you're looking at a timeline just to provide context on where we're at in the short term rental process. The ordinance was adopted in June. We had 120 days to establish registration. Registration did start on 120th day, October 24th per the ordinance operators have 180 days to register after the registration enforcement begins . Currently, we are enforcing the quality of life provisions included in the ordinance. At the council meeting, certain items were requested that we bring back. I'm going to go through the individual slides and call those out. The first item is cleaning and sanitizing protocols. We were asked to speak with the platforms. They submitted their protocols. Both the platforms that submitted Airbnb and VR bio direct their hosts to follow local guidelines and provide guidance consistent with the city's health order. Both the city's health order and the state health order only allow unoccupied units to be rented. While the operator is not physically present or has an exterior entrance and exit that does not require the use of a shared facility or is otherwise unoccupied. This since the city health order cannot be less restrictive than the state. Only unoccupied staffers for the state's definition can be operated within the city or. In terms of the economic impact of COVID 19 on tourism, there has been a. A direct impact. I think the most telling of those is the fact that revenue per available room, which is a combination of occupancy and room rate, has declined 52% from $142 to $68. Totti collection reflects this decline. Approximately 30% decline has occurred from 1419 to f y 20. You'll notice that for starters, there actually shows an increase. However, this is deceptive in the fact that for Fy19 we only collected for six months of the year, April to September. Well, at fy20 we were able to collect for the whole year. We were also asked to look at rental housing vacancy rates. The vacancy rate was approximately 4 to 5% from the beginning of the first quarter of 2019 to the first quarter of 2020. That rate has now increased to about 6%. This appears to be sort of a combination of two things. Presumably COVID, as well as the fact that there were 236 new rental units added to the market right as the pandemic hit. In terms of registration. It has been slow and the three weeks that we have been accepting them, there have been 33 applications received and 26 have been approved. We're working on the 27 gaining additional information from the applicants. Just real briefly, current ordinance highlights it established an annual city registration and fee includes enforcement provisions and a pardon me and mechanisms to remove bad actors. There's a 24 hour contact to respond to a nuisance complaints within an hour. Requires a limited event permit to exceed occupancy limits. The occupancy limits are two guests per bedroom, plus two with a maximum of ten guests. In addition, stars are prohibited and deed restricted, affordable housing units and dormitories and 80 use. In addition, landlord consent is required if a unit is subject to a rental agreement. Staff is recommending that Unhosted stars be allowed to operate, specifically that operators be allowed to operate to non primary residences and their primary residence. This is consistent to a version of the ordinance that was brought to you in May of this year. Other provisions that were in this version of the ordinance that we're still recommending is to limit the number of non primary staffers to a thousand, as well as to provide for a petition process for people within a residence, specifically within census block groups to opt out. In terms of allowing unhosted staffers within their census group. There have been questions about why we don't have the opt out process now, and that's because this was specific to unhosted stars and we're only allowing hosted. The process would be a mail in process and would be conducted by by staff. Our next steps are to receive direction from the City Council regarding unhosted stars as well as to if we are asked to look at Unhosted, we would return to City Council with a revised ordinance and then we would submit a revised application to the Coastal Commission. That concludes my presentation and we're available for questions. Thank you. Think you have a motion by Councilmember Pearce on a second by Councilman Price. Let's do the public comment first. Our first speaker is Audrey Luna. Thank you, Mayor Garcia and city council members and I am speaking on behalf of my neighborhood and district to Rose Park in particular with regards to and hosted Airbnbs. I actually live in a four unit apartment complex and there are two units that are currently unhosted. And the reason why I am asking that you do not lift the ban is because there have been several large gatherings, parties, noise after the event after the 10 p.m. curfew. It's unfortunately at this point, I'm feeling a little unsafe in the complex that I live in because the gates are left open to the guests that arrive are not using the private entrance. They're coming through the back door gate and interrupting the other tenants that actually pay rent. So. There's I know that the cleaning folks are not following the COVID sanitation protocol and the amount of garbage that has increased has caused a rodent infestation. So it's just there's quite a few negatives about unhosted. I really, really hope that this ban is not lifted because I feel as though. Thank you. Our next speaker is Alex Bland. Hello. My name is Alex Bland with Airbnb. The staff recommendation in front of you is the product of years of negotiations with this council and hours upon hours of public input and debate. The city held multiple community based public input hearings beginning in 2018 where there was overwhelming support for the legalization of first year and UNHOSTED stays in particular. The City Council has discussed this issue at multiple hearings throughout 2019 and 2020 and taken hours and hours of public testimony on the matter. This item is not new. There are no amendments, and support for this compromise approach is broad. These regulations protect housing by limiting the number of vacation rentals that can operate within the city, while ensuring that the local Long Beach residents and small business community still continue to benefit from the tourism economy and also look to address the coronavirus. Now, in response to the pandemic, Airbnb issued a mandatory enhanced cleaning protocol based on the latest guidance from the W.H.O., NCDC. Enhanced cleaning protocol was developed in consultation with Dr. Bruce Murthy, the former U.S. Surgeon General under President Obama and recently named co-chair to President Biden's coronavirus task force. It goes into extensive detail regarding how to disinfect between guests, including the types of cleaning products to use and requires us to attest to complying as well as to pass acquittals to ensure they reviewed the materials. We've shared and reviewed this protocol with your staff and they've advised us that they're comfortable with the steps we're taking. And recently, the CDC has also recommended that stars are a safer option for travel over hotels because it limits contact in public spaces. Thank you so much for your time. I think your next speaker is Andy Passage. And the passage. Our next speaker is Audrey Luna. I already spoke. You can move on to the next. Sorry. I think our next speaker is Charlie Quijano. Charlie Cano. Mr. Califano. Our next speaker is Ed Campbell. Hi, my. My name's Campbell. This is Andy Page. I want to be on. Please begin any. Okay. The City Council will just vote yes to city wide on host this year. Unlike most of the speakers, the presence of unhosted cards violate your city council agenda for number one medical health of the community. You know, we can't believe that a landlord would be as good as as a well versed a well versed worker in a hotel downtown. And number two, the mental health of the community families, some raising young children should not have to tolerate unhosted stars becoming one of the following a party, as you know. And the problem there is that those places sometimes evolve into into having violence, even on vacation business locations. Again, downtown hotels, hotels are a best place for this activity. Agents making deals on cell phones in front of other people's houses. It should not have to be tolerated. And Unhosted. You are supposed to give rise to unprecedented businesses such as the filming of photography. And this this has happened to us. So I'm sorry to to have to add that a three the economy and poverty hospital, hospitality workers of all sorts are dependent on hotels and local restaurants to for a living they enter and feed the economy by. Thank you. Our next speaker is Charlie Cano. Charlie Cano. Our next speaker is Heather Roseman. At their Roseman. Good evening, council members. My name is Heather Roseman, executive director for the Long Beach Hospitality Alliance. I'd like to start by saying that homes are for families and hotels are for guests. And as such, we urge you to ban the vacation rentals in Long Beach, as other cities have already set precedent for successful policy regarding short term rentals. This new ordinance will only undermine the hotels, the hotel industry's ability to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. I ask that you consider the many mom and pop hotels with excellent and affordable rooms that will surely be impacted by this ordinance. Taking homes away from Long Beach residents for short term rental use will surely decrease the available housing stock, displace hotel workers from their homes, will taking much needed business away from hotels. I'm calling on you to protect your hotel community and our workers, as are one of your greatest assets in economic recovery and one of your biggest partners in protecting Long Beach jobs in the wake of COVID 19. Hotel occupancy levels are at historic lows and will not likely recover for many years. Please remember, as you consider this ordinance, Long Beach families need homes and hotels need guests. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is John Choi. Hi. John Choi, Public Policy Airbnb. I just wanted to add a few comments regarding the pandemic impact, the tremendous impact it's had on travel. But what we've seen since the early onset of the pandemic is a rebound, with a focus on local and regional travel within a few hundred miles. For many who are just looking for a change of scene or a safe, clean place to work for a few days, a vacation rental in Long Beach has been a lifeline. And I want to echo the comments my previous colleague Alex made about CDC recommendation, preferring short term rentals over hotels, specifically for the reason of being able to avoid public spaces. So even during a pandemic, when visitors stay in Long Beach, Long Beach vacation rental, they are supporting a local property owner as well as local small businesses who don't typically benefit from tourism as well as the city's general fund. Erin B signed a voluntary collections agreement to collect and remit the city's total in April 2019. As a staff report indicated in fiscal year 2019, we remitted 1.4 million and in fiscal year 2020, a year heavily impacted by COVID, we still remitted $2.2 million and approximately 50% of this revenue will be lost if the city does not legalize Unhosted rentals before the April 2021 enforcement date. In conclusion, the regulations for Unhosted stays have been thoroughly discussed by the City Council and as a reasonable compromise that protects housing while allowing an important part of the tourism economy, the tourism industry to contribute to the local economy. Short term rentals have not been shown to have any negative impact on hotel industry jobs. And this proposal ensure that local residents. Thank you. Our next speaker is Charlie Cano. Help. Hello? Hello? Yes, we. Can you hear me again? Okay. Thank you. This is Charlie Cano with Unite Here Local 11. I'm calling to strongly oppose this motion, as was alluded to by the previous caller who lives in a in a 40 minute building where two are being used for unhosted rentals. This is this is going to to help take more housing off the market at a time when we need it, at a time. When we're. Facing an eviction crisis. I think it's really important. And that's, by the way, that's happening right now when it's illegal. Imagine that the the amount of abuse that could happen when there is this loophole created that will make all short term financial regulation more difficult to enforce. Just to put this in perspective, the limit of a thousand homes is about three times what a Long Beach produces in terms of housing each year. So I think it's important for city council to ask, who are they going to side with? The majority. Of people in the city that rent. That are that are facing terrible economic circumstances because of the pandemic. And we're facing huge we're facing rent increases even before this. Homeowners who just want to use their homes as homes or to provide an opportunity for somebody else to rent from them long term. Or, you know, a. Big company like Airbnb. And I think it's and folks lucky enough to have, you know, property that they can be somewhere else for a significant portion of the year. So I would just suggest please keep keep the current regulations. Thank you. Our next speaker is Ed Campbell. Hi. Hi. Speaking. Thank you. Did Campbell. And when the pandemic began this last spring, we noticed some changes in our neighborhood. The property directly across street began having some remodeling. When the work was complete, we learned that they plan to operate to one hosted yard. Once renters started showing up at these hosted actors, there were parties, loud music, drug use and even possible human trafficking. Going on parking has been a big problem in the neighborhood. It's already stretched thin for parking spots. The UNHOSTED SDR has changed the character of the neighborhood by having a, quote, mini hotel in a quiet residential neighborhood . It has removed at least two long term rental housing stock from the city and has become a nuisance. It threatens the public health, safety and welfare of neighboring property through careless actions, especially during the pandemic. Now I feel that the Unhosted SDR should not be allowed because they encourage runners to have parties and be loud when there is anyone there, stop them. These unhosted only take away quality, long term rental possibilities for the residents of Long Beach. They are also very unfair to the long term tenants at the building to have to put up with the constant traffic of new renters coming in and out. Some of the tenants have even been offered money to move out to the owners for renovate their units as well. The long term tenants are forced to use the same laundry room as the SDR during this pandemic. The SDR is also create an unusually large amount of trash filling the camp to the point that the long term renters do not have room for their trash. And it overflows into the street. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jonah Breslow. Jono Brazil. Hi, my name is Jonah Breslau and I am a research analyst at Lane, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. I urge you to reject this proposal. We're in the midst of an enormous housing crisis to lose a thousand homes. The commercial de facto hotel use is a profound misuse of energy when we should be fighting to preserve every unit of housing and build more. And the timing is inappropriate in another sense as well. The city has barely begun to issue permits for home shares, and it is far too soon to expand the cities program when we have scarcely had a chance to assess the effectiveness of the existing ordinance. You've also heard from tenants expressing their personal experience with currently existing illegal coal home rentals. It would be a terrible and cruel irony if the city launched a pilot program to potentially allow 500 tiny homes at the same time that it removes twice that number from the housing market. I urge you to vote down this ordinance. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is one cruise. One cruise. Good evening. My name is Frank Rules. I am a member of United 11. I am hotel worker for 17 years. I live in District six in Long Beach. I work for Queen Mary Lambert Convention Center and for the Maya. I have worked on both. Sure the short term growth of. Please do not let 1000 home truly interrupt my house when we are in the middle of housing crisis in the middle of a pandemic. Please consider this petition. Please vote no on ordinance 60. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kelly Hartwick. Kelly Hartwick. Hi. This is Kelly. And we own a triplex. Bayshore in Belmont Shores. We bought it as a existing vacation rental over 16 years ago. We're in in favor of the homestead as our guests. Yes. Utilize Kayak Corner and the restaurants and the shop on. Down in Belmont Shores. We live 5 minutes away. Our neighbors have our cell phone numbers in case there's an issue. I confirm with all guests that there will be no parties, no pets, no smoking or vaping on property. We court we follow all the COVID cleaning protocols that have been set forth. I post quiet hours between ten and eight. I've bought signs for the exterior patio as well to have those posted. We've hosted the US Women's Olympic team for sailing to practice in Long Beach. We've hosted the men's Russian team. We employ a full time housekeeper that lives in Belmont Shores. We own also a property on the East Coast that is ACR. And every year that city has a protocol that inspects every SDR. Thank you. Our next speaker is Maria Misa. Hello. Good evening. Please begin. Hello? Okay. Thank you. Hi. My name is Marianne Lisa. I work in Long Beach and I'm a member of the United Locally Living. In the hospitality industry. I'm very angry to hear that the city council is considering to open up Body Farm in the middle of this funding drive on the part of our sector festival have been crucial. We haven't seen a city. I'm also affected my job and my coworkers. This will take all your wholesale away. I urge you to box in this item for Federal Housing. Prime Minister. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Melissa, so-called trigger. Hello. Hello. Thank you for having me. I'm calling because I. Live next to an on hosted SDR, and I'm also here to ask you to not allow. Them to. Continue and has protesters put the burden of safety and regulation on residents? We have to walk over and explain that it's not okay to park on the sidewalk. We have to show that one of our neighbors uses a wheelchair and that he needs access to the sidewalk. One guest asked me why a gentleman couldn't go into the street to go around his vehicle. I guess as invested in our community, he is on vacation and no one is here to keep him accountable. No one has explained parking or anything else to these guests. No one is suggesting that they're clearly signing up for a party. And the reason that they just behave this way, because the Astros understood what the owner had told me to discuss. They would be more cautious about who they like, and one would guess. But even that, I wish that the person that own the property next to me was considerate of the woman who spoke. I think people before me. But the fact of the matter is, that woman is an exception. The person that owns the property must meet the inevitable. That is what will happen if you allow this to pass. Please do not pass this. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is next. So do. Hi. My name is Max DeSoto. I live in Long Beach District nine. I also work at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, where we have been closed since March. Lifting the ban will make it a lot harder for my coworkers and I to return back to work. I am so angry and appalled to find out that our very own city council has decided to hurt working families. But we are trying to survive this pandemic. I am asking you to stop short term rentals now. Short term rentals hurt, short term rentals will hurt and take away hotel jobs and will also take away affordable housing . It is time for our city council to put residents and workers first. I find it alarming how comfortable these Airbnb hosts are saying that they have on hold said hours even right now when it's not allowed. They are really not following the law. I am. I really urge you to vote no on 66 and stop unhosted short term rentals now. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Sylvia Salcedo. Hello. Yes. We can hear you. Please begin. Okay. Good evening, Mayor and council members. I would like to speak to the negative impact that Unhosted cards have had on my once peaceful neighborhood in the Second District. I respectfully implore the city to not allow Unhosted escorts to operate in the city illegal and host to the cars that have operated across the street from my home since June 2020 have violated every one of the protections. The ordinance was set up to provide our neighborhoods. We've had to deal with constant party celebrations day and night, loud noise into the early morning hours, no masks, no social distancing, and guests routinely smoking marijuana in the front yard throughout the day, which permeates our home. Parking is another issue, with guests constantly parking on the sidewalk, blocking our driveway and guests with multiple vehicles on our street exacerbates the lack of parking in our neighborhood. We were not provided with any contact information of a local person should problems arise. Our complaints to super hosts who don't reside in Long Beach took the platform completely ignored, and now we're having to call the hotline almost daily. During this pandemic, we all have to witness new guests arriving after the unit was clean only 20 to 30 minutes beforehand. It's rare that a 24 hour wait period is followed. This recommendation will incentivize transforming rentals into LCR, then will have a huge negative impact on housing. The burden of responsibility has been put on the neighbors. It has been our responsibility to monitor the city hours on a daily basis and report violations. The owner host has no vested interest in maintaining the character of our neighborhood because they do not. Thank you. Your next speaker is Valerie Luna. Hi. I am against the ordinance and I am begging and respectfully requesting the Council to continue upholding Unhosted as a staff. I'm not going to say anything other than every one else has already said. But there is one thing I'd like to add that there is a division in management. I'm currently a resident in a four plex and two of the units are being utilized as unhosted short term rentals. And whenever we have. Issues with the. Property management company. We're told to contact the owners and the owners never respond. So not only is there that division that we are not getting what we should be getting as far as property management, but there's nothing for anyone to do about the issues that we have with the short term rental. Everybody is saying the same thing, especially for those that are living in these types of communities. It's very disturbing. They're constantly they're the short term rental. People are constantly asking us for coats, knocking on our doors at all hours of the night at. 2 a.m. in the morning. There's constantly drug use being used within the complex. And it's very disturbing. Not to mention the hygiene issues that everyone has already discussed before about. Not wearing masks. And I think your next speaker is Victor Sanchez. In Samarra. Council members Victor Sanchez of the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and Healthy Community. We respectfully ask that you not support this item. We simply do not have the information needed to make an informed decision on the dias this evening. Title five of the new missile code, which outlines the rules and regulations on short term rentals in the city, only began taking registration of short term rentals on October 24. 33 applications and 26 approvals just mentioned in the report. Is this enough data to justify an expansion to give one host up to three units to put on short term rentals? I believe it's unreasonable to justify the removal of a 1000 housing units simply because we want to put this issue to rest after four years of debating it. We are clinging on to an analysis that was done pre-COVID. We are in the middle of a pandemic which has changed everything. And as much as we want to ignore the impact COVID had on this item, we cannot ignore the impact it's had on working families and think that we've done enough for workers, especially those in the hospitality sector, a sector which has been decimated and will further be threatened because of this expansion. I ask that the Council take stock of the moment and air on the side of public health and on the side of working families. Protect our housing. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public comment for the sun. Mayor. We've concluded public comment on this item. Mayor Garcia. Can you hear me? Yes. We can hear you. Okay. Gosh. Okay. Sorry about that. I'm trying to. All right. I'm sorry, I. Madam Court, did you? I was. I was trying to call you there. Sorry about that. Did you get my message? Yes. We've concluded public comment for item 66. I got kicked off here, so. Thank you very much. So I want to go back to Councilmember Pearce. Great. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you to all the speakers. Thank you to staff for the brief presentation and everybody that's been engaged in this process. Billy This is our fourth or fifth time actually taking a vote on short term rentals. And each time we make substantive changes to try to make it the best fit for our community. I know that many of our constituents have called in tonight and said that they currently have issues with illegal Airbnbs right now, and that's actually why we brought this item to the Council over four years ago. We brought it because there was a black market essentially happening where these Airbnbs were operating and they weren't legal in the city. And when we talked to staff they came back and said we don't have the resources. So what happens is city prosecutor, city attorney, they send a letter out a cease and desist. Then, you know, they wait to hear back. They might send one more letter, but that's it. The city hasn't had any ability to hold accountable the bad operators in our town. That is why this item was brought forward, so that we could make sure that we allowed for people that wanted to host in their own home to do that legally and that the city could collect revenue on it because they are operating like a hotel and that non hosted could also operate in a way where we're able to collect revenue but hold those accountable for those big parties that tend to happen. So I'd like to ask staff a couple of questions because this is our fourth or fifth time to actually take a vote on this. I had hoped to try to move kind of quickly tonight. I know that there is a lot of division and you hear it in the public comments, homeowners versus renters and hotels versus Airbnb . The fact is, is that there's not one model that fits everything. And this policy has tried to take into account protecting our housing stock. That's why it comes back with the housing vacancy number in there, and that's why we've tried to limit that number as well. So I'd like to ask staff right now for non hosted. Can you walk through the process for what happens and then can you walk through what would happen if we voted tonight to do this? How do we hold accountable the bad actors? So Councilmember Pearce, are you talking about the process for the host ID that's currently in place? No, I'm talking about the UNHOSTED right now on hosts that are not currently legal. What happens whenever a community member files a complaint on that? Yes. Thank you. I'm going to ask Scott Baldwin, who's working directly on the enforcement to respond to this question. Hi. This for hosted or unhosted only. What we're doing right now is. Due to the ordinance. We have a 180 day period after enforcement began to allow everyone to be in compliance. So currently, you know, we're only three weeks removed from the effective date, so we're still in the 180 day period, giving operators time. Essentially to either comply or to. Remove their listings and in or change their operations. Councilmember. Let me add to that, that response. So currently we have no mechanism for enforcement because unhosted or not regulated what the as you indicated our ability to regulate unhosted short term rentals will allow us more significantly significantly to work with Airbnb and other hosting platforms to be able to limit and prevent the marketing of that unit , to take reservations, to move that project forward as well as additional enforcement. That's what we currently don't have and this process will allow us to enforce those things. And there are fines that are included in this ordinance, correct? That is correct. That we don't currently have. That is correct. So I walk through that because every time I have a conversation with one of my constituents that's upset about a party house, as I remind them that regulating it is the way that we get the tools in the toolbox to actually hold them accountable to the standards that we deserve to have in our community. And so I agree. I don't like you know, I'm hosted party houses next door, but for too long we've done this in a Wild West way. And so that is why we brought this item forward. I believe that, you know, we are in uncertain times, but aligning ourselves with the state. I believe it was mentioned in the in the PowerPoint, being able to say that the state says that we should have unhosted as the safest way instead of hosted. We did six months ago asked staff to work with the hosting platforms on cleaning requirements. I heard it in public comment. But staff, can you speak to that? Have you worked with the hosting platforms to ensure that the cleaning guidelines is up to CDC recommendations? Councilmember We have worked with the hosting platforms as well as Dr. Davis and the Health Department, and we have provisions currently in our order to regulate the the short term rentals with language that is similar to the state order. Great. Thank you. And then I wanted to there's another comment that was made in public comment that said, we are taking a thousand units off of the market right now. Can you clarify how many staffers have been active before COVID? Because I know we had those numbers in the report. That's Councilmember Pearce. Right now, within the last year, there's been approximately 670 and hosted stars that are active and approximately 170 and hosted stars. So that was a hosted I'm sorry, pardon me. That was 170 hosted and 700 and hosted. Okay. So I it's pretty clear for the. Record that the. Comment that we are taking units off the market is not happening. These units are have already been in use. This is part of this new economy that's emerged that we're all trying to grapple with and find a rocky balance policy. Councilmember Pearce. Yeah. I'm sorry. Your 5 minutes is expired. Oh, I forgot about 5 minutes. Okay. Well, I will close out with saying that I believe that we should vote tonight to move forward. We've been doing this for four years, and I'd like to end with saying that this vote is not a vote against a hotel worker or a hotel. This is a vote to try to make sure that we have a balanced city that is really taking into account all the different models and ways that people want to stay at places and have their business and do it in a way that we can hold people accountable. So with that, I urge my colleagues to pass this agenda tonight. Thank you. That's the motion. The second is about Councilman Price. Councilman Price. Thank you. You're Mr. Mayor. So I want to ask a lot of those comments. Biggest one for me. I know that the second and third district have the highest number of staffers and the number one unpermitted staffers. And the number one complaint that we get from residents is that there's really no enforcement mechanism right now for resident complaints because they think a house in the neighborhood is being used as a short term rental. They actually have to work with the city attorney's office and provide the evidence that the city attorney would need to issue some sort of a letter to the property owner. And it really puts neighbors in a bad position because they're trying to collect evidence on property owners within an adjacent home. And it's just it's not where we want our residents to be. So I know that these operations are happening, and I believe we need to have an enforcement mechanism so that we can hold people accountable for the requirements to operate these stars. Right now, we have nothing to hold people accountable, and it's almost impossible to prove that they're operating it as an SDR without the neighbors testifying against. The property owners. So as much as I understand a lot of the comments today, I think finding an enforcement arm to be able to regulate this activity that's already happening is very important. I would like I am interested in limiting the SDR from the recommendation that we received. So Councilmember Pearce, my question would be, would you accept a friendly to change the proposed ordinance that allows for a total of three to change it to a total of two, one being the primary and one being the unhosted. Yes, I would. Okay. Thank you. And then the other question that I had for city staff was there remain concerns from constituents regarding the large scale event aspect of the ordinance. Can you please talk to that? Because what we don't want is to have residential neighborhoods that are having up to six large scale events in a residential neighborhood. And how can we limit or prohibit that? Councilmember Price. Well, what we do have in the ordinance is what we call a limited event permit. That is to allow, on a infrequent basis, people to have more than the maximum occupancy limit at that place. It's very similar to an occasional event permit that the special permit, special events office regulates. The host or operator would have to prepare the same information that goes into the occasional event permit. How many people are going to be there? Is there going to be music? These types of things and going through this process will be able to in the future deny people that are bad actors and don't conform to those permits . We're allowing six per year. Correct. Thank you for reminding me that we're recommending that maximum of six be allowed per year at each individual short term rental. I would like to make a friendly to limit that or reduce that to four. If Council member Pearce is open to that and I also want to make sure that there is a process in place where neighbors will be able to weigh in like we do with the occasional that permit. I guess I don't see a problem with that. Is there a process in place where neighbors can oppose such a permit? Yes, they can. They could. They. Well, let me circle back with you. There is no public process to a review process for any time. They're issuing an occasional event permit. We can consider what we can do to inform the community about these permits. Like staff to please look into that. But I don't want to hold up the process this evening. And then finally, can you just speak to the opt out process in terms of who initiate who needs to initiate that for neighborhoods that are interested in that process? Certainly. So it is a resident that will contact the city and say that they would like their census block group to opt out of the unhosted short term rentals. What will then happen is that the city will initiate a mail mail in balloting process for all the residential property owners within that census block group. Great. Thank you very much. I have nothing further. Thank you. Councilman Day has. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you, Councilmember Pearson Price for this item. I know that you guys have been working on this item far, far beyond when I came on to the council. So I know how invested you are on short term rentals. I wanted to see if maybe I could, you know, make a friendly I know that coming from a district to where I house a lot of of workers that work in our hotels and and have seen a lot of them lose their jobs during this pandemic. Really, really touches my heart and breaks my heart for what they're going through. So I know that short term rentals could devastate them even more, but I understand that there has to be some kind of balance. And I'd like to offer a friendly to see if maybe we could limit the amount of unhosted rentals to be permitted from 1000 to 700. Is that something that you would accept? Councilmember Pearce. I know that we've had this discussion before with this council, so I'd like to see where the discussion is. I know that right now we're at 640 and know that there's been some other discussion around coming back. So let's see where the council colleagues are. Okay. And I'll come back up then. Thank you. Okay. Councilman Mongo. Thank you. I appreciate the discussion today. I'm interested in. A couple of things. One, I'll just say that I know that the. Original there are lots of cities that have unlimited number of. Ideas. I know the staff came forward with an initial number and a chart for us, and I just wanted to remind everyone that a thousand. Was the number. We compromised too. And so during this time we were only allowing hosted to register. So 640 of those spots is already. Are already taken. So there's really only 260 available for the and hosted. I was interested in asking a point of clarification for Councilman Price. You had mentioned you wanted to go. From one primary and two. I couldn't hear. That was one primary and two. What, three total where one had to be their primary and now the friendly was to make it so that it was to. One their primary. And one additional. Are you open to making it. Or I guess it would be to Janine. Councilman Pearce, are you open to having it be just. To general and they can decide if it's their primary or not? I'd like to stick with Councilmember Price's motion, because we've done so much work over the last four years on saying that if somebody was going to have an additional one, that they needed to live in one, that, too. That is too big of a shift to make tonight. Okay. So they could still just have one that is not their primary. That was Councilmember Price's motion. Yes. Okay. Thank you. No additional comments. Okay. Councilman Ranga, then councilman is in Dallas. Mr. Mayor, can we correct something? I think that was just quickly in the stated. Elisa, can you answer a question on that, please? Yeah, sure. What I wanted to say is that the limit on Unhosted is currently a thousand. Right now operating in the city. Within the past year has been at 700 unhosted and currently we have 170 hosted. Those 170 hosted do not apply to the limit. And of those, 173 have actually registered with us. Thank you. That's a very important point of clarification. Thank you, Mr. Modica. I've got some Ringo and councilmen and they ask. Thank you, Mayor. I have a couple of questions, but I just wanted to make sure that I'm. Listening correctly. So we're talking about the debt limits. We talked about limit of 1000. That is up to 1000 and where I currently had 700. Is that correct? I'm sorry, Councilmember. Could you repeat that? I had trouble hearing you. The number of stories we have on hosted the discussion right now is to have a total number of 1000. That's a top level. And from what I heard, or even if I'm wrong, is that there are currently 700 unhosted stores currently in use at the present time. So there are 300 more that we can allow at this point. There would be 300 additional that we are not currently operating between. The 700 that we know of operated within the last year and the 1000 limit that we have discussed in the past. That is being proposed. Okay. So consequently, there are the discussions that we're having here. Then it's not necessarily that we want to lower the number of on host approach to keep it at a maximum of a thousand. It's another way of putting it. Would that be correct? Yes. The other aspect of this, and I'm trying to get a clarification on and I haven't seen anything, is that the number of days that a host is? So in terms of the unhosted str, there is no limit on the number of days that they can operate during the year where. They enter the aforesaid. I got I got a call right in the middle when you just started. I'm sorry. Can you start over with that? Sure. So presently or what had been discussed for the unhosted that there would be no limit on the number of days that they could operate during the year when there was a discussion of a potential limit. That was when we were discussing a primary, a STR, which is where the individual lived, that they could operate that home as an on hosted for up to 90 days during a year. That was that limit. So we're not that is not part of this discussion at all in terms of what number of days a person can stay the unless year. Posted around. Yeah. That would be for further consideration. Well, the reason I'm bringing this up is because obviously sometimes it starts functionally rental units when there are no limits placed on the number of days that a guest can stay at a short term rental. And that's my concern at this point, especially glad to see that there was a adjustment being proposed and a friendly and being accepted from going from a to a non primary and one primary to one primary and one not in terms of residence. So that that's that's good. But I'm still having concerns that even that one unhosted would function as a. Mentioned before being a bad actor where an individual will have a star there, and that would be basically an apartment rental. Not unless you are still concerned about that. The other aspect of it is that we're talking about removal, removal of affordable housing, especially when I'm talking about along the coasts. As you may know, I'm a member of the California Coastal Commission, and one of the biggest concerns that we always have up and down the coast is affordable housing along the coast. Has there been an average done in terms of what the cost of these streets are in Long Beach in regards to Austin or other hosted units ? Where do they sit with the with the rental market here in Long Beach? Councilmember. We do not have any current information regarding what the what the rates are. I'm happy to come back to you after we have some time to research that item. And I'm saying that now because that will be a concern once this issue comes before the Commission. And affordability for housing along the coast is very important to the commission, and it would be something that would be seriously considered as to whether or not the city would be able to modify its LCP in that regard. And this allows. Council member this is Christopher Koonce. That is absolutely a concern for lower cost housing to the degree that it is occupied as a rental today. But in our discussions with the Coastal Commission staff, they're also very concerned with lower cost visitor accommodations, which is a specific reference in the Coastal Act statute. And we do know from Coastal Commission data that Airbnb or BRP, these type of units are typically more affordable, particularly to families, than full service hotel rooms. And it's for that reason that a coastal commission, at least at the staff level, has advised us that they see these types of units as a tool to meet their lower cost visitor accommodation goal. And they have expressed some concern just that the staff, the staff level about the council's previous action to allow only that hosted because they were concerned that it may not provide sufficient lower cost visitor accommodations within the coastal zone. Councilmember Urunga. Your time has expired. Okay. Well, that would be my major concern at the present time, but I'll continue the discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Consumers in house. Mr. Mayor. And after hearing some more on this from staff, I was wondering, council member Pearce said maybe we could consider lowering the Unhosted max to maybe 800. Is that something that you would accept as a friendly. Mayor. Do we have other people queued up to speak? No. This is from the after this. We're going to a vote. Okay. Well, I will accept your motion. You're a friendly. A agree. And also, might you be able to accept that we that we have city staff come back to us in 6 to 9 months to reevaluate, you know, and see where we are with, especially since we're in a health crisis right now. I think that in the original ordinance there's a staff supposed to come back annually with the vacancy rate. Is that correct stuff? Yes, that is correct. Okay. So since we're lowering the number, giving us, you know, I think 12 months to come back is a reasonable amount of time. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Remember? Okay. Thank you. That can actually count for a. Just check it. Thank you, Eric Garcia. I just have a point of clarification and I think possibly a lot of residents are confused. I mean, basically, it's counterintuitive to think that we have to allow Unhosted in order to regulate them. But specifically, I'd like to ask Councilman Price to clarify what the 6 to 4 party's friendly means and and whether there is an annual unhosted limit for a house. So I can I can talk about the the for the from six to force a staff was recommending six large scale events be permitted per ACR per year. And I ask that to be reduced to four with a request that staff look into a notification process for neighbors in the area. So that was my my friendly which Councilmember Pearce accepted. I don't know that I could speak with any expertize on the other item. That might be a better for staff question. Well, yeah. And I think if I could ask staff, how how would the word get out to the public or how would there be notification on the policies? Well, we need to come back to you with to provide you additional information. But the ideas that we provide on our website, an opportunity to notice the community about pending applications for events. Okay. Great. Thank you. Okay. That concludes our council comment. Go ahead. Yes. Did you just did you are you did you cued up again? Okay, customer. Pierce. Sorry, I just wanted to clarify. In the past, when we've talked about the vacancy rate, we've talked about the number of units being able to go up when the vacancy rate is above 8%. So I just wanted to confirm that that is still in the ordinance. And I know that it was in the report that the vacancy rate was variable. I just wanted to confirm. Oh. Yes. It was in the in the ordinance. That's right. So with that, you know, support the motion that's on the floor. Thank you. Okay. Roll call. Vote, please. District one, district two I. District three. I. District four. I. District five. I. District six. AM District seven. II. District eight. Hi. District nine. All right. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. Let me go to go back to some of the items that have been asked to move up. Next one item, I think 73 and 75 have to be taken together or one after another. Is that right, Mr. City Attorney? I think you could take it.