The California Coastal Commission approved Seal Beach’s Short Term Rental Program on Thursday, July 11. Technically, the CCC approved a coastal development permit to authorize the city program.
Coastal Commission had staff recommended approving the report, with conditions. (See “Short term rentals on July 11 CCC agenda,” at sunnews.org.)
A proposal to require owners of short term rentals to live on-site was rejected. However, there were changes to one of the CCC conditions following a July 5 letter to the Commission from Better Neighbors LA.
Better Neighbors asked the CCC “to allow only true home-sharing within the Coastal Zone.”
“True home-sharing in hosted only short-term rentals means a host is living and on-site during a guest’s stay,” according to Better Neighbors LA.
“The City states that due to limited personnel, the City would be unable to effectively enforce a hosted-only STR program,” according to a Coastal Commission staff addenda to the original staff report.
“The City did not specifically respond to BNLA’s other three proposed revision points, but their general response to the difficulties of enforcing a hosted-only program carry over with any changes that would revise the STR program as hosted-only,” according to the CCC addenda.
Better Neighbors LA. Recommended amending the Coastal Development Permit to promote coastal access and housing and to require more data for housing.
One of the CCC conditions requires Seal Beach to do a six-year study on the short term renal program. The city agreed to accept changes to the permit’s language to include—among other things—categorizing the study by permit type, structure type, and geographical zone, according to the CCC addenda, the average number of rooms for each short term rental listing (including the number of guests the listing could accommodate), and the number of nuisance complaints, according to the CCC addenda.
Originally, the CCC required an annual report of transient occupancy tax revenues. The language was changed to specify the revenues paid by STR operators, according to the CCC addenda.
Seal Beach used to forbid short term rentals, but suspended the ban in September 2023 in response to court rulings that said cities couldn’t ban them.
The Coastal Commission staff report for the July 11 meeting said the program would allow about 47 vacation rentals in Seal Beach.
The same report said there were 14 homes in Seal Beach with conditional use permits to operate short term rentals.
