As vacation home-sharing websites such as Airbnb become more prevalent in Southern California, municipalities are scrambling to regulate them.
Proponents of tighter regulation on homeowners and landlords who rent out their space to vacationers say that the lax standards are making California’s housing shortage worse.
“It’s important that we focus our enforcement on people who have apartment buildings and are basically turning them into hotels,” Santa Monica Councilwoman Sue Himmerlich told the L.A. Times.
The measure will still allow owners to host and rent out space to vacationers only if they live on site. Renting out a space to visitors full-time while the owner lives elsewhere will be prohibited.
