Homeowners using Airbnb, Vrbo and other short-term rental services may soon be slapped with more restrictions in Long Beach, driven by complaints that the business, left unchecked, invites crime and inflames an already tight housing market.
The Long Beach City Council unanimously voted Tuesday to approve a first reading of new rules following a months-long review of the existing ordinance, which already requires short-term rentals to register annually with the city.
After they receive a second reading and final approval, the changes will include:
- Mandating inspections for any unsafe conditions before a homeowner is approved to offer short-term rentals
- Barring property owners from offering short-term rentals if they have any outstanding code enforcement fees
- Preventing homeowners from reauthorizing their rentals if they are the subject of any active or pending criminal or civil investigations (This includes code enforcement actions or violations.)
- Requiring property owners to submit to new inspections when they renew their annual registration
- Disqualifying operators from renewing their registration if they accumulate three or more citations in an 18-month period
- Banning recreational vehicles, pool houses, rumpus rooms or casitas as short-term rentals
- Setting the maximum number of people at a short-term rental to two per bedroom or a max of eight people
- Banning filming or special events without additional permitting
- Upping the penalties if there are violent incidents at their rentals — now counting as two strikes in a system that blocks the annual renewal after three strikes
- Counting any violations of the city’s municipal code or the California Penal Code violations as three strikes — automatically preventing the annual renewal
- Allowing the city to cancel or suspend a short-term rental if the owner or operator fails to respond to or remedy an incident involving violence
The move comes about a year after a shooting outside a short-term rental spurred the City Council to take up the issue.
“We were tasked with, for the small number of bad operators, how do we hold them accountable,” said Community Development Director Christopher Koontz.
Long Beach has regulated the industry since 2020 when it set a cap of 700 on the number of “unhosted” short-term rentals — meaning the homeowner isn’t present during the guest’s stay. Currently, there are 695 unhosted, short-term rental units and another 257 that have a host present.
To do business, hosts must register annually with the city, pay lodging taxes, keep records for city inspection, and make sure they have working smoke detectors, fire extinguishers and information on emergency exits, among other requirements.
Debates over how to tighten rules dragged on for months inside City Hall, with tenant activists and homeowners on either side of the service agreeing that stronger enforcement was needed, but not at the expense of those who follow them.
Many who spoke Tuesday supported the rules but also pointed out the good that comes with these rentals’ presence in Long Beach. Many are rule-abiding homeowners, they said, who shop local and invest in their home’s upkeep. Some host a range of guests, from the Oman Royal Air Force to professional ice skaters and even those displaced by the recent fires in Pacific Palisades. Cleaning and maintenance crews, they assured, are paid handsomely.
“And when we get all these visitors who come in, we have a chalkboard with every single local business listed where all these folks go,” said Anthony Swager, who has hosted an Airbnb space since 2016. “The only request I have is that you not penalize all the hosts that are in compliance and abide by the regulations.”
But others continued to say the service attracts nuisance, from loud noise to late-night partying and crime. Many residents feel enforcement is nonexistent and the city’s complaint hotline provides zero follow-up to incidents. The only solution, they said, is to ban any host that gets in trouble with the law.
In 2024, there were 127 complaints filed through the hotline, according to city data.
According to Scott Baldwin with Long Beach Code Enforcement, the city revoked two licenses since it began the ordinance.
How you feel about the rentals also likely depends greatly on where you live. More than 250 of the rental properties are clustered in the 3rd City Council district in southeast Long Beach. Downtown and around Alamitos Beach also have large numbers.
One resident demanded a limit to the number of rentals in a neighborhood, saying that his neighbor’s planned Airbnb next door will make five short-term rentals on his block alone — two on either side and one across the street.
The law also allows neighborhoods to ban short-term rentals outright if the majority of a census tract agrees to do so, but only two tracts have so far cleared that hurdle. Speakers at Tuesday night’s council meeting promised more are on the way.
“We were so darn close, so it feels like we have a good opportunity of being successful,” said Christina Nigrelli, whose South of Conant neighborhood fell less than a dozen votes short of a ban last year.
Andy Oliver, who led Long Beach’s first-ever successful ban in his College Park neighborhood, said the process was grueling and inaccessible — costing $1,000 to even begin the petition process. A successful petition needs 50% plus one majority of a census group tract and must be completed sometime between Dec. 8 and June 7.
Oliver said he lodged more than 50 complaints with the city about a problem rental next to his home before the shooting there catalyzed his neighborhood to support the ban and spurred the city to consider tightening regulations.
He and others griped that residents said that property managers openly flout this law, saying there’s no way to effectively enforce against a property manager that operates multiple buildings.
In response, Koontz said that a third of complaints are noise-related, and many do not lead to citations. It often takes a police presence, a written report and proof that the noise proved to be a chronic nuisance.
“That doesn’t mean there wasn’t noise, that doesn’t mean it wasnt upsetting or disruptive to someone,” Koontz said. “What we have to be able to do is establish that it exceeded the noise ordinance which is a certain number of decibels depending on the time of day.”
Koontz did acknowledge, however, that many short-term rental owners contract with property management firms and could lead to “dozens” of short-term rentals being run by the same people.
“But the restriction in the ordinance has to do with the ownership of the rentals,” Koontz explained. “We do our best, and we do investigate, but it’s certainly possible that there may be multiple properties that are owned by different LLCs and each LLC may have some common partners but also some different partners.”