City Council looking into rental property ordinances

Focus would be mainly on short-term rentals

The Porterville City Council directed city staff Tuesday to research and bring information back to council with regard to regulating rental properties.

City Manager John Lollis hinted at the notion of bringing back a couple of sample ordinances dealing specifically with business licenses for short-term rentals. He said the council may also want to include certain conditions related to the state’s drought regulations.

Jenni Byers, the city’s community development director, said there are a number of reasons the council is considering establishing an ordinance regulating rental properties

In recent years, Byers said the growing popularity of online housesharing sites such as Airbnb and Homeaway has generated an increase of unlicensed and, in many instances, unidentified short-term rental venues. Byers said the trend can lead to decreased availability of rental properties, which she said intensifies the shortages of an already impacted housing market.

Byers said other jurisdictions have also experienced issues between homeowners and the short-term tenants of a neighboring house where vacationers and visitors may be more rambunctious than is typical for a neighborhood. Byers said another significant impact of the increased use of webbased vacation properties is the potential loss of transient occupancy tax and impacts to local hotels, motels, bed and breakfast inns, and the like.

“Another related issue staff has noticed involves long-term rental properties becoming code enforcement issues,” Byers said, adding that implementing a business license requirement for landlords owning multiple (three, five, or more) rental units could provide incentive

for property owners to assure higher quality maintenance of rental properties.

To address these issues, Byers said many local jurisdictions have adopted rental ordinances. While the language of the local regulations vary, Byers said most focus on establishing a licensing system for rental properties (shortterm, long-term, or both), requiring business licenses and standard conditions for such businesses, and establishing a system for payment of transient occupancy tax for short-term rentals.

Byers said the main goal is not to try and regulate all of the rental properties, but rather to treat those who have multiple rentals as a business.

“If you have more than so many rentals then it is a business and it should be treated as such,” Byers said.

Although the issue is not a major problem,

Mayor Milt Stowe said it would be nice to still have something in place.

“I can see where, especially with the shortterm [rentals], people come in and they are going to stay the weekend or stay a few days and they party late at night because it is their vacation and they want to enjoy it, but being in a residential neighborhood you have neighbors that may be living there that don’t want to hear that,” Stowe said. “So we need to have something in place, some kind of ordinance.”

Lollis said similar problems are taking place in Three Rivers where permanent residents are saying that visitors aren’t maintaining their placid way of life.

Although such situations are nonexistent in the city, Lollis did note that there are growing concerns with regard to code enforcement.

“A lot of the property

issues we are dealing with involve rental properties so there are some complications they are running into in code enforcement,” Lollis said.

In addition to requiring a business license, Councilmember Monte Reyes said there should also be signs stating the city’s rules on watering and other common code enforcement violations so people are aware.

“I can see someone coming and maybe wanting to wash the mud off their car or their boots and not really have an idea that they are creating a violation of any sort,” Reyes said. “They may be coming from an area that doesn’t experience things like drought.”

While the problem is minor as of now, Councilmember Cameron Hamilton said he is glad city staff is on top of it.

“I commend you for being ahead of it because it will become an issue,” Hamilton said.