Glendale City Council begins discussions on short-term rental issue

Last week, Glendale City Council heard about the growing short-term rental market in the city as neighboring cities deal with the burdens and benefits of the sharing economy.

Short-term rentals, made popular by hospitality companies like Airbnb, is the practice of renting out dwelling areas for a period of less than 30 consecutive days, with host present or not. Recently, several major cities, including Santa Monica and New York City, have banned the practice.

Although council members took no action to either regulate or ban short-term rentals — preferring instead to wait for ongoing lawsuits against Santa Monica and Airbnb to pan out — the city staff made it clear that the sometimes volatile rental activity would someday soon need to be dealt with.

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At issue was whether or not the city should begin the process to amend the municipal code to better deal with short-term rental activity and whether to allow, regulate or ban them in some zoning districts. No comprehensive state law exists on the issue.

In its current form, the city code does not address short-term rentals explicitly. However, according to city staff, the code can be read to support use in some residential areas. Hotel or motel code definitions are not broad enough to include short-term rental activity.

“In other words, if we were to say you can’t have a vacation rental in Glendale, it’s not a winning argument because of the language in the code,” said City Atty. Michael Garcia at the meeting last week.

Glendale had an estimated 450 listings citywide as of this past October, with most rented at a maximum of 15 to 90 days per year, according to data from Host Compliance, a service that monitors short-term rentals for local governments.

City staff members outlined several public-policy benefits such as supplemental income for residents, reduced carbon footprint of a hotel and the possibility of collecting a transit occupancy tax from providers.

Short-term rental hosts are obligated to collect and submit transit occupancy taxes to Glendale, but many have not done so, according to staff.

Some issues which have kept short-term rentals out of some major cities include concerns over the drop of affordable housing, costs of enforcement and nuisance activities associated with an increase in occupancy.

As policy options, staff members recommended possibly conducting an affordable-housing-nexus fee study, paid for by the city’s housing authority, for direction on how to actively enforce collection of the 12% transit occupancy tax.

One suggested method is to partner with hosting platforms to collect and submit the tax. Currently, Airbnb is the only provider that has voluntarily partnered with some cities, such as Los Angeles, for collection.

“This is an enforcement nightmare, no matter which way we go,” said Mayor Paula Devine.

In the end, City Council did not opt for outreach, further study, tax enforcement or any move to ban or regulate short-term rentals in Glendale.

“[Current action on short-term rentals is] too messy. It’s just going to lead to a large number of problems,” said Councilman Zareh Sinanyan. “We’re going to have to deal with it somehow until there comes a point where this whole thing is systematized and better monitored, but I don’t think at this point we have a handle on it.”

Garcia suggested staff reevaluate the status of the ongoing lawsuits related to short-term rentals in six months and return to council with any findings.

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Jeff Landa, jeff.landa@latimes.com

Twitter: @JeffLanda