Yesterday, I attended the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee meeting to speak on the “Vacation Rental Ordinance”. The previous draft of the ordinance would only have allowed a handful of vacation rental permits (.25% of units per census tract) to be issued in our area so we hadn’t been paying careful attention to it. I was dismayed to find that the new draft allows up to 1000 permits for our area (1% of units per Community Plan Area). With the current housing and homelessness situation, I was incredulous that the committee was moving forward on a piece of legislation that shifts tens of thousands of housing units to the hospitality market. I thought possibly they were just trying to put the nail in the coffin of this terrible idea…
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