Paso Robles council to discuss updating vacation rental policies

With the growing popularity of such short-term rental websites such as Airbnb and VRBO, Paso Robles is experiencing a significant increase in demand for vacation and short-term rentals.

The Paso Robles City Council on Tuesday is scheduled to hold a discussion of the city’s vacation rental policies and steps that might be taken to update them. The discussion was prompted by a community forum on the subject held in November that attracted 130 people.

Residents’ biggest concerns were protecting the character of residential areas, safety and parking, according to the item’s staff report.

Rental operators favored using existing regulations to govern rental conflicts and promote tourism.

Vacation rentals are defined as homes or individual rooms in homes that are rented for less than 30 consecutive days.

“As the popularity of short-term rentals for tourist lodging increases, the city wants to ensure compatibility with surrounding neighborhoods and conformance with municipal code,” said city planner Susan DeCarli. “It is also important that vacation rentals pay transient occupancy taxes or ‘bed-tax’ as do hotels.”

Transient occupancy taxes are a common revenue source for local governments. Most local cities, including San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay, as well as the county use them. Paso Robles’ bed tax is 10 percent of the rent charged by the operator.

Paso Robles officials estimate that between 200 and 300 short-term rentals are operating in Paso Robles. However, only about 60 of these have business licenses and pay bed taxes.

This translates to a loss of revenue for the city. The city Administrative Services Department prepared a memorandum that found that 54 licensed short-term rentals paid $122,000 in bed taxes in 2014.

The memo went on to estimate that an additional $330,000 in revenues could be collected if 200 unlicensed short-term rentals were licensed.

This story was originally published March 13, 2016 at 8:39 PM with the headline "Paso Robles council to discuss updating vacation rental policies."