Board and calling to this meeting to order at 7 p.m.

for Monday, February 10th.

And we'll go ahead and start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Board Member Wang.

I pledge allegiance.

And to the Republican stands.

One nation under God.

Indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you for leading us.

And we'll go ahead and move on to the first agenda item roll call.

Yes, uh, good evening.

Um board member Hom.

Here.

Board member Ruiz.

Here.

Board Member Wang.

Here.

Board Member Saheba.

Present.

And President Cisneros.

Here.

Okay.

We have a quorum.

And board members Sue and Ariza are excused absences.

Okay.

Great.

And the next agenda item is any agenda changes.

Seeing none from the board or staff.

We'll move on to non-agenda public comments.

Does anyone would like to speak on an item that's not on the agenda?

You may approach and speak for three minutes.

Seeing no speakers.

All right.

Okay, great.

We'll move on to the consent calendar and seeing no items.

Then we'll go ahead and move to the regular agenda item 5A on the short-term rental ordinance.

Yes, uh good evening.

Um is Steve Buckley.

I'm the planning services manager, and I'll be making the presentation tonight on the short-term rental ordinance.

This is just an introductory uh discussion.

Uh we will be taking uh further um action later, um, but tonight is just a discussion to introduce some thoughts on the item.

You have a staff report in your packet as well, and so I'm just going to summarize here some of the points in that report.

Um generally we're here, as I said, to uh just give you a briefing uh on some of the context and the uh need for the ordinance, some of the issues we'd like to address, and then uh an opportunity for you to give some feedback.

Uh short-term rentals in general are uh also referred to as STRs.

Uh they refer to uh rooms or entire uh homes or spaces that are uh rented for generally a period of less than 30 days, and so they they don't establish a tenancy per se, um, but they are often um obtained through a uh online platform that such as Airbnb um Virgo and others that you see on television and other channels uh of advertising.

Uh they're very uh prolific and have um uh worldwide uh influence on the rental market, uh including in Alameda.

Um, and so uh there's uh opportunities here that um uh offer uh residents uh owners or tenants to um offer their their excess space for rent to uh travelers and uh uh also um you know earn some income, uh but they could also possibly have side effects on the neighborhood that in which they're located uh in terms of noise or parking or those you know, excess trash and and um uh so we we have a policy in our housing element to sort of try to balance those interests uh to protect the rental housing market as well, because in some cases landlords might discover that they can make more money by renting on a short-term basis than they would by entering into a long-term lease, and so we want to uh balance the interest in having housing available for permanent residents and and uh local workers rather than necessarily uh travelers who have other options such as your typical hotel.

Um this is an example, just a screenshot of of one set of listings on one day.

Um, but these are the places that were available last week in Alameda on one platform, um, and they're going rate for an overnight stay.

Um as you can see that they're scattered around town and different neighborhoods and and different um environments.

So some might be houses, some might be apartments, those apartments might be rented by the landlord, or they might be rented by a tenant, who then is sort of subletting overnight or um by the week.

They might also just be accessory buildings on a property.

We've even seen some listings for airstream trailers in a backyard or a yurt, those sorts of unusual places that someone might want to stay just for a unique experience.

In general, we've seen that the majority are for the whole space, either a whole house or a whole apartment.

I just mentioned that because some of these platforms are also used by landlords who are looking for longer term tenants, but they might just you know use the platform as an advertising venue, even if they're not necessarily short-term rentals as they're defined.

Right now, Alameda's zoning code doesn't really mention short-term rental or regulate it in a specific way.

And so this project includes a whole uh framework that we're going to have to create kind of from scratch as far as the land use regulations.

However, they are regulated essentially as hotels in our tax code.

And so technically, short-term rentals are also supposed the hosts are supposed to be collecting and remitting to the city a 14% transient occupant occupancy tax, just like they were if we're a hotel.

And so hotels do register with the city and they remit a monthly payment to the city, which goes into a fund for all kinds of community benefits for the city.