The Riverside County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 to formally adopt a revised set of short-term rental regulations, tightening enforcement rules for the roughly 1,100 vacation rental properties scattered across the county’s unincorporated communities. The vote followed a second reading of the ordinance after the board’s summer recess, but it came only after supervisors heard renewed pleas from residents who want non-owner-occupied rentals banned from their neighborhoods entirely.
Among those speakers was Ramona Bautista, who described a vacation rental in her neighborhood that was involved in a gun assault in which a bullet went through a window and narrowly missed a sleeping child, according to MyNewsLA.com. Bautista opposed non-owner-occupied short-term rental properties during the hearing, and Dave Petrella, speaking about the Temecula area, advocated for a blanket prohibition on all short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods, telling the board that such rentals are not wanted there, per the same outlet.
Short-term rentals — defined under county rules as dwellings leased for a maximum of 30 days and a minimum of two days and one night — have operated under a formal framework only since 2022, when Riverside County ratified Ordinance No. 927 to replace what had previously been an informal permitting process. The county refined that framework further with Ordinance No. 927.1 in October 2022 and Ordinance No. 927.2 in December 2023, adjusting occupancy limits, separation distances and lottery procedures along the way, according to the Riverside County Planning Department.
Faster Suspensions, No More Grace Period
The county’s Transportation & Land Management Agency had originally proposed suspending a rental certificate after five notices or citations within a 12 months, and revoking one after seven notices, the article notes. Supervisors instead tightened those thresholds, revising the suspension trigger to three citations and the revocation trigger to five, while also eliminating a 60-minute self-correction window that previously gave operators a chance to quiet things down before a citation was issued…