Palm Springs council preserves 36-stay cap for legacy short-term rentals, delays other changes
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Summary
The City Council voted to stop the scheduled reduction of allowed short-term rental stays for legacy permits and keep other regulatory changes for later stakeholder review.
Palm Springs City Council voted Wednesday to halt a planned reduction in the annual stay cap for legacy short-term rental permits, keeping the longstanding 36-stay allowance for properties that already had that level when the 2022 ordinance took effect.
The vote preserves the status quo for legacy permit holders while sending staff back to gather more stakeholder and neighborhood input on other proposed rule changes, including how event homes are treated and several administrative clarifications recommended by the city's Vacation Rental Administrative Appeals Board.
City staff framed the item as a technical change to avoid an immediate drop in permitted stays for legacy properties. Veronica Goodhart, the city's director of Special Program Compliance, presented detailed usage statistics showing most permits average nine to 12 stays per year and relatively few properties use more than 32–36 stays. “Many of their recommendations can and will be implemented by policy changes,” Goodhart told council and recommended the council remove only the impending reduction from 36 to 26 and defer more complex changes for broader outreach.
Councilmembers discussed complaints, enforcement data, and the administrative burden of additional changes. Mitch Navhan, the city's code compliance supervisor, reviewed enforcement trends and said total citations for vacation rentals have trended down since 2023, with music/noise and vehicle-overlimit citations the most common active disturbances.
Councilmember Jeffrey Bernstein, who pressed for clarity about contract records and enforcement, and Councilmember Reddy and Mayor Pro Tem raised the need for additional public outreach before adopting further rule changes such as increasing post‑2022 permit counts or altering how event permits are counted. Several councilmembers said they favored targeted, neighborhood-level fixes for recurring problems rather than citywide rule changes.
Councilmember Vicki Garner moved to accept staff’s ordinance language removing the pending reduction for legacy permits; the motion was seconded by the Mayor Pro Tem and carried 5–0. Staff will return with draft language and outreach plans to address administrative clarifications (vehicle-count rules, contract retention and format, platform compliance under new state law) and to take a separate look at event‑home rules with additional stakeholder engagement.
The council also directed staff to explore stronger platform-level enforcement (citing recent state law expanding platforms’ responsibilities) and to return with options on clearer guest ID/contract rules that are easier for code to audit.
The council’s action preserves permit holders’ expectations while giving neighborhoods and vacation‑rental stakeholders more time to weigh substantive changes that may affect neighborhood character or local businesses.
