Supervisors press OSTR and Rent Board on STR enforcement and ILO implementation; public urges stronger action
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Summary
At a lengthy hearing, planning and rent-board officials reported on short-term rental (STR) registration and enforcement and on intermediate-length occupancy (ILO) implementation. Staff described application backlogs, roughly 1,600 active registered hosts, about 600 pending applications, budget and staffing for OSTR, and enforcement outcomes; tenant advocates urged more aggressive enforcement and inclusion of STRs/ILOs in the city housing inventory.
The Land Use and Transportation Committee held an extended hearing on Sept. 27 covering intermediate-length occupancy (ILO) rules and the Office of Short-Term Rentals (OSTR) program’s registration and enforcement work. The session included presentations from the Planning Department, the Rent Board and OSTR, followed by extensive public comment from tenant groups and neighborhood advocates.
Corey Teague, the Planning Department zoning administrator, gave a brief ILO overview: the ILO designation applies to stays longer than 30 days and less than one year, the city set a 1,000-unit cap for ILO permits, and eligible units in existing buildings had a filing window; to date the department had received "fewer than 10 ILO applications representing less than 100 dwelling units" and many units have until mid-2022 to file, Teague said.
Christina Varner of the Rent Board summarized rent-ordinance changes related to ILOs, including a new section (cited in the hearing as 37.9f) to prevent circumvention of tenant protections by corporate rentals. Varner said the Rent Board has received one complaint under the new disclosures requirement and explained the Rent Board’s investigation and remedies for alleged wrongful evictions and related petitions.
Diego Sanchez, who manages the short-term rental program for the Planning Department’s OSTR, gave a detailed presentation on staffing, budget and enforcement. Key figures cited by Sanchez: OSTR is budgeted at about $1,358,000 and operates at 6 of 7 FTEs; since inception OSTR has accepted approximately 8,330 applications, denied roughly 2,340 and had about 3,080 withdrawals; the office reported approximately 1,600 registered short-term rental hosts and about 600 pending applications, with roughly 2,200 properties showing STR activity in platform data. Sanchez also said OSTR has closed or abated about 1,865 short-term rental complaints and assessed roughly $1,260,000 in penalties (with $1.18 million collected and $79,000 outstanding), but supervisors flagged discrepancies between these figures and earlier reports and asked staff to reconcile the data.
Supervisors and public commenters pressed staff on several points: the policy of allowing hosts to operate while applications are pending (a feature of the 2017 settlement with platforms), data integrity after system migrations, the frequency of listings that platforms need to delist (staff estimated roughly 50 per month), and whether platforms have been sanctioned for repeat violations (OSTR said it had not pursued platform-level enforcement during the period covered). Tenant advocates urged active enforcement, inclusion of STRs and ILOs in the municipal housing inventory, and a City Controller analysis of impacts before ILOs expand. Many callers said corporate short-term and intermediate-length rentals remove rent‑controlled housing from the long‑term market and disproportionately harm low-income and BIPOC tenants.
After public comment the committee voted to continue the hearing at the call of the chair to allow staff to follow up on outstanding data and enforcement questions and to schedule a further hearing focused on ILO implementation and Rent Board remedies.
