Key Takeaways

  • San Diego’s 2023 short-term rental ordinance has no language barring license approvals after illegal no-fault evictions
  • State law shields eviction records, making it structurally impossible for officials to detect unlawful STR conversions
  • Councilmember Campbell plans to bring ordinance amendments to committee next month, four months after the loophole was exposed

San Diego landlords are converting long-term rentals to short-term rental listings through a no-fault eviction loophole that the city has failed to close, and the city itself has no way to know how widespread the problem has become.

According to an inewsource investigation, the gap in San Diego’s STR licensing ordinance, which took effect in 2023 and has been cited nationally as a model regulatory framework, fails to address no-fault evictions, leaving city officials with no lawful basis to deny or revoke a license even when the eviction was carried out illegally.

In one documented case, a tenant was evicted after new owners claimed they would occupy the unit as a primary residence, yet a short-term rental license was issued to those same owners within 90 days of the tenant’s move-out date.

City tracking gap leaves enforcement blind

The enforcement problem runs deeper than the legal gap alone.

Eviction records are protected under state law, making it effectively impossible for city officials to cross-check short-term rental license applications against eviction filings.

“My concern is that I don’t know how they plan to fix it if they’re not tracking evictions,” according to Gil Vera, a director with the Legal Aid Society of San Diego.

Operators using platforms like Airbnb are not required to disclose eviction history as part of the licensing process, and the city’s proposed eviction notice registry — floated as a potential tool back in 2023 — was never implemented.

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The San Diego City Attorney’s Office formed a housing protection unit to investigate tenant protection violations, and a spokesperson confirmed the office has received complaints tied to the loophole since it was first exposed, but declined to provide specifics.

Hundreds of San Diegans have been evicted since inewsource originally reported the gap, and the city has no data connecting any of those evictions to subsequent short-term rental license approvals.

Councilmember Jennifer Campbell, who led the 2023 push to regulate San Diego’s STR industry, plans to bring amendments to the ordinance before a council committee next month — the first concrete step toward closing the loophole, but still no guarantee of a fix.