Brandy Zender: Santa Barbara’s Vacation Rental Crackdown Puts Wildfire Safety Ahead of Airbnb Profits

Santa Barbara has taken its most significant step in years toward regulating short-term rentals — and the decision now hinges on whether the California Coastal Commission will uphold a wildfire-safety exclusion that residents on the city's coastal mesa have sought for years.

On Oct. 6, the Santa Barbara City Council unanimously approved an ordinance regulating short-term rentals (STRs) and homeshares, according to Noozhawk. The ordinance creates a permitting pathway for STRs in designated commercial zones and allows homeshares in specified residential areas. But its most consequential provision excludes both from Santa Barbara's Coastal High Fire Hazard Area — a swath of hillside terrain above the Arroyo Burro area that city records have flagged as wildfire-vulnerable for nearly half a century.

Because the rules affect the Coastal Zone, the coastal portion of the ordinance cannot take effect until it is reviewed and certified by the California Coastal Commission. Until then, vacation rentals in the disputed area continue to operate.

Why the Fire Hazard Exclusion Matters

In an opinion piece published by Noozhawk under the byline headline naming resident Brandy Zender, the author argues the exclusion is a matter of life safety rather than anti-tourism sentiment. City documents cited in the piece trace the area's risk profile back decades: Santa Barbara has designated Campanil Hill a High Fire Hazard Zone since at least 1979, citing heavy brush, difficult access, hilly terrain, hilly slopes and low water pressure.

More recent records reinforce the concern. The Coastal Commission certified Santa Barbara's Coastal Land Use Plan in 2019, which recognizes Arroyo Burro's slope constraints, high fire risk and below-maximum-density development. The city's 2021 Community Wildfire Protection Plan links the region's wildfire history to human activity and identifies visitors, human behavior, vulnerable residents and overloaded roads as evacuation concerns.

The geometry of the problem is stark: many neighborhoods in the hazard area have only one narrow road in and out, with evacuation ultimately depending on Cliff Drive — assuming that route itself is not threatened or blocked by fire. Residents, emergency responders and vacationing visitors unfamiliar with local conditions would all share those constrained routes during an emergency. Noozhawk reported that the city fire marshal supports excluding STRs and homeshares from High Fire Hazard Areas because of evacuation and life-safety risks.

The argument resonates beyond Santa Barbara. The 2024 Franklin Fire in Malibu and the 2025 Palisades Fire demonstrated how quickly wind-driven wildfire can overwhelm coastal communities that once seemed insulated from inland fire behavior.

What the Kracke Decision Did — and Didn't Do

The legal backdrop is the 2021 Kracke v. City of Santa Barbara ruling. As Noozhawk explained, the court did not determine that short-term rentals are appropriate throughout the Coastal Zone. Instead, it held that the city needed Coastal Commission approval before changing its STR policy, because of potential effects on coastal access and lower-cost visitor accommodations.

Critics of unregulated STRs in the fire hazard area note the irony in invoking coastal-access concerns there: a simple Airbnb search for a four-night stay in the Coastal High Fire Hazard Area, according to the Noozhawk piece, shows listings ranging from $8,000 to $20,000 — hardly the lower-cost lodging contemplated in the Kracke discussion.

Airbnb's Spending in Sacramento

The ordinance also lands amid a broader fight over STR regulation along the California coast. CalMatters, as cited by Noozhawk, reported that Airbnb paid nearly $90,000 lobbying against the City of Pacifica's ordinance, $75,000 against Monterey County's short-term-rental restrictions, and more than $615,000 on California lobbying overall between April 2025 and June 2026. Filings reportedly also identified efforts to influence "Coastal Commission appointees," though the spending amount behind that effort was not disclosed.

For Santa Barbara residents who have organized around the issue, the spending disparity is the point: homeowners say they cannot compete financially with a global platform, professional lobbyists and vacation-rental companies protecting profitable business models. Their leverage, the Noozhawk piece argues, rests on the commission recognizing that adding transient occupancy to an area with nearly 50 years of documented wildfire vulnerability increases both ignition risk and evacuation strain.

What Comes Next

The immediate question is procedural. The coastal portion of the ordinance now goes to the California Coastal Commission for review and certification, a process that can take months. In the meantime, the status quo persists in the fire hazard area — vacation rentals continue operating, and, as Noozhawk reported, some residents say they are losing fire insurance without notice, compounding anxiety in neighborhoods already on edge after recent Southern California fire disasters.

The city and the commission will face pressure to explain how the vulnerable area will be protected during what could be a lengthy review. Supporters of the ordinance, including Mayor Randy Rowse and the council members praised in the Noozhawk piece for listening to residents, have framed the vote as a balanced outcome: STRs get a legitimate pathway in commercial zones intended for visitor lodging, homeshares are accommodated in residential areas where an owner is present, and the highest-risk hillsides are kept for the lower-density residential use they were planned for.

The counterargument — advanced by Airbnb and rental operators — is that platform-based rentals expand visitor access to the coast. The Coastal Commission will have to weigh that principle against a fire marshal's life-safety concerns, a half-century of documented hazard mapping, and the evacuation lessons of Malibu and Pacific Palisades.

For now, Santa Barbara residents on the coastal mesa are watching Sacramento — and the calendar, as fire season stretches late into a dry autumn — waiting to see whether a unanimous City Council decision survives its final hurdle.