Becoming a expert on San Diego Trash Regulations

Back in October, I wrote about vacation rentals and how they don’t fit into the spirit of my neighborhood. Since then, I’ve been researching as much as possible about it and trying to figure out what legal way I can help put an end to them. This is not a new battle as the communities of Pacific Beach and La Jolla have been trying to do something about curbing vacation rentals for years. I’ve setup a website to collect information about them.

While the spirit of the residential zoning laws don’t permit short term vacation rentals, the letter of the law permits it according to the city attorney (I don’t believe this interpretation, however).

I’ve been running through lots of different ideas in my head and last night it dawned on me that there may be a different tact. My neighbor has routinely put out his trash cans too early and removed them too late; the city requires that cans be put out after 6 pm prior to the day of pickup and removed no later than 6 pm the day of pickup. (SDMC §66.0105) This got me thinking, what other regulations are there with regards to refuse collection.

I found the regulations and got a huge smile on my face.

The City will not provide Non-Residential Refuse Collection Services, except for limited service to eligible small business enterprises if authorized by the City Council and in accordance with eligibility criteria established by the City Manager (Mayor).

Where “Non-Residential Refuse” is defined as:

Non-Residential Refuse means all refuse that is not Residential Refuse including, but not limited to, refuse generated at a commercial, industrial, institutional or transient occupancy facility, including but not limited to business facilities, hotels, motels, inns, bed & breakfast establishments, churches, non-profit organizations, and non-City government/public facilities.

and “Non-Transient Occupancy” is defined as:

Non-Transient Occupancy means occupancy through ownership, lease or rental for periods of one month or more.

So my layman’s interpretation on this is that one of 3 things has to happen:

• The City stops collecting refuse for all properties that are short term vacation rentals. The City can use the Transient Occupancy Registration Certificate information to find some (not all) vacation rentals in the city.

• The City Council has to declare that vacation rentals are eligible small businesses for refuse collection. This, however, could be problematic as saying that vacation rentals are businesses would make them not able to be in residential zones.

• The City Council has to amend the refuse collection regulations to allow collection from vacation rentals.

If refuse isn’t picked up at the thousands (someone showed me a list of over 1100 vacation rentals in PB alone as listed on a vacation rental website), it could create a big problem for the owners/operators of these facilities. It might convince them to stop having a vacation rental (that’s my hope anyway). In addition, I wonder if the City could send bills to those with vacation rentals for past collections. If the other 2 options are chosen, the City Council has to act which they have failed to do with respect to vacation rentals.

So far I haven’t heard back from the code enforcement officer at the Environmental Services Department, but this could be quite interesting.