Enforcing San Diego Trash Regulations

Some may be asking why I’m so interested in trash regulations. It’s quite simple, if the city won’t regulate vacation rentals, the more I can find and do to make vacation rentals less profitable, the more likely the vacation rental next door will go away.

Today I received confirmation that my analysis of trash regulations with respect to vacation rentals was correct. However, there are a number of problems in enforcing it:

  • Terminating trash collection for those with a Transient Occupancy Registration Certificate unfairly rewards those that don’t have the certificate and haven’t been operating within the law. That’s a pretty poor excuse. What I’d suggest is work with the city treasurer to enforce the TOT registration by issuing a subpoena to AirBnB, VRBO.com, etc. for records of all listings in the city. Then overlay that data with the registered ones and cite those without the certificate (and collect back tax). In addition, encourage neighbors to report vacation rentals. I’d be more than happy to work on data crunching to assist in finding people skirting the law.

  • If the city picks up the cans from the vacation rentals, nothing is stopping the owner from going to Home Depot, purchasing a trash can for automated collection and using it. The drivers don’t know who is supposed to get service and who isn’t. Again, this is an excuse. If the trash vehicles are equipped with GPS systems, work with the vendor to integrate a POI system that would alert the driver of properties to skip. If the vehicles aren’t equipped with GPS systems, it is about time they were as studies have shown that fleet vehicles like this can improve fuel economy with more efficient routes guided by GPS.

  • For areas like Mission Beach where the houses are rented out most of the year to students 9 months of the year and 3 months of the year used as vacation rentals, would the city stop and start service? Look at the regulations; they don’t say that a “transient occupancy facility” has to be one the entire year. So, if it is ever used as a vacation rental, stop trash collection completely.

  • If vacation rental owners have to get private trash service, there will be a big environmental impact of having additional trash vehicles on the street. Trash trucks not only have an environmental impact, they do numbers on the streets. I don’t have a solution for this problem.

  • How does this get enforced? That’s another easy one to answer. Encourage neighbors to report their neighbors; offer rewards under whistleblower statutes using money from fines. I’m sure neighbors would be more than happy to report vacation rentals next door.

Basically unless the Environmental Services Department is instructed to enforce the regulations by the mayor, they won’t do anything. I’ve sent a letter to the mayor and city attorney requesting that the trash service be discontinued for my neighbor; that doesn’t help anyone else, but it is a start. Will I get a response from the mayor? I have no idea.

Can I sue the city to get them to enforce the current regulations? I have no idea and I’d need an attorney to do pro-bono work for me as I can see the cost going up pretty quickly.

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