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Keen v. City of Manhattan Beach, 77 Cal.App.5th 142 (2022) 292 Cal.Rptr.3d 366, 22 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 3511, 2022 Daily Journal D.A.R. 3377 Once the local program is approved, it can be amended, but the local government must submit amendments to the Commission for approval. Absent approval, amendments have no force. (§ 30514, subd. (a).) Throughout this case, the City has not disputed it would need Commission approval to enact a new prohibition on short-term rentals within the coastal zone. That would be an "amendment." But the City has stoutly maintained there has been no amendment, because its old ordinances always prohibited short-term rentals. Keen disagrees, and that frames the issue in this case: whether the City amended its program when it clamped down on short-term rentals, or whether the prohibition was not an amendment because it merely continued the legal status quo. L We now recount how the City banned short-term rentals. For quite some time, people rented residential units in Manhattan Beach on both long- and short-term bases. The City knew about the practice and occasionally got complaints about a rental property, including about one "party house" in 2005. Things changed leading up to 2015. Online platforms like Airbnb became popular, which increased short-term rentals. The City had not received a "tremendous" number of complaints, but it sought an active stance on the issue. After hearing from the public, the Council passed two ordinances "reiterating" the City's supposedly existing ban on short-term rentals. The Council claimed its existing ordinances, including those enacted with the local coastal program, already prohibited short-term rentals implicitly. We call these the 2015 ordinances. When the City Council enacted the 2015 ordinances, it resolved to submit the one about the coastal zone for Commission certification. City staff met with Commission staff. The Commission staff, however, recommended the City allow at least some short- term rentals to facilitate *147 visitor access to the coastal zone. Then, in 2016, the Commission wrote to all coastal cities, saying municipal regulation of short-term rentals would have to be in cooperation with the Commission. The Commission emphasized that "vacation rentals provide an important source of visitor accommodations in the coastal zone" and that blanket bans would rarely be appropriate. After the Commission made clear its support for some level of short-term renting, the City withdrew its 2015 request for Commission approval. The City tells us its withdrawal was because the 2015 ordinance worked no change in the law and hence never required Commission certification. The City Council continued to grapple with how to regulate short-term rentals. In 2019, the Council adopted an ordinance creating an enforcement mechanism for its short-term rental ban. This required platforms like Airbnb to tell the City who was renting out what. The ordinance also prohibited platforms from collecting fees for booking transactions. We call this the 2019 ordinance. The 2019 ordinance had a pronounced effect: by June 2019, short-term rentals dropped, in round numbers, from 250 to 50. The ban was markedly, although not completely, effective. **369 In July 2019, the City hired Host Compliance, a company specializing in helping cities enforce short-term rental regulation. Bewilderingly, the City tells us there is no evidence its ordinances reduced the number of short-term rentals in the City. The record contradicts this. C Darby Keen owns property in the City's coastal zone. He rented it on a short-term basis. The City sent Keen a Notice of Violation on July 16, 2019. Keen petitioned for a writ of mandate to enjoin the City from enforcing the 2015 and 2019 ordinances. The trial court issued a 19-page single-spaced tentative decision: a model of careful analysis. The court noted what the City did not dispute: the City would have to obtain Commission approval if it were to enact a new prohibition on short-term rentals. The City's position, however, was the prohibition was not new but rather was to be found in its old WESTLAW © 2023 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. 3