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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 zoning laws that the Commission had approved years before. The court disagreed, ruling the *148 City had not identified any zoning provision to support its conclusion that rentals for fewer than 30 days were barred but longer rentals were permitted. The court concluded the City was wrong to say it had always banned short-term rentals. Rather, the court ruled the ban was new, it was an amendment, and it thus required Commission approval, which it did not have. The court therefore enjoined enforcement of the ban on short-term rentals pending Commission approval. The City appealed. II The City's argument boils down to this: the trial court was wrong to think the City has always allowed short-term rentals. The trial court was right, however, and the plain language of the City's ordinances proves it. Our review is independent. (Berkeley Hills Watershed Coalition v City of Berkeley (2019) 31 Cal.App.5th 880, 896, 243 Cal.Rptr.3d 236.) A [2] The trial court correctly interpreted the City's ordinances: they always permitted short-term, as well as long-term, residential rentals. The City's ban on short-term rentals thus amended the status quo. This amendment required Commission approval, which the City never got. So the City's ban was not valid. The issue reduces to whether the City's old ordinances permitted short-term rentals. The following analysis demonstrates they did. The City always has allowed people to rent apartments and homes in the City on a long-term basis. In other words, it always has been legal to live in Manhattan Beach as a renter. No one disputes this. One would be rather surprised to discover a community anywhere that banned renting completely. Because rentals that are long-term have always been permissible under the City's ordinances, however, the City has been forced to distinguish between long-term residential rentals the City allows and short-term residential rentals the platforms promote and the City dislikes. Unfortunately for the City, its old residential zoning ordinances contain no long- term/short-term distinction. Absent some distinction in the law, then, the law must treat long-term rentals the same as short-term rentals. If long-term rentals are legal, so too are short-term rentals. The ordinances offer no textual **370 basis for a temporal *149 distinction about the duration of rentals. The City could have enacted a distinction like that, but it never did. Because its ordinances say nothing about the duration of rentals, the City cannot credibly insist its ordinances permit long-term residential rentals but have always banned short- term rentals. That interpretation makes no sense. The crucial text is ordinance A.08, which defines "Use Classifications" for the City's zoning code. One use is "Single -Family Residential," defined as "[b]uildings containing one dwelling unit located on a single lot." A second use is "Multi -family Residential," which is defined as "[t]wo or more dwelling units on a site." This ordinance contains a chart that shows the City permits both uses in residential areas. In other words, it is legal to build a residential house or an apartment building in the City's residential zones. Once it is built, you can reside there. Anyone can. This all makes sense. It would be surprising if it were otherwise. The reasonable interpretation of permitting a "Single -Family Residential" building in a residential area is that people are allowed to reside in that building, whether they are owners or renters. Why, under the text of the ordinance, are renters allowed in? Because residential renters are common in cities, as everyone knows, and nothing in the ordinance takes the unusual step of banning all renting in the residential areas of the City. Use of the word "residence" does not imply some minimum length of occupancy. (Cf. People a Venice Suites, LLC (2021) 71 Cal.App.5th 715, 726,286 Cal.Rptr.3d 598 (Venice Suites) ["A `residential building' is used for human habitation without regard to length of occupancy ...."]; Greenfield, supra, 21 Cal.App.5th at p. 899, 230 Cal.Rptr.3d 827 [the city in question historically treated short term rentals as a "residential" activity].) WESTLAW © 2023 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. 4