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- STRs help to make housing affordable for those of us homeowners who are able to "home share" and earn money by renting portions of our houses, or the entire house, for a period of time. This helps make homeownership possible for many Santa Ana residents who otherwise could not afford the high cost of housing and would be pushed out of the market. - Prohibiting STRs will significantly reduce the City's available overnight accommodations, which will almost certainly result in an overall increase in the prices of motel and hotel rooms, making it more expensive for families to stay in the City overnight. - Not only will this impact the ability of low- and moderate -income families to visit Santa Ana and Orange County for vacation, these increased costs and lack of availability of short term housing would disproportionately impact the individuals and families most needing flexible housing options such as residents facing life transitions, students, traveling nurses and other essential workers, families of patients in healthcare facilities, and other transient residents who are often shut out of the long-term residential housing market. - Higher STR prices will have ripple effects on the City's economy. STRs and their hosts, guests, and transitional residents support a number of local small businesses; everything from housekeeping, pool service, and air conditioning repair to restaurants and merchants benefit from a robust tourism and STR market. A prohibition on STRs will terminate growth opportunities for these small businesses and threaten their ongoing viability. - STRs also provide families visiting Orange County a central and affordable homebase when visiting places like the Bowers Museum, the Santa Ana Zoo, Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, the beaches, and other Southern California tourist destinations. They offer overnight accommodations suited to larger families or groups, with kitchens and communal spaces that are not simply available at hotels and motels. The Staff Report completely ignores all of this in its 11 th hour attempt to prohibit STRs citywide. There is no discussion of how a prohibition on all STRs would reduce these benefits or the potential for significant unintended consequences on the community. We strongly urge the City Council to investigate and fully understand these issues before regulating or restricting STRs in an arbitrary and capricious manner, and would, as described above, violate our rights under state law and the state and federal constitutions. We Need to Understand the Reasoning Behind the Proposed Ban Finally, we are concerned with the intent behind the proposed prohibition now before the City Council. As discussed above, the staff report alleges nuisance impacts but does not specify these impacts or substantiate them in any way to justify such an extreme approach. The staff report also alleges that STRs "divert[] a significant portion of available housing away from permanent residents" without any evidence supporting this assertion. Further, the City scheduled the consideration of the Ordinances directly following the Easter holiday in what feels like an attempt to limit public opportunity to debate this important issue. Given these facts, we are 9