Once again, the City of Santa Barbara is being sued over its crackdown on unpermitted vacation rentals. But this time, the plaintiff is not vacation rental operator Theo Kracke, who won his suit against the city earlier this year.
The plaintiff in this case is a two-man association, known as the Santa Barbara Inland & Coastal Property Rights Association. It’s made up of Eric Ryan, a condo vacation-rental operator, and James Fenkner, his neighbor who owns a vacation rental in the same complex. Fenkner is the president of the association and has made a civic emergence in recent years as the founder of Fair Education, a group that is involved in a separate lawsuit against the Santa Barbara School District.
Fenkner’s suit is over one of his two Santa Barbara properties — a condo on Bath Street he has rented out as a 30-days-or-less vacation rental. The city told Fenkner multiple times from 2013-2015 that he could not use his property as a short-term rental unless he converts it to a hotel, but Fenkner said he doesn’t want to because he plans to live in the condo later on after his children move out of the house.