Santa Clara, CA Short-Term Rentals: Host Presence Rule (2026)

250 of the Zoning Code ties the entire short-term rental program to whether a host is actually present. For a standard unit, hosted status turns on the host physically staying within the dwelling during the rental. For an Accessory Dwelling Unit, the ordinance extends that presence test to the property as a whole: the ADU is considered hosted, for purposes of the annual-limit rule, only if the primary unit on the same lot is owner-occupied, regardless of who, if anyone, is inside the ADU during the stay.

Because hosted status is what unlocks the unlimited-day allowance instead of the 90-day cap that applies to unhosted rentals, this presence definition is the mechanism that determines a host's legal exposure under the program. The ordinance backstops the presence concept with a mandatory Local Contact Person requirement that applies to every registered short-term rental, hosted or unhosted. The host must give the City, every short-term renter, and every occupant of an adjacent property the name and contact information of a local individual available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the duration of each stay.

That contact person, or the host personally, must respond on-site within 60 minutes to any complaint about the rental's condition, operation, or the conduct of the short-term renters, and must take remedial action to resolve the complaint. In practice this means a Santa Clara host can never be legally unreachable: even an unhosted rental still requires a designated person capable of showing up in person within an hour of a neighbor's call.