Santa Cruz County, CA Short-Term Rentals: Short-Term Rental Parking Rules (2026)

694(D)(9)(ix), every new non-hosted short-term rental permit, a whole-home rental in the unincorporated county, must supply on-site parking before any guest vehicle spills onto the street. One- and two-bedroom units need a minimum of one on-site space; units with three or more bedrooms need two. A guest may keep one additional vehicle off-site, but only on roads that already allow street parking, and that guest has no exclusive or assigned space, no more claim to the curb than any other resident. If the off-site parking falls inside a formal parking district, the permit holder cannot rely on a residential parking permit allocation and must instead purchase a permit at the business rate.

Where a lot genuinely cannot meet the on-site minimum, the code does not simply deny the application. The operator can apply for an on-site parking exception through a Conditional Use Permit, decided by the Zoning Administrator at a public hearing. To grant the exception, the Zoning Administrator must find that nearby street and off-site parking is available without adding significant congestion to the neighborhood. That finding is unavailable, and the exception is off the table, if an encroachment into the public right-of-way is blocking parking along the property's own frontage; in that case the applicant has to remove the encroachment first.

694(E)(2) treats illegal parking among guests as a nuisance activity that undermines a short-term rental's compliance, a property that repeatedly ignores its own parking limits is exposed both to code enforcement and, if violations pile up, to the county's short-term rental permit revocation process.