Sonoma Municipal Code § 19.50.110 does not impose a primary-residence requirement on the grandfathered pool of vacation rentals because new applications are flatly prohibited. The 'grandfather' test is whether the property held a valid business license and TOT registration on November 3, 1999 — not whether the owner lives there.
Unlike cities such as San Francisco or Santa Monica that limit short-term rentals to a host's primary residence, the City of Sonoma chose a moratorium-and-cap model. SMC § 19.50.110(B) defines a 'licensed' vacation rental purely by reference to its license/TOT status on November 3, 1999. Ownership may change, and the operator need not live in the unit, provided the rental remains compliant with the operating standards in subsections A.2 through A.11 — including the 24/7 property manager requirement (A.5), the 29-day maximum stay (A.2), the maximum of two complete residential units per rental (A.1), and the occupancy cap of two persons per sleeping room plus two additional persons per unit (A.3). Because no new rentals are allowed, owner-occupancy is functionally irrelevant: an investor cannot create a new rental by moving in, and an owner-occupant cannot convert a non-grandfathered home into one. Note: this contrasts sharply with the City of Sebastopol (SMC 17.260.060) and with Sonoma County (which requires a 'primary owner' definition for hosted rentals under § 26-88-118).
There is no separate 'primary residence' violation in the Sonoma code. Enforcement targets the underlying status of the rental: a rental not on the City's published 'Legal Vacation Rentals' list is treated as an unpermitted use under SMC Title 19 and abated through the code enforcement and City Prosecutor process under general SMC Title 1 penalties.
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