Simi Valley is not a hot vacation spot. The city has six hotels and one prominent attraction for visitors, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum.
But Simi Valley does have about 100 vacation rentals, according to data the city obtained from Airbnb and other short-term rental sites. And not everyone is happy about that.
The Simi Valley City Council plans to vote during its May 11 meeting on a possible ban of any short-term rentals, defined as those that last less than 30 days. The city’s Planning Commission and most of its neighborhood councils have endorsed a complete ban, while city planners have recommended an ordinance that would regulate and tax short-term rentals.
The City Council hasn’t taken a position yet. To give the Council a better gauge of public opinion, the city has hired True North Research to conduct a public opinion poll of city residents, at a cost of about $30,000.
“We want to solve the problem with good data,” said Rocky Rhodes, the city council member who asked for the survey. “We’re a fiscally responsible council, and we want to do things that are in the best interests of the city.”
Rhodes favors regulation and taxation. The tax would be 10%, the same rate that hotels pay.
A new state law passed last year requires sites like Airbnb to collect taxes for their listings and pay them to cities and counties that charge them. It also requires the reservation websites to track which properties are located in which cities and which ones have the proper city permit.
Rhodes considers it an easy way to increase the city’s tax revenue and help local businesses that serve tourists and visitors. Rhodes himself is a fan of short-term rentals and uses them when he visits family.
“I perceive short-term rentals as an addition to a neighborhood,” he said. “When I travel, I like to have my kids over for dinner, and you can’t do that in a hotel.”
Short-term rentals ‘like living next to a motel’
The council has been hearing about the matter for more than a year and a half, ever since the real estate agent who sold a prominent house in Simi Valley said it would be used as an Airbnb.
At first, people began attending City Council meetings to complain about short-term rentals and ask the council to ban them. More recently, the owners of Simi Valley’s vacation rentals have made their case.
Anthony and Alynne Eason, a retired couple, have been some of Simi Valley’s most vocal advocates of a full ban. They led a petition drive that they said gathered 430 signatures from Simi Valley residents opposed to short-term rentals.
It started for the Easons when one of their neighbors had a short-term rental for a few months last year. Alynne Eason said it felt “like living next to a motel.”
“We live in residential neighborhoods that are zoned for residences,” she said. “They’re not zoned for businesses.”
Though the Easons said they didn’t have much late-night noise or trouble parking on their street, they disliked not knowing who was in the house next door.
“It’s uncomfortable having a revolving door of strangers coming and going constantly,” Anthony Eason said. “You don’t know who these people are. You don’t know what they’re there for. It’s unsettling.”
City Planner Sean Gibson said in an email interview that the city got just four complaints about short-term rentals in 2025. He said he hasn’t compiled the total for 2026 yet but would have that information for the City Council at its May 11 meeting.
The Easons, though, say those numbers should be higher. They said they tried to complain about the rental in their neighborhood and never found anyone to take their complaint.
“Our complaint wasn’t registered because they don’t have a process to take your complaint,” Anthony Eason said. “So for them to say they only have X number of complaints, well, you don’t have a system where people can complain.”
‘Who the hell is going to want to go to Simi Valley?’
The owners of Simi Valley’s short-term rental properties say their rentals aren’t causing any problems, and they’re bringing in extra income that in some cases allows people to afford their homes. Many say they welcome regulation and would be happy to obtain permits and pay taxes on their revenues.
“No one wants party houses, excessive noise, parking problems or disruptions in their neighborhoods,” Todd Taylor, who rents a guest suite in his home, said during a council meeting in March. “However, a complete ban would punish responsible homeowners while failing to address the real issue: nuisance properties.”
During a recent interview, Taylor said he’s been renting on Airbnb for most of the past eight years, though the suite now has a long-term tenant. When the unit was on Airbnb, Taylor said he charged about $100 a night on weeknights and $120 on weekends, plus a $40 cleaning fee.
“At first we thought, who the hell is going to want to go to Simi Valley?” he said. “But it’s been amazing.”
Taylor, a private investigator and former bounty hunter, said he’s “naturally mistrusting” and was reluctant to have strangers in his home. He said he’s never encountered any problems and has met some lovely people, including two different European academic researchers who stayed in his rental unit to be close to the Reagan library.
“We had this young man from France who stayed with us who was doing research there,” Taylor said. “He was so impressive, just the nicest kid. We gave him some rides, and on President’s Day he dressed up in a suit to go the library.”
Rachel Powers owns what is probably Simi Valley’s most prominent short-term rental: the “Poltergeist House,” where parts of the 1982 horror film were shot. The four-bedroom house looks much like it did when the movie was filmed, down to the vintage cabinet television in the carpeted living room, the VCR and the Atari video game console.
Powers bought the property in 2024. Though she says it’s become the “poster child” for short-term rentals in Simi Valley, she only rents it out a few nights a month. The home is her primary residence, and when it’s rented out, she stays with her sister.
The guests are usually families with children. Sometimes they pick the house because they’re big horror movie fans, Powers said, or they want a real early-1980s experience. Most of them just want a place to stay so they can visit family in the area.
Powers said she’s never encountered any problems with unruly guests and was shocked to hear people at a neighborhood council meeting say that short-term rentals would bring “crime, homelessness, people defecating on the street.”
“Can you believe that?” she said. “People paying $1,000 a night for the house, defecating in the street?”
Four Ventura County cities prohibit STRs
If Simi Valley bans short-term rentals, it would join Ojai, Moorpark and Camarillo as cities with full bans on the books, according to a 2024 Simi Valley City Council report. Santa Paula has no formal ban, but no ordinance permitting them either, and the city’s website says they are not allowed.
Thousand Oaks does not have an ordinance regulating or banning short-term rentals. The city “does not regulate the length of stay in any rental residential property, whether it is a long-term lease, month-to-month or less than 30 days,” Thousand Oaks city spokesperson Alexandra South said in an email.
In Port Hueneme, Oxnard and Ventura, where there is high demand for beach houses as vacation rentals, short-term rentals are allowed, but city ordinances limit how many are permitted, and in some cases, which neighborhoods they’re allowed in.
Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation’s Fund to Support Local Journalism.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Simi to decide fate of short-term rentals like ‘Poltergeist’ house
Reporting by Tony Biasotti, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
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