San Bernardino Bans All Short-Term Rentals: Fines Start at $1,000 a Day

If you are renting a property inside San Bernardino city limits for stays under 30 days, you are now breaking the law, and the fines start at $1,000 a day. The city council voted 4-3 on April 15, 2026 to ban all short-term rentals citywide, and that ban took effect May 15, 2026. No permit unlocks it. No business structure gets around it. The door is closed for the entire city.

What the Ban Actually Covers

The prohibition is total. It covers entire homes, individual rooms, owner-occupied properties, and any rental arrangement under 30 days, regardless of how the property is owned or managed. The council did not carve out zones or property types. Every address inside San Bernardino city limits is affected.

It is worth being precise about geography here, because it matters. This is the city of San Bernardino, the county seat, not San Bernardino County's unincorporated Mountain and Desert regions. Those areas operate under a completely separate county ordinance and still permit short-term rentals under their own rules. If your property is inside city limits, the ban applies. If it is in the county's mountain or desert communities, it does not.

How It Happened, and How Fast

The vote was contentious. City staff had actually recommended regulating short-term rentals rather than banning them outright. The council majority went the other way. When the vote happened, roughly 108 properties were listed as short-term rentals across the city. Those hosts had exactly 30 days between the council vote and the effective date of the ban to wind down their operations.

What makes the situation sharper is that San Bernardino never had a dedicated short-term rental permit to begin with. Hosts had been operating in a regulatory gap, with no formal use category in the city's Development Code and no specific permit on offer. That gap drew the complaints that ultimately led to the ban. Hosts who thought they were operating in a gray area are now operating in a clearly prohibited one.

What Happens If You Keep Listing

Enforcement is not theoretical. Fines for hosts who continue operating start at $1,000 per day. The city has signaled that enforcement is a priority, and there is no permit process to fall back on, no compliance pathway that makes continued operation legal. Every day a listing stays active inside city limits is a day of potential liability.

What Hosts Should Do Now

If you own a property in San Bernardino and the short-term rental model was the plan, the realistic options are straightforward: convert to a long-term lease, sell, or look at a different market entirely. The math on holding a property and waiting for the ban to be reversed is a gamble with steep daily stakes.

For hosts who were operating before the ban and are now winding down, there are still tax and registration obligations to close out properly. Before the ban, hosts were required to hold a business registration certificate and collect a 10% transient lodging tax. If you collected that tax and have not remitted it, that obligation does not disappear because the ban arrived. Tie off those loose ends before walking away.

If you are weighing a move to San Bernardino County's unincorporated mountain or desert communities, understand that those areas have their own permit requirements, fees, and rules. They are a different jurisdiction entirely, and operating there legally means starting that compliance process from scratch.

For the complete San Bernardino compliance guide including tax calculator, checklist, and daily monitoring, see San Bernardino, CA STR Regulations.