How Many Vacation Rentals Does Nevada City Have, and What Would Measure Q Change?
About 71 permitted short-term rentals, most of them whole houses · Voters decide November 3 whether to cap them
Plenty of visitors skip the inns and book a house. In Nevada City that means a short-term rental registered with the city, and how many of those there should be is the one city question on the November 3, 2026 ballot.
How many there are. City staff counted about 71 permitted short-term rentals this summer: 53 whole houses and 18 hosted rentals, where the owner lives on site, The Union reported in July. (In May, city officials had put the count of permitted hosted rentals at 62, with 62 to 73 likely operating, so the count depends on who is counting and when.) The city's software estimates the rentals bring in about $300,000 a year in hotel tax, the transient occupancy tax every overnight guest pays.
The rules today. A host registers with the city each year, holds a business license, files the hotel tax every quarter (Airbnb collects and pays it automatically; VRBO hosts pay it themselves), notifies the neighbors, and posts the city's Good Neighbor guidelines inside. Because voters enacted those rules by initiative, only voters can change them. The city planner told the council there are "no operational standards to enforce" beyond whether a rental is registered.
What Measure Q would do. According to the city attorney's impartial analysis, a yes vote repeals the registration rules and requires a permit to advertise or run any short-term rental, in two kinds: whole-home rentals and hosted rentals. New permits could not go within 300 feet of another permitted property. New whole-home permits would stop at 2 percent of the city's housing stock for main houses and 1 percent for accessory units, a cap the analysis expects to block new whole-home permits for main houses for now. Permits would end when a property sells or sits unused, a contact within 15 miles must answer the phone around the clock, and events, camping and subletting would be barred. Today's registrations get a one-time chance to convert, even past the cap. Unlike today's rules, the council could amend the new ones. A no vote keeps the current rules.
Where it leads. City staff told the council whole-house rentals would drift down from 53 to about 43 over time, and that the hotel-tax take would fall with them. The council put the measure on the ballot 4-0 in July, with Council Member Doug Fleming absent. Mayor Daniela Fernández and Council Member Adam Kline signed the ballot rebuttal in favor, which says the measure follows nearly three years of workshops and is not a ban. A part-time resident who rents out her Boulder Street home told the council the cap leaves no workable path to a new permit, The Union reported, and Council Member Micayla Sortland, a former rental operator who voted to send the measure to the ballot, called rental income a "safety net" for owners. The Nugget could not read the scanned text of the official argument against.
For visitors. Whichever way the vote goes, the rentals already registered keep operating while they stay in good standing, and every stay in town carries the city's hotel tax. Results will be added here after the election.
To vote. Ballots go in any official drop box, including the 24-hour box at City Hall, 317 Broad St., until 8 PM on Tuesday, November 3, or in person at the Rood Center vote center, 950 Maidu Ave.: 9 AM to 5 PM through November 2, and 7 AM to 8 PM on Election Day.
Sources: City Attorney's impartial analysis of Measure Q; City of Nevada City, Short-Term Rentals; Nevada City resolution placing the measure, July 23, 2026; Rebuttal to Argument Against Measure Q; Argument Against Measure Q; The Union, May 19, July 22 and July 25, 2026; Nevada County Elections, drop boxes and vote centers.