Michael “Micky” Mills in interview with NBC7. Screen grab from NBC7 video.
Slumlord Michael “Micky” Mills Has Over 100 Short-term Vacation Rental Licenses in Ocean Beach
In a letter fired off to Mayor Gloria and members of the City Council, the Ocean Beach Planning Board is demanding changes to the short-term rental law that has allowed one person to be granted licenses for over one hundred properties — all in OB.
The Board has determined that one owner, Michael “Micky” Mills has obtained 115 short-term vacation rental licenses through a loophole in the poorly written ordinance passed by the city council last year. That’s only one part of it. Mills is evicting tenants out of his properties in OB in order to convert them to STVRs.
The letter came as a result of Wednesday night’s packed meeting of the Planning Board.
Mills has been a well-known and longtime slumlord in OB. Just recently, the Rag documented Mills’ transition from slumlord to vacation rental king of Ocean Beach.
The “host” loophole targeted by the Planning Board is a requirement that each short-term rental license has a “host” and that person must have the legal right to occupy the unit. A host isn’t allowed to hold more than one license at a time. But a host isn’t the same thing as the property owner.
NBC7 just published an excellent report into the complaints of the OBPB and sat down with Mills who explained how he found hosts to apply for licenses.
“I asked friends in Ocean Beach, family, my staff who live in and around Ocean Beach,” Mills said. “I asked anyone who cared to listen to me if they would contact their friends or relatives with the idea of becoming a host where they wouldn’t be obligated to anything giving them our assurances that my family would manage the properties for them and they wouldn’t be obligated to do anything.”
Mills told us none of these hosts were paid or compensated in any way and are connected to these properties in name only.
“They have no intention of personally managing the property,” Mills told us. “They simply allowed me to qualify for the city’s ordinance restrictions, probably aimed at trying to cut down on the number of short-term rentals in all the beach cities.”
Here is a map published by NBC7 on some of Mills’ properties in OB (each dot represents an address with multiple units) :
The June 8th letter from the OB Board was in the form of “requests” and “suggestions,” but it claims this loophole is contributing to the housing crisis right here in one community, Ocean Beach.
Here is the letter:
