The city synonymous with master planning and suburban order is a surprising hot spot for short-term vacation rentals, a trend that is creating overnight entrepreneurs and fueling neighborhood conflict.

Irvine, not any beach city or Disneyland’s hometown of Anaheim, has seen the biggest jump in Orange County in the number of homeowners offering to rent out their properties via online vacation-rental services, data show.

And the spike in alternative lodging in Irvine, the county’s third-biggest city, is prompting neighbor complaints and a quiet city crackdown that some view as nothing short of an unofficial ban on vacation rentals.

“I feel like I’ve been vilified by the city,” said Jorge Zamora, an Irvine property owner who is fighting an Irvine-issued citation over a short-term rental.

“I’m not a lawbreaker, or someone who is going to bend the rules. I’m a by-the-book guy.”

Some argue that renting out a home for a night or two isn’t in anybody’s rulebook. As the practice has become more common, homeowners across the county have asked cities to beef up enforcement, complaining about late-night parties, trashed streets and streams of strangers in their neighborhoods.

Statistics indicate it’s not a small issue in Irvine.

As of September, the city had 370 listings on Airbnb, up from about 10 listings two years earlier, according to Beyond Pricing, a company that tracks vacation-rental data. Earlier this month, there were 130 Irvine listings on VRBO and HomeAway, a more than fourfold increase from three years ago, company data show.

Irvine is pushing back. Citing rules about hotel taxes and zoning laws that ban hotels from residential neighborhoods, city code enforcement officials have issued written warnings to nearly 70 people offering their properties for rent online.

Most of those warnings were sent over the past 15 months, city figures show.

Though such crackdowns aren’t unheard of – Anaheim, Laguna Beach and San Clemente are among the cities that have temporarily banned or limited vacation rentals – Irvine is suppressing the practice without a public hearing.

The idea hasn’t been formally discussed in any City Council meeting. And a review of city documents found the most prominent mention of the issue in the winter edition of the city newsletter, Inside Irvine.

“We ask that residents be mindful of activity happening in their neighborhoods,” it said. “City Municipal Code states that transient occupancy is not allowed anywhere other than a hotel-motel zone; transient occupancy is defined as rental of a space or unit of 30 days or less.”

That section ends with a request for complaints: “If you notice short-term rental activity in your neighborhood, please call the City’s Code Enforcement staff.”

Irvine spokesman Craig Reem said via email that the city’s view is that any dwelling that is rented out for 30 days or less is considered a hotel and, as such, isn’t allowed in a residential neighborhood.

Ten of the nearly 70 homeowners who received warnings were eventually cited. Of those, two paid fines and three have formally appealed, Reem said.

Zamora, the Irvine homeowner, is among those appealing a citation. He said in an email that Irvine is “trying to shoehorn individually-owned single-family properties into a hotel taxation clause.”

Zamora said he and his wife, Carla, decided to rent out their three-bedroom townhome primarily to families with children about 18 months ago, after his new job prompted them to move to San Jose. Before they rented out the unit, he said, they checked the rules of their homeowners association, which stated the property can be leased with no day restrictions as long as a lease is drawn up.

In September, after they’d been renting out their unit for some months, the Zamoras received a warning letter from the city saying they were violating city regulations.

“I said to myself, ‘Are they kidding me? This is for transient occupancy for hotels, not for rental leases,’” he said in an email.

Zamora believes one part of the city’s own code contradicts its stance on short-term rentals. The city rules define what a hotel is and, he points out, they also spell out what a hotel is not.

Specifically, the city code says a hotel is not “any private dwelling house or other individually-owned single-family dwelling … rented only occasionally … by the owner or his or her family.”

But Irvine spokesman Reem points to a zoning code that defines hotels and motels as “a facility offering transient lodging accommodations to the general public, either on a daily basis or for extended periods of time.”

“A homeowner can occasionally rent a portion of his owner-occupied home as long as it is for a period of 31 days or more,” Reem added. “Otherwise, it would be considered a hotel in a non-hotel zone.”

Zamora, a software engineer, said that if the city wants to ban or regulate short-term rentals, he’s OK with that. But the current city policy, he added, is “muddy.”

Irvine’s push against short-term rentals has stressed warnings over fines, but the city code does allow for fines ranging from $100 for the first day to $500 a day for violations that last three days or longer, plus administrative fees.

Residents can appeal their cases to the city’s zoning administrator. So far, the administrator has sided with the city in one case, according to a record of that hearing. A second appeal has been tabled until Wednesday. The third appeal has been filed by the Zamoras.

An official at HomeAway, whose brands include VRBO, declined to comment on Irvine’s policy other than to say he agrees with the Zamoras that the rules aren’t clear.

“It’s just ambiguous what the regulation is, what a short-term rental is,” said Walter Gonzales, who is part of HomeAway’s government relations department. “There has to be a clear spelling out of what” that is.

An Airbnb spokeswoman also declined to discuss Irvine’s short-term rental rules.

Zamora is disappointed that the issue has not made it before the City Council, which did not respond to requests for comment. The city did not say why the issue hasn’t been formally discussed in public.

The Zamoras aren’t currently in the short-term rental business. They still rent out the property, but only to longer-term tenants.

They have hired an attorney, and their appeal is expected to be heard by the Irvine zoning administrator in May.

Contact the writer: lleung@ocregister.com