Mayor Mitch Landrieu declared on Monday that full-time, short-term rentals of entire homes in residential neighborhoods were "off the table" for his administration.

It turns out that a lot depends on how you define "full-time."

A pair of ordinances the administration submitted to City Council members Monday afternoon — after consultation with websites like Airbnb and Homeway — would allow anyone who owns or leases a property in a residential area to rent it out up to 15 times each year for as many as 120 days total.

Those rentals would face fewer regulations than the proposed full-time rental of entire homes in residential areas that the plan eliminates.

At the same time, the relatively loose time limits on so-called "temporary" rentals could potentially allow those units to be used solely for short-term rentals, rather than as an occasional way for basically full-time residents to make money while they're out of town — a model espoused by many proponents of short-term rentals.

Deputy Mayor of External Affairs Ryan Berni sent an email to council members along with the proposed ordinances Monday. They were obtained and verified by The New Orleans Advocate on Tuesday.

The City Council is scheduled to take a preliminary vote on proposed short-term rental regulations at its meeting Thursday.

But while minor changes are possible, Berni said in an interview Tuesday, "aside from some minor tweaks we can't support anything else." And, he said, if the council does not act Thursday, the Landrieu administration will not take up the issue again.

That, he argued, would simply lead to a continuation of the status quo, in which short-term rentals, while technically illegal in New Orleans, flourish without any enforcement of laws against them.

"The options for folks are to pass something Thursday that we can then do an ordinance on that we'll sign and can enforce and get active," Berni said. "Or do nothing and continue to have proliferation across the city for another couple years until someone else can try to do something else." Landrieu's final term will end in May 2018.

The administration's proposal would seem to do little to assuage many critics of short-term rentals, who say that neighborhoods have been inundated with listings that have crowded out long-term owners and tenants.

Their concerns have largely focused on what have generally been termed "whole-home rentals," meaning entire properties in residential areas that are used frequently or exclusively for hosting out-of-town tourists.

But a key element in crafting the administration's proposal appeared to be getting buy-in from the websites that host the listings for short-term rentals.

In his email, Berni said, "If this framework is put in place, the major platforms have agreed to voluntarily collect taxes on behalf of (short-term rental) permit holders, pay a fee into the (city's Neighborhood Housing Improvement Fund) for affordable housing and provide certain pass-through data to the city on a quarterly basis, including the names and addresses of operators and the number of nights each operator has rented on the platform for the previous 12 months."

"This industry participation is critical to making anything work," he wrote.

As the mayor said Monday, year-round short-term rentals of entire properties in residential areas would be eliminated in the plans submitted by his administration.

But the proposal also greatly expands so-called temporary rentals. That category was originally created to allow residents to rent out their homes occasionally, such as during Carnival and Jazzfest and perhaps a handful of weekends a year.

The Planning Commission recommended limiting those rentals to a maximum of five times a year totaling 30 days or less. Those limits would likely prevent units from being used solely as short-term rentals.

By contrast, the definition of a temporary rental in the mayor's proposal could still make it lucrative enough for owners to use properties solely as short-term rental sites, perhaps leaving them vacant most of the year, rather than as owner-occupied homes that they occasionally rent.

Berni, however, argued that the 120-day limit would "cap the market considerably."

A report commissioned by Airbnb this week found that of the 5,309 local hosts who use that site to rent out their homes, the average property was rented for about 64 nights a year. About 47 percent of the properties were rented for fewer than 30 days each year.

It's not clear how many of those properties were occupied by long-term residents the rest of the year.

The ordinance also would not cap the density of temporary rentals in a given block or neighborhood, nor would it require an owner to have a homestead exemption, potentially allowing some owners to continue to own and rent out multiple properties through the city solely on a short-term basis.

Finally, it would not require owners of those properties to get a conditional use permit from the city, though they would be required to get a temporary use permit when the properties are rented out.

The administration's proposed regulations also provide:

Renting out a room or a half-double without time restrictions would require a homestead exemption.

Short-term rentals of rooms and half-doubles and of entire condos or apartments in mixed-use or commercial buildings would be banned in the French Quarter.

All types of rentals would be required to have insurance, smoke detectors and fire extinguishers and be up to city codes.

The plan would allow violations to be punished with the revocation of the short-term rental license, fines, property liens and, in the case of repeat offenders, discontinuation of electrical service to the property.

The ability to cut power to short-term rentals that don't follow the regulations represents a "significant" enforcement mechanism that hasn't been tried elsewhere, Berni said.