KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Some Kansas City residents are speaking out: They no longer want short-term rentals in their neighborhood.
If you are driving in the West Plaza area, road signs will appear.
Amrita Burdick has lived in the West Plaza area for almost 40 years. It used to be a quiet place until more and more short-term rentals started coming to her neighborhood.
She said rentals sometimes bring parties to her block.
“Which caused parking issues all over the street,” Burdick said. “We already have several rental properties…My car was vandalized for the first time I’ve been here in 40 years.”
Burdick took his complaints to the city, particularly when one of the rentals was operating without a permit.
She also takes issue with the fact that some of the operators don’t even live in the neighborhood or in the state.
“I really think we should move to owner-occupied Airbnbs only, because the people who live in a house are directly affected by any noise from the place, and they will really take care of it so that they don’t have not that problem,” Burdick said.
Airbnb realizes that there are bad tenants and wants to fight against these party houses.
He announced a new anti-party technology that will help them identify users taking advantage of the platform and stop their booking.
“So some of the factors that could go into a booking that we could, you know, look at very closely in terms of potentially blocking that booking are, are you a brand new user who signed up yesterday? Or are you using platform for years and do you have dozens of positive reviews?” said Ben Breit, Director of Trusted Communications at Airbnb.
He encourages owners who have problems with rentals to report it to the platform.
“If there are any concerns about a particular property, we operate a 24/7 neighborhood helpline. It can be accessed at airbnb.com/neighbors,” Breit said. “So if a neighbor would like to write to us about a particular property and anything they want to bring to our attention, they can do that. If they want to call, they’ll speak to a property agent very, very quickly. neighborhood support trained.
FOX4 has updated Burdick on Airbnb’s latest moves, but she doubts it will stop parties from popping up. She also doesn’t think it will prevent operators from using a different platform to rent.
“There are several places where they can advertise. I don’t know how good that would feel,” Burdick said.
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