Los Angeles City Council calls for enforcement against illegal short-term rentals and non-compliant Airbnbs

LOS ANGELES (CNS) — The Los Angeles City Council on Friday approved a motion to strengthen enforcement of a city ordinance banning unauthorized and non-compliant Airbnbs and other short-term rental operations.

Councilor Nithya Raman and Councilors Bob Blumenfield, Mike Bonin and Paul Koretz’s motion called for the Planning Department to report within 90 days on:

  • Recommendations on how the city can deal with non-compliant hosts who rent properties listed as primary residence but are not used as such, conversion of affordable housing stock to short-term rentals, conversion of multi-family residential structures to short-term accommodation term rentals, short-term rentals engaged in commercial uses/activities and properties rented for longer periods than permitted
  • Enforcement mechanisms such as citations, fines, license revocations and criminal penalties
  • Home sharing regulation and enforcement models from other cities, including San Francisco, Austin, and New Orleans
  • Strategies to ensure that all home sharing platforms that operate in the city enter into platform agreements requiring them to share data with the city
  • Strategies for implementing and improving data collection
  • What staff or dedicated unit, office or department is needed to consolidate various aspects of home sharing compliance and enforcement into a multidisciplinary team.

“In our city, we cannot afford the consequences of losing more affordable housing units to supply that is already desperately short,” Raman said. “Failing to fully and properly enforce the Home Sharing Ordinance means we are losing homes, putting tenants under pressure to move and inviting major nuisance and quality of life issues into our communities. [Friday’s] Voting is an essential step in our ongoing efforts to stabilize and protect our neighborhoods.”

A McGill University study prepared for Better Neighbors LA found that a third of short-term rental listings advertised by the city have been illegal since the home-sharing ordinance went into effect in 2018.

“We passed short-term rental regulations in Los Angeles to stop landlords from converting Angelenos’ homes into rogue hotels, but enforcement is so lax that operators and platforms are breaking the law and worsening our housing crisis. affordable housing,” said Mike Bonin, who co-authored the 2018 Home Sharing Ordinance. “We are haemorrhaging valuable rental stock, and that needs to stop. »

The Planning Department will also write a report within 90 days for a plan to create a centralized digital database or platform to better coordinate the tracking of non-compliant properties. The platform would be used for monitoring and enforcement purposes.

The motion also called on the department to ensure within 90 days that the public can see if a city property has a home-sharing license, a home-sharing license renewal or a home-sharing extension.

Licence.

“In addition to battling runaway parties and violent crime in short-term rentals, we have serious concerns about Home Sharing Ordinance violations such as the illegal conversion of our critical affordable housing stock, hosts engaging in commercial activities and renting homes that are not a primary residence,” Koretz said. “In fact, we see a number of home sharing ordinance violations every day in my district, and we need to seriously look at the program and the mechanisms and resources needed to effectively enforce the ordinance.”

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