Los Angeles still drags its feet on Airbnb regulations

Cities across California and the world have placed limits on Airbnb and other short-term rentals, but lawmakers in Los Angeles, where there are about 23,000 short-term rental listings, are taking their time.

The town planning and land use management committee on Tuesday postponed the vote on the draft by-law that has been lying around town hall for two years. Committee chairman Jose Huizar said the committee would “hopefully” take action in 30 days. Once that’s done, the last hurdle will be the Los Angeles City Council.

For PLUM, the sticking point has been: how many days per year should hosts be allowed to rent their accommodation?

The proposal is a 180-day cap, which Airbnb hosts say is too strict. PLUM tries to find a compromise.

On Tuesday, he asked staff in the planning department to come up with a process for some hosts to exceed that cap, possibly, for example, by getting permission from their neighbors.

“We have reduced it… this is the last problem we are looking at,” said Huizar.

David Ewing, a longtime resident of Venice, accused committee members of “hacking” while the Angelenos lose their home.

“There is no excuse; you know you have the information you need to make your decision, ”he said.

It is much more lucrative for landlords and landlords to use sites like Airbnb than to rent to long-term tenants. Amid a housing shortage, which has pushed up the cost of rents, Los Angeles needs as much housing as possible for long-term renters. (A 2015 report by Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy found that short-term rentals take 11 units off the LA rental market every day).

According to Host Compliance LLC, a company that monitors short-term rental platforms for local governments, of the approximately 23,000 homes and units available for rent in Los Angeles on short-term rental platforms, approximately 6,000 to 10 000 are mainly used for short term rentals, that is, this is the number that is not available for long term tenants.

This is a “relatively small portion of the city’s total 1.45 million housing units (less than 1%),” city planners wrote in an October report to PLUM committee members.

“However, the rapid growth of the practice and its concentration in certain neighborhoods threatens the housing availability, affordability and residential stability of a growing number of communities across Los Angeles,” they added.

A 180-day cap would affect thousands of hosts. According to the Planning Department, there are 3,900 Airbnb listings that exceeded 180 days of short-term rental activity last year alone.

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