LOS ANGELES (KNX) — An advocacy group says about one in every five of AirBnb listings in Los Angeles violate the city's laws on short-term rentals. Based on their findings from a new report, Better Neighbors L.A. said they want city leaders to step up and better enforce the laws and issue fines to repeat offenders.
“I’m sure there are some people who are just not familiar with what the rules are, but what we have seen time and again is actually people who are very clearly deliberately violating the rules,” Nancy Hanna, a Better Neighbors spokesperson, told KNX.
Hanna said the violators include “corporate operators of multiple properties across the city.”
Other Airbnb critics have said that the short-term rental listings are also part of the cause behind such high rent in L.A. — because owners are choosing to rent them out to vacationers or visitors rather than long-term renters.
“As this [short-term] industry grew, it exacerbated an already great strain on our City’s limited stock of affordable housing, our hotel industry and hotel jobs, and the cohesion of our communities,” the Better Neighbors group wrote in its report.
“Though enforcement has come a long way since the passage of the Home-Sharing Ordinance, there still exist gaps that hosts regularly exploit to evade complying with the law.”
While the report acknowledges that the city put the Home-Sharing Ordinance (HSO) in place to regulate short-term rentals, it says it has also found repeated violations where those renting the homes seem to keep getting away with the violations.
Common violations found by the report include:
Host claiming bogus exemptions:
The report alleges that Airbnb listed “thousands” of short-term rentals as exempt from the Home-Sharing Ordinance (HSO), and did not require the hosts to provide documentation verifying the exemption.
“The abuse of exemption status is one of many actions by hosts that suggest there are already too many ways to circumvent the HSO,” the report reads.
“Future amendments to the HSO only stand to create more opportunities for abuse by unscrupulous hosts. For this reason…[the] focus should be on enforcing the HSO as it exists, and not amending its language.”
Lack of valid registration numbers:
Better Neighbors L.A. said it has found thousands of listings across many platforms, not just Airbnb, that do not display the required registration number. And in some cases, the report said, the numbers listed were found to be not valid.
Hosts misrepresent property as their primary residence:
Based on the Home-Sharing Ordinance passed by the city, a short-term rental can only be done in a home that is the host's “primary residence,” where they live for more than six months out of the year.
However, in its report Better Neighbors L.A. said hosts are finding ways to “get around” the requirement, by claiming that the rental unit is their primary residence when they register it.
When it's done, the report said little seems to be done to reprimand the host.
Response from rentals
An Airbnb representative told The L.A. Times that the report shared by Better Neighbors L.A. relied on “questionable statistics” and alleged that the Better Neighbors L.A. group was being supported by the hotel industry - which would stand to gain on further regulations on short-term rentals.
“We have removed thousands of listings at the request of the city, in accordance with the law — and we will continue to do so going forward,” Airbnb spokesperson Liz DeBold told the newspaper.
To read the full report, and suggestions offered by Better Neighbors L.A., click here.
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