Thousands of units across the city of Los Angeles function as short-term housing rentals, putting a limit on the number of units available to the millions of people living in L.A.
In 2018, the city began to enforce the “Home-Sharing Ordinance,” which restricted short-term rentals to a person’s primary residence and allowed them to rent out their home for no more than 120 days per year.
But a proposed ordinance threatens to diminish that work, by exempting “vacation rentals” from the short-term rental regulations.
A group of city council members currently considering the so-called “loophole” to the regulations said they are strongly opposed to the vacation rental ordinance.
If passed, the ordinance would allow a non-primary residence to be rented out as short-term lodging for visitors, according to L.A. City Planning. The decision could impact as many as 14,000 homes, allowing them to operate as short-term vacation rentals.
To qualify, homes would have to be “occasionally occupied” by the property owner throughout the year and the city would cap owners to just 90 rental nights per year.
While the city said the goal of the ordinance “is to allow vacation rentals on a limited basis while protecting against the loss of the city’s supply of long-term housing,” several city council members disagree - and said the decision would be detrimental to Angelenos.
“We have a massive lack of affordable housing and so what are we talking about doing? We’re talking about taking 15 or 16,000 units off the market by adding vacation rentals to a home share ordinance that is already riddled with holes,” Councilman Paul Koretz said Tuesday.
In a letter sent to Judge David O. Carter, Better Neighbors L.A. — a coalition of hosts, tenants, housing activists and community members in Southern California — said the rental market has already removed thousands of affordable housing units from the “traditional” rental market.
“The unregulated short-term rental market in Los Angeles poses critical challenges to the availability of affordable housing. When hosts choose to rent their properties to tourists on platforms like Airbnb, these units are directly removed from the traditional rental market,” the letter said.
The group cited a recent study that found a host renting out a home could make a whole year of rental income by renting out their property to city visitors for just 83 nights a year. Critics argue that the money incentivizes landlords to evict long-term residents from rent-stabilized units and transform them into rental properties, which are less regulated.
Additionally, the group, along with city council members, feel expanding the short-term rental market is a detrimental move for the city’s actual residents.
“We are here today for a very simple reason...to stand up for the right to housing and to double down on enforcing the home sharing ordinance,” Councilwoman Nithya Raman said Tuesday.
“And to make sure homes in Los Angeles are for Angelenos who are [actually] living in them.”
Raman has introduced a motion to guarantee that the city’s planning department has the tools and resources to enforce the existing short-term rental ordinance.
The previous ordinance was established to allow homeowners to rent out a room or whole home as a source of income, without taking long-term rentals off of the market, according to the city’s resource page.
L.A. officials began accepting applications for short-term rentals on July 1, 2019, but did not start enforcement until Nov. 1 of that year — to give hosts time to register and to launch an educational campaign involving citywide workshops.
To learn more, or register for the home sharing program, click here.
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