The Los Angeles Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to approve an ordinance restricting the short-term vacation rental market throughout unincorporated LA County. The decision comes after pushback against the industry, which some experts consider a threat to Eastside neighborhoods like East LA or City Terrace.
While not outright banning short-term vacation rentals like Airbnb or Vrbo, the restrictions affect the process for new home share applications and limit how hosts can rent their property.
Rebecca Ayala, a representative of Better Neighbors LA, said areas of unincorporated Los Angeles had very few restrictions until this ruling. Better Neighbors LA works to curb illegal commercial activity in the short-term rental industry through research and data analysis. Ayala said that since 2019, short-term rentals have tripled in East Los Angeles.
“We’ve seen that over the last few years, there’s been a huge increase in the number of short-term rentals in unincorporated East Los Angeles,” Ayala said, also noting that East LA is the fourth largest un-hosted short-term rental market in unincorporated LA County. Un-hosted rentals are defined as homes or apartments that are available to rent without the owner on the premises.
The county expressed the urgency to regulate the industry at a time when the county residents struggled to find stable housing in unincorporated areas that span more than 2,600 square miles and homes close to a million people.
“The proliferation of unregulated short-term rentals has the potential to erode available housing stock, degrade community and residential character,” the County Counsel wrote in an analysis. “It is a priority for the County to strike a balance between the economic benefits of short-term rentals and the potential impacts to neighborhoods and quality of life for residents.”
The new law requires hosts in unincorporated LA to pay an annual fee of $914 and limits guests’ stays to 30 days at a time. It also prohibits hosts from listing second homes, guesthouses, and ADUs as rent-ready vacation homes, and hosts who have multiple properties would have to pull their listings from the platforms.
Sonia Roman is a homeowner in City Terrace, an Eastside community in unincorporated LA County. She said that guests who stay in the unhosted short-term rental next door crowd up the already limited parking, contribute to garbage overflow, and don’t respect the community’s noise curfew.
“We started seeing an overflow of trash on our sidewalks, something I’ve never seen, and I’ve been living here for 12 years,” Roman said, frustrated. “It’s become very disruptive and is changing the character of our community. Because we don’t even know our neighbors, and that’s when it feels unsafe. You don’t know who was renting who was in that space. You can’t easily go tell them, ‘Can you lower your voice,’ because there’s no rapport. No relationship.”
At its worst, she said, Roman expressed seeing tourists sunbathing in the nude on the deck of the property next door. Roman attributes the attraction of tourists to the neighborhood to its proximity to the city center and the abundance of scenic views of Los Angeles the hills in City Terrace offer.
“We’re very accessible. We’re just like Boyle Heights, we have like four different freeways. we’re like, ten minutes away from downtown. it’s accessible for people to come here to East LA, and navigate through the party scene at night,” Roman said.
Roman considers the impact the rentals have on her community and the Eastside at large.
“I’m sure it’s becoming very difficult for everybody to even find a place to rent for the long term. Because this person that owns like, four or five units here, it could be long term for people that live in LA and not for tourists,” she said.
Roman’s worries about changes to the availability of housing stock and costs aren’t far-fetched. According to Ayala of Better Neighbors, the average host in East LA has about three listings in LA County.
Ayala cited a study done by the Urban Politics and Governance research group in 2022. The study found that short-term rentals have contributed to an increase in rents of $810 annually in the city of Los Angeles and approximately 5,000 additional people experiencing homelessness each night. The study also found that the proliferation of illegal short-term rentals in Los Angeles made up 45% of rentals on the market.
The county received the heaviest pushback not only from platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo themselves but also from residents who say the supplemental income they receive from their rentals is essential for “survival.”
“This will take away any possible fees and occupancy taxes the county would be able to charge and we both would lose valuable and important income that keeps us surviving,” said Jyoti Drummond during a Board meeting last month.
During the same meeting, Franklin Jameson argued that the restrictions prohibiting hosts from renting out the ADUs on a property will negatively impact his income and opportunities for childcare.
“I need this additional income to support my family of four and to keep our home. We cannot move into our ADU since the space is too small,” Jameson explained, referring to the law’s stipulation that hosts can only rent out the main home on the property. “We would also never rent it to a long-term tenant since we need the flexibility of in-laws visiting to assist with child care,” he said.
Other opponents of the ordinance say tighter restrictions may disincentivize tourism to the communities around Los Angeles. Although stringent, the ordinance allows for property owners to rent out a room in the home they live in, or, the main home on a property with an ADU, meaning the regulation still gives owners a pathway to supplement their income.
The ordinance will take effect in October of this year but will not take effect in the County Coastal Zone, like Santa Monica, Malibu, and Catalina, until certified by the California Coastal Commission.
