Airbnb adds pressure to dwindling affordable housing in L.A.

A billboard advertises the services of Airbnb.

By Alfredo Santana

Affordable housing is becoming an endangered species in Los Angeles as many landlords are refurbishing units to turn them into hostels, and rent them short term as part of Airbnb’s global model to offer online rooms and apartments to tourists from one to several days apiece.

This rental model has contributed to the eviction of hundreds, if not thousands of city residents, many whom have joined the growing list of homeless in the County of Los Angeles, have nowhere to go and sleep in public parks, under freeway bridges and camping tents set along sidewalks.

This trend has added stress to Los Angeles’ steady loss of rental units due to an ongoing gentrification in neighborhoods like Highland Park, Echo Park and Boyle Heights. Before 2005, apartment that used to fetch between $550 and $750 a month for one and two-rooms  now cost twice, and in some cases three times more, in part because the new tenants are Caucasians and have more money.

Airbnb, a company which advertises rooms for short- term rent to tourists and business travelers to L.A., markets rooms from as low as $27 a day to $225. These apartments have panoramic urban views nested in Silver Lake, a solid middle class neighborhood, or are located in El Segundo, a neighborhood a few mile south of LAX. The prices on the deals fluctuate depending on the month and days of the week, but their availability keeps growing.

Several former tenants in rent-controlled apartments have sued their former landlords who cited the Ellis Act to evict them, and weeks later advertised the dwellings for short-term rent in the Airbnb website.

One evicted resident who lived 21 years in the same apartment sued both Airbnb and the landlords, accusing them of breaching the city’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance and the Ellis Act. This law allows landlords to get out of the rent-controlled program when they demolish the building to create new units or if they stop renting altogether.

So far, the Los Angeles City Council has failed to produce legislation to regulate Airbnb and levy taxes in synch with the fares of each unit. Lawyers representing evicted tenants said landlords incur in fraud when they kick out long-term residents and turn the units into a hostel, or shared rooms.

Airbnb broke ground in the short-term rental business in 2008. Based in San Francisco, the company benefited from a recently won ballot measure, which allows landlords to engage in short-term rentals up to 90 straight days. Usually, long term tenants have no limits on their rental agreements, unless written in a contract.

Airbnb markets short-term rental units in cities such as Paris, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Tokio, Frankfurt, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Barcelona.