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| 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.
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.
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