After a summer of waiting, the short-term rental regulations will move forward to the City Council. The regulations will go to the Housing Committee, the Planning Committee and finally to the full City Council.

While we are pleased with where the draft ordinance is overall, we continue to be concerned about the cap issue. As it is currently proposed, hosts can rent out their short-term rental properties for 180 days a year.

What does a large cap mean for our neighborhoods and housing market?

The data shows that affordable housing will be lost if short-term rentals are permitted for as few as 60-days per year in some Los Angeles neighborhoods. In fact, across all of Los Angeles neighborhoods it takes an average of just 83 nights per year to earn more on Airbnb than can be earned in a whole year of renting to a long-term renter.

We have seen the effect of a large cap in other cities. After two years of trying to work through problems with their STR legislation, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is working toward imposing a hard 60-day cap. They are revising the previous ordinance of 90-days because it was unenforceable. They have now determined that 60-days strikes the right balance between helping people earn significant supplemental income while not encouraging landlords to keep the units off the rental market. Airbnb's own study “The Impact of Home Sharing in Los Angeles,” found that hosts in Los Angeles share their home less than 60 nights a year on average, therefore the City does not need to allow more days. 60 days will easily accommodate true-home sharing hosts.

We need our supporters to tell the City that it is clear that landlords will be economically motivated to turn affordable apartments and homes into short-term rentals if the cap is too high. We want to tell the stories of how your neighborhoods have been impacted by a proliferation of short-term rentals. It’s vital that the city adopt short-term rental ordinances that are both enforceable and truly protect affordable housing - and that included a low, 60 day cap.