By Lily Aronovitz, SAJE Communications Intern 

May 5, 2026

Reject efforts to weaken short term rental regulations! Join us at the PLUM meeting to tell them to take action NOW to protect renters, preserve our neighborhoods and crack down on illegal STRs! RSVP HERE.

Los Angeles is in the midst of a housing affordability crisis, and short-term rentals (STRs) are contributing to the problem. Generally associated with online booking platforms such as Airbnb or VRBO, STRs are rental units that are rented for fewer than 30 days at a time. Cities around the world have moved to regulate STRs because of the way they reduce the supply of long-term rental housing while driving rents higher. Since July 2019, the City of Los Angeles has governed STRs through the Home-Sharing Ordinance (HSO), which sets out guidelines hosts must follow to operate legally: hosts must live in the STR for at least half the year, and they cannot rent it out for more than 120 days per year. Even with these rules in place, the city estimates that 7,500 STRs, or about 60% of the city’s short-term rentals in apartment buildings, are illegal.

Recently, the Airbnb-funded coalition Save Our Services proposed relaxing the HSO by allowing homeowners to rent out secondary properties, potentially converting more than 30,000 more units into STRs. The coalition claims that more short-term rentals will bring more tourists to Los Angeles, which in turn would generate more than $110 million in occupancy tax revenue and tourist spending. Even more recently, Mayor Karen Bass proposed relaxing short-term rental regulations for the 2028 Olympics; in exchange, Los Angeles could collect around $50 million in prepaid transient occupancy taxes, which it could count as revenue for FY 2026–27 against the current budget deficit.

These schemes are harebrained for a couple of reasons. First, they assume more Airbnbs are going to magically generate more tourists. In fact, Airbnb has made a similar “If you relax it, they will come!” promise in other US cities hosting mega events, and STR hosts are still waiting for all those tourists to materialize. These schemes also assume a net gain in tourists. Hotels generate occupancy taxes, too, and when a tourist stays in an Airbnb, it means they aren’t staying in a hotel. And this does damage to a significant sector of our local economy: Los Angeles hotels generate $12.5 billion in annual economic activity, support approximately 64,000 jobs, and produce more than $1.1 billion in state and local tax revenue—a lot more than the paltry sum Airbnb is promising.

A March 2026 report published by Better Neighbors LA (BNLA) found that if Los Angeles just enforced the HSO we have, we could generate revenue plus bring housing back to the long-term rental market for the people who live here. BNLA found that over half of the city’s STR listings are illegal, yet citations have only been issued to 0.2% of them. If the city properly fined every STR currently violating the HSO, we would generate $850 million each year—a stark improvement over the $95,000 in annual fines we’re currently collecting. You can read more about the report’s findings and methodology here.

SAJE strongly opposes these efforts to relax the HSO. Instead, we want the City of Los Angeles to pursue an enforcement strategy that would simultaneously generate revenue and expand the supply of rental housing by removing illegal STRs from the market. Over the past several months, SAJE and BNLA advocates have mobilized at City Hall to oppose attempts to weaken the HSO. We are also speaking out against efforts to relax HSO through the city budget process, turning out Angelenos who waited in line for hours to give comments at Budget and Finance hearings on April 24 and April 27. Mayor Bass’s budget proposal is expected to face additional Budget and Finance Committee consideration on May 7, and the Save our Services scheme will be considered at an upcoming Planning and Land Use Committee meeting on May 12.

Reject efforts to weaken short term rental regulations! Join us at the PLUM meeting to tell them to take action NOW to protect renters, preserve our neighborhoods and crack down on illegal STRs! RSVP HERE.