By Iris Craige, Assistant Director, Policy and Research
July 14, 2026
In the year leading up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, short-term rental activity in Inglewood has expanded dramatically. According to data from Inside Airbnb, Inglewood recorded 103 active short-term rental listings in August 2025, ranking 32nd among Los Angeles County cities outside the City of Los Angeles. By June 2026, active listings had risen to 180, a 75 percent increase.
This short-term rental growth is occurring in a city where renters already face affordability pressures because of a shortage of available long-term rental housing. Sixty-seven percent of homes in Inglewood are renter occupied, and housing affordability is a significant challenge: 60 percent of renter households in Inglewood are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing, and approximately 30 percent of those households are severely rent burdened. According to OWN-IT! analytics, many neighborhoods in Inglewood have elevated renter vulnerability, meaning tenants may already be at heightened risk of displacement due to these economic and housing affordability challenges.
Against this backdrop, the rapid expansion of short-term rentals for one-off, temporary events like the World Cup raises questions about whether and how Inglewood’s long-term rental market will withstand the pressure of decreasing supply.
What is happening in Inglewood also reflects a broader pattern observed in other cities when mega events come to town. According to a recent Inside Airbnb report, these major international events—the World Cup, the Olympic Games, and other global gatherings—often accelerate short-term rental expansion by driving rapid host entry and the conversion of rental housing into tourist accommodations. Airbnb listings rose by roughly 97 percent in Rio de Janeiro and 93 percent in Paris in the lead-ups to their Olympics, and researchers found that these demand shocks left lasting impacts long after the event itself concludes, as these homes do not return to the long-term rental market.
Housing advocates have long raised concerns about how short-term rental growth reduces the supply of housing available to residents, particularly when entire homes and apartments are converted into visitor accommodations. In Los Angeles County, more than 83 percent of active Airbnb listings are entire homes or apartments rather than spare rooms, highlighting the tension between accommodating visitors and preserving housing opportunities for residents.
Since July 2022, Inglewood has regulated short-term rentals in an attempt to balance tourism with housing preservation. Their laws permit both hosted and limited unhosted short-term rentals while prohibiting certain housing types like ADUs.
In practice, however, Inglewood’s short term rental laws rely almost entirely on reactive enforcement. Platforms like Airbnb are required to provide the city with monthly electronic records identifying listings, responsible parties, addresses, lengths of stay, and prices paid. If the city identifies an unauthorized listing, the platform must remove it within five calendar days. Because platforms are not required to verify permit validity before listings go live, the city routinely risks allowing new improper listings to proliferate.
Inglewood’s sudden increase of short-term rentals highlights why housing advocates in Los Angeles have opposed efforts to weaken the city’s Home-Sharing Ordinance ahead of the 2028 Olympics, and why proactive enforcement of that ordinance is needed. Encouraging the growth of a short-term rental market to temporarily accommodate mega event tourists will take long-term rental housing off the market and drive rents up, making Los Angeles even less affordable than it is now.
The rapid expansion of short-term rentals in Inglewood also undercuts industry arguments that Los Angeles must weaken its Home-Sharing Ordinance to accommodate Olympics-driven demand. Inglewood experienced a dramatic increase in listings without relaxing any of their regulations for the World Cup, and the Olympics will likely have the same effect in Los Angeles, especially because enforcement is so lacking.
As Los Angeles considers proposals to expand short-term rental activity ahead of the 2028 Olympics, Inglewood offers an early indication of the challenges that can emerge when rising demand for visitor accommodations intersects with an already strained housing market. Preserving housing for long-term residents should remain a central consideration as policymakers weigh changes to the city’s short-term rental regulations.
