By Sustainable Economies Law Center Executive Director, Janelle Orsi

Imagine that a group of people works hard to fill their neighborhood with urban farms, bike lanes, parks, murals, community services, and education programs. Next, imagine that those same people are forced to move away. Ouch, that bites.

Sadly, this is real: Improving the livability of a previously disinvested neighborhood creates opportunities for speculators, landlords, and developers to increase rents and drive up the cost of property, often causing displacement of the very people who made the neighborhood livable to begin with.

If you live in a fairly populous city, or you like to travel off the beaten path, you've probably heard of Airbnb-style short-term rentals (STRs). Residential housing that is rented for short periods of time, STRs were once a niche way to travel, but are now available for rent all over the world. 

The evolution of STRs is a success story for the many STR platforms that broker transactions between STR hosts and guests, but for cities and communities dealing with the adverse social and economic impacts of the activity, STRs pose a unique new challenge. 

View or download the report here.

If you live in a fairly populous city, or you like to travel off the beaten path, you've probably heard of Airbnb-style short-term rentals (STRs). Residential housing that is rented for short periods of time, STRs were once a niche way to travel, but are now available for rent all over the world. 

The evolution of STRs is a success story for the many STR platforms that broker transactions between STR hosts and guests, but for cities and communities dealing with the adverse social and economic impacts of the activity, STRs pose a unique new challenge. 

On the one hand, STRs have a strong contingent of proponents, including the well-resourced STR platforms themselves, and property owners who benefit from the flexibility and economic opportunity STRs afford them. On the other hand, unbridled STR activity has led renters and tenants rights advocates to argue that profit incentives and lack of regulation have led many property owners to evict tenants and convert long-term residential rentals into STRs – removing bedrooms and entire units from the rental market and displacing and driving up housing costs for local residents. Renters are not the only stakeholders with concerns. Hotel interests argue that unregulated STRs unfairly compete with established hotels, local regulators contend that STRs reduce local business and hotel tax revenues, and neighbors complain that a constant turnover of transient STR guests adversely impacts neighborhood quality and cohesion. 

Now that the peer-to-peer economy has collided with housing, cities are being called upon to find solutions that protect public interests and meet the needs of all residents in a climate where some criticize governments for failing to adequately regulate STRs, while others criticize government for failing to embrace them.

How can cities regulate STRs in ways that generate inclusive opportunities for local wealth-creation, while still balancing the needs of all members of the community? The Sustainable Economies Law Center has some suggestions.  

This guidebook will equip cities to respond to STRs in ways that protect public interests – including housing affordability, health and safety, neighborhood quality, and municipal revenues – while retaining reasonable latitude for city residents to host and earn money from short-term guests. Regulating Short-Term Rentals: A Guidebook for Equitable Policy identifies key issue areas, incorporates references to sample STR ordinances from around the US, and provides the Sustainable Economies Law Center's recommendations for best practices.

Because there is no one-size-fits all ordinance for STRs, we strongly encourage community stakeholder participation in the formation of any STR policy so that it accurately reflects local circumstances. Please share this guidebook widely: with neighbors, with community organizations, with city councilmembers, and with mayors. We created this guidebook for people like you. 

CONTACT: Yassi Eskandari-Qajar ([email protected])

By: Tim Logan, LA Times

"Airbnb profits from transactions," said Yassi Eskandari-Qajar, city policies program director at the Sustainable Economies Law Center in Oakland. "There's no incentive for them to put limits on how many people can do this, how much they can charge or how many homes they list."

But, she notes, Airbnb is mindful of political pressure. And when pushed, it has agreed to changes.

Read the full article on latimes.com

Video recording of a teach-in and community conversation hosted at Sustainable Economies Law Center's Resilient Communities Legal Cafe, July 02, 2014 at LOL Makerspace, including 350 years of American land enclosures in 5 minutes!

So there we were, on the brink of changing the world, and we still hadn't found a name for what we were doing! The sharing economy? The community resilience movement? The cooperative economy? The new economy?  

Well, at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, our extensive and intensive research has finally uncovered a more precise phrase: The Beatles Economy! Yeah, Beatles. As in The Beatles, who managed to present a comprehensive vision for a better world...in their song titles. Check out our video to learn more!

32 specific policy recommendations that enable communities to remove barriers to sharing and realize the benefits of the sharing economy in food, jobs, housing, and transportation. View in window below or click here to download PDF. 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Yassi Eskandari-Qajar / [email protected]

New report details what cities can do now to benefit from a sharing economy

San Francisco, CA (September 9, 2013) — A new report released today by the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) and Shareable details policy steps that city governments can take to benefit from the growing sharing economy by supporting innovations such as ridesharing, carsharing, cohousing, cooperatives, and urban agriculture.

The Sustainable Living Research Ordinance (SLRO) provides Goleta local government with a regulatory pathway to enable residential sustainability projects and designs otherwise illegal under current law. The ordinance does so by designating a property as a "Sustainable Living Research Site," where practices including natural building, onsite wastewater treatment, and self-sustaining agricultural villages would be permitted uses.