Housing activists launch hotline to report illegal short-term rentals
According to neighbors, an Airbnb in Silver Lake is being used as a party house. Now, activists have come together to help stop irresponsible short-term rental owners.
SILVER LAKE (KABC) -- Local housing activists in Silver Lake launched a hotline this week to report illegal short-term rentals.
This hotline is a solution for many upset neighbors.
"The big, big thing has been the noise disturbances and the parties," said Silver Lake resident Lilly Taylor.
"We've been recently living next door to a house that was bought in September and immediately turned into an Airbnb, which has just been a revolving door of strangers," said Taylor.
The L.A. Home-sharing Ordinance went into effect on July 1st, 2019.
According to the ordinance, home sharing is only permitted in Los Angeles if the listing is the owner's primary residence.
But Taylor believes the owner doesn't live in the popular listing next door to her home.
"Randomly, every couple weeks we'll see her just on her laptop or for the construction workers or the cleaning ladies," said Taylor.
ABC7 called the owner of the Airbnb listing who said this is her primary residence. But we weren't able to get more details.
However, the house is described as a hotel or motel on the listing.
Taylor said she has contacted the city and Airbnb multiple times to get help regarding the disturbance.
Yeghig Keshishian, Chief External Affairs Officer at the City Planning Department, said the listing had already been reported.
"In regards to this site in particular, we've already taken steps to direct Airbnb to take down this listing. As a matter of fact, they never even applied for a registration number with our department," said Keshishian.
In a statement to ABC7, Airbnb said:
"Airbnb is fully committed to being a long term partner to the City of Los Angeles and is the only short-term rental platform to have developed a system that helps the City enforce its home sharing ordinance."
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