Post by High Priestess on Mar 5, 2016 21:22:34 GMT
See the article:
www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/business/airbnb-pits-neighbor-against-neighbor-in-tourist-friendly-new-orleans.html
Talk to the locals in certain New Orleans neighborhoods — from the historic and genteel Garden District uptown to the dense and increasingly trendy Bywater downriver — and you can be pretty sure that one topic will come up eventually: Airbnb.
With crime, potholes and the Saints, the home-sharing economy has become one of the city’s most discussed topics, bickered about in countless informal conversations, through snarky signs (“Won’t You B&B My Neighbor?”) and increasingly in public forums where city officials, and the citizenry, argue over what to do about it.
Everybody has an opinion. Some are distraught at revelers leaving “floors covered with vomit” in residential buildings and “short-term strangers” squeezing out long-term residents. But just as passionate are people who say renting rooms on Airbnb has brought them enough cash to rehabilitate properties or cover the mortgage after a layoff or after Hurricane Katrina. All of those arguments were made in September at a planning commission hearing on the subject — a meeting that lasted over two hours despite a time limit on comments.
Like some other cities, New Orleans has laws that make most short-term rentals illegal. In most circumstances, renting property for less than 30 days is prohibited without a special permit that few individuals have obtained, and it is punishable by fine or possibly jail time. But city officials acknowledge that New Orleans simply does not have the resources to enforce this rule — given the 2,400 to 4,000 short-term rental listings on various services. Whether short-term rentals will be permitted in some form is not in question; the numbers have already settled that. It is up to the city to adjust accordingly, and figure out how they will be permitted.
www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/business/airbnb-pits-neighbor-against-neighbor-in-tourist-friendly-new-orleans.html
Talk to the locals in certain New Orleans neighborhoods — from the historic and genteel Garden District uptown to the dense and increasingly trendy Bywater downriver — and you can be pretty sure that one topic will come up eventually: Airbnb.
With crime, potholes and the Saints, the home-sharing economy has become one of the city’s most discussed topics, bickered about in countless informal conversations, through snarky signs (“Won’t You B&B My Neighbor?”) and increasingly in public forums where city officials, and the citizenry, argue over what to do about it.
Everybody has an opinion. Some are distraught at revelers leaving “floors covered with vomit” in residential buildings and “short-term strangers” squeezing out long-term residents. But just as passionate are people who say renting rooms on Airbnb has brought them enough cash to rehabilitate properties or cover the mortgage after a layoff or after Hurricane Katrina. All of those arguments were made in September at a planning commission hearing on the subject — a meeting that lasted over two hours despite a time limit on comments.
Like some other cities, New Orleans has laws that make most short-term rentals illegal. In most circumstances, renting property for less than 30 days is prohibited without a special permit that few individuals have obtained, and it is punishable by fine or possibly jail time. But city officials acknowledge that New Orleans simply does not have the resources to enforce this rule — given the 2,400 to 4,000 short-term rental listings on various services. Whether short-term rentals will be permitted in some form is not in question; the numbers have already settled that. It is up to the city to adjust accordingly, and figure out how they will be permitted.