Los Angeles City Councilmembers Paul Koretz, Nithya Raman, Bob Blumenfield, Mike Bonin and Monica Rodriguez called for tougher regulations and enforcement on Sept. 28 of the city’s home-sharing ordinance.

The city officials also pledged to vote no on a vacation rental loophole currently being considered, warning that it could take 14,000 homes off the market and convert them into short-term rental units. A vote on vacation rentals is expected in the coming weeks.

“The city’s home-sharing program has pulled thousands of much-needed housing units off the market, adding to our already disastrous homeless problem, and has been beset by non-compliance, criminal activity and the destruction of once quiet single-family neighborhoods,” said Koretz, 5th District. “If we’re going to take home-sharing and its many challenges seriously, we need to provide the planning department with the resources necessary to effectively enforce the ordinance, and this needs to be done before we start digging a deeper hole with a vacation rentals program. We currently require primary residency for a reason.”

“If the city is struggling to enforce the home-sharing ordinance we already have on the books, what makes us think we’re ready to put in place a new vacation rental ordinance that, even when properly enforced, would allow almost 15,000 additional units to be taken off the rental market and turned into Airbnbs,” added Raman, 4th District. “I pledge to vote no on the vacation rental loophole currently being considered.”

The city estimates that since 2017, 6,000 to 10,000 housing units have been removed from the rental market by owners and converted into short-term rentals. Bonin was one of the main sponsors of the original home-sharing ordinance approved in 2018 to address a shortage of affordable housing. The ordinance strictly limits home-sharing to primary residences and requires hosts of short-term rentals to register for a permit. It also prohibits host platforms from processing bookings for listings without a valid city home-sharing registration number. Housing advocates and UNITE HERE Local 11, a union representing more than 32,000 hospitality workers, are also calling for stricter enforcement of the home-sharing ordinance.