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The College Estates neighborhood in Long Beach, California has become the first in the United States to ban unhosted short-term rentals after a violent shooting took place at one in January.
For over a year, Andy Oliver had lived next to a home that was rented out by the hour on platforms like Airbnb and PeerSpace for film shoots, parties and “all kinds of craziness,” Oliver told USA TODAY. The owner was not typically at the property when the guests were there.
On the morning of Jan. 2, a shooting broke out in the short-term rental. The 21-year-old man who was renting the home was chased by masked gunmen onto Oliver’s property, and was shot and killed on Oliver’s front porch in an incident Oliver said was “pretty traumatic.”
This led to Oliver founding the Long Beach Safe Neighborhood Coalition, a community action group that sought to eliminate unhosted short-term rentals in which the host does not live on the property.The Long Beach City Council passed an ordinance in 2020 that allowed individual neighborhoods to petition their census block about such a policy. If over half of the residents signed, unhosted short-term rentals would be banned from operating in that neighborhood.
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Under the ban, unhosted short-term rentals can operate until their license expires, and they won’t be able to renew.
Since the shooting, the Long Beach Safe Neighborhood Coalition blanketed the 755 homes in the neighborhood. On May 3, Oliver received news that the petition passed with 51% of the 735 petitions returned agreeing to the ban. Three homes in College Estates operate as unhosted short-term rentals.
Of the over 3,000 census tract groups in Long Beach, eight others have filed petitions. As of Tuesday, four of those failed to pass and the others are still pending. Previous groups have tried to petition and failed over the past two years.
“The city makes it very very difficult for anything like this to even be successful,” Oliver said. “Imagine having to campaign over 700 homes just to try to live in peace.”
Prior to 2019, over 1,000 unhosted short-term rentals were illegally operating throughout Long Beach, Long Beach Community Development Director Christopher Koontz told USA TODAY. The new ordinance also only allowed 800 short-term rentals to operate. Currently, there are just over 625.
Christina Nigrelli, who lives in the South of Conant neighborhood of Long Beach – another that filed a petition and has three unhosted short-term rentals – said the house next door has been an unhosted short-term rental since February. She said there’s been “large parties” and “terrible experiences” with guests smoking and blocking driveways with their cars.
“It’s a crapshoot, you don’t know who’s rolling up, we don’t know how long they’re staying,” she said.
Airbnb announced its global party ban in 2020, and Airbnb spokesperson Nicolette Velaquez told USA TODAY the vacation rental platform has seen a 53% decrease in party reports. Airbnb has a community disturbance policy in which it will remove hosts and listings if it is violated, and a neighborhood support line for people to report such violations.
The Long Beach City Council also offers a 24/7 hotline for complaints around unhosted short-term rentals. “There’s been a very small number of complaints in comparison to the size of the city and amount of time that’s gone by,” Koontz said.
“There is something done every time a complaint is received but it’s not always to the satisfaction of the person who filed a complaint,” he said. “Loud talking is not an illegal activity. Cars parked on the street, if it’s legal, it’s not actionable.”
Kathleen Wong is a travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Hawaii. You can reach her at kwong@usatoday.com.