First there were the all-night parties and loud music at a neighbor's house in Long Beach that kept Andy Oliver awake at night.
Then there were the “smokeouts,” when visitors enjoying refuge from hostile cannabis laws in their home states burned marijuana all day, sending clouds of hazy smoke into Oliver's sanctuary, his neighborhood home. College Estates of the city.
The last straw came on Jan. 2, when a shooting victim jumped over his fence, bleeding and seeking cover.
In each case, the source of Oliver's pain was tourists staying in a short-term rental with no lodging next door. These rentals are listed by owners who are not present during the guest's stay, as is the case with Airbnb.
“This all happened over the course of a year and it was starting to get to be too much,” Oliver, 50, said. “This is a residential area and something had to be done.”
Four months later, Oliver has successfully petitioned the Long Beach Community Development Department to ban short-term rentals within College Estates. His victory also generated nine similar petitions across the city.
“I don't have the final count, but there are about 755 houses and we got enough signatures,” Oliver said. “I heard it was close and I don't have confirmation of the final vote, but I was informed [last week] that we achieved it.”
Oliver's victory was the culmination of nearly a year of work, which included testing the city's complaint hotline, speaking with a council member and ultimately founding an online advocacy group, the Long Beach Safe Neighborhoods Coalition.
Jean Young poses for a portrait near the pool of her home on Thursday in Long Beach, CA. Young has used AirBnB for over ten years.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
For months, coalition members commiserated on the social media site Nextdoor over their frustrations with short-term rentals, building momentum for a ban.
“The common theme we ran into was that this was a big problem for many residents and almost all of us got the runaround from the city of Long Beach,” Oliver said. “They didn't seem to care.”
As short-term rentals have spread, responses across Southern California have varied.
In Palm Springs, short-term rentals were limited in specific high-demand neighborhoods, causing a local drop in home prices.
In Orange County, Anaheim requires a minimum stay of three nights to avoid frequent disturbances, while Seal Beach has restrictions short term rentals to 31 units in the coastal area of the city south of Westminster Boulevard.
Last year, Lakewood banned them entirely.
Similarly, Long Beach originally non-hosted short-term rentals prohibited in the early days of the pandemic. But that ordinance was relaxed to allow short-term rentals of 800 non-primary residences, meaning people could use their second properties within the city as Airbnbs.
Currently, there are 626 non-primary short-term rentals registered in the city, according to the Department of Community Development.
Jean Young, a 67-year-old technical writer, is among those with a short-term rental.
“I'm a part-time writer and the rental income just smoothes out the rough edges and has been wonderful,” she said.
Young splits his time between his three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Long Beach's affluent Bixby Knolls neighborhood and one in the sprawling senior housing community at Leisure World in Seal Beach, where he spends three or four months a year.
She began renting out a portion of her Long Beach home 11 years ago to JetBlue and Southwest flight attendants in the city between shifts, then turned it into a place of refuge for traveling nurses during COVID-19. Young now hosts physical therapists and resident doctors.
Sometimes he rents the entire place.
“Since then, my son moved away to college and my mother passed away, so I have all this space in my house to share,” she said. “It would be sad to lose that ability.”
Young said he understands the reaction from community members. The Jan. 2 shooting near Oliver's home on Kallin Avenue was “horrible” and an “abomination,” she said, but a citywide ban would ultimately be “harmful.”
Oliver said he initially tried other means.
He called the city hotline to complain about his neighbor's rent, “but nothing was ever enforced.”
He approached a city councilman and the city attorney.
In the end, he had to resort to the grassroots.
“There were two previous petition drives that failed, so I wasn't sure if we would be successful,” he said.
But every time he became discouraged, he remembered his encounters with noisy neighbors.
In December, he said he spoke to a group of 20-somethings from Texas who were staying at his neighbor's house because the “incredible amount of marijuana they were smoking” was floating around their house.
“They said recreational marijuana wasn't allowed in Texas and they were going to take advantage of their time here,” he said.
Just a few weeks later, on Jan. 2, an unknown gunman shot a man in the lower body as he stood outside a short-term rental with no accommodation in the 800 block of Kallin Avenue, according to Long Beach police. .
The house was listed on Peerspace, an online marketplace for hourly rentals, Oliver said. The shooting is still under investigation.
The victim attempted to scale Oliver's fence and smeared blood on the gate as he crossed into the yard.
“My house was closed for hours due to an investigation,” he said.
As Oliver's plea grew, help came from unexpected places.
Best Neighbors LAa self-described coalition of hosts, renters, housing activists, hotel workers and community members, made Oliver's decision Prohibition of petition for $1,050 fee with the city.
“BNLA is pleased to support neighbors like Andy in Long Beach, as well as individuals and groups throughout Los Angeles County who want reasonable regulations on an out-of-control industry affecting their neighborhoods,” the group said in a statement .
Oliver said the group is also funding efforts to ban short-term rentals without accommodation in nine other Long Beach communities, including El Dorado Park, Naples and South Conant, where resident Stephen Carr is leading an effort.
Carr, a freelance photographer, said the ban was necessary after his neighbor's home listed on Airbnb “was turned into a hotel.”
He said that one weekend last summer, guests in town for an electronic dance music festival stayed up all night.
“The music is loud. There is screaming and drunkenness that spreads through the front and back gardens until 3 in the morning,” she said. “One of the guests apologized the next day, but then they went back to partying until 4 in the morning.”
Carr said he called the police, but they only gave him warnings. He also called the city's complaint hotline, but never received a call.
Eventually, she found Oliver on Nextdoor and connected with Better Neighbors LA, which she said funded her $1,050 petition fee.
“There's no regulation, there's no help coming from anywhere,” Carr said.
For their part, sites that host short-term rentals in Long Beach, such as Airbnb, Peerspace and Vrbo, say they have spaces for residents to express their concerns and point out their problems.
Airbnb cited a city report in April which said most of its operators were “meeting compliance standards” and that there was “proactive and reactive” law enforcement against violations.
The hosting site has a Community Disruption Policy which prohibits parties and events that are disruptive, open invitation, and invite excessive noise, visitors, trash, trash, and smoking, among other issues.
Neighbors who witness problems or violations are encouraged to reach out to Airbnb support staff, said a company spokesperson.
Meanwhile, Peerspace said its sites rent locations by the hour, including homes, photo studios, storefronts and banquet halls.
The company said it takes neighbors' concerns seriously and asks anyone experiencing complications to contact their Trust and Safety Team. He also said he didn't have any ready for the house on Kallin Avenue on Jan. 2, when the shooting victim went up to Oliver's backyard.
Vrbo recommends that neighbors with complaints first address any issues with the host. They then suggest completing a Stay Neighbor complaint form if a solution cannot be found.
