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HOUSING - Angelenos are facing a housing affordability crisis that’s fueling a homelessness crisis. Yet Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass wants to make a deal with Airbnb that would take rental units off the market and turn them into tourist housing for the 2028 Summer Olympics, resulting in higher rents across the city. It makes no sense, and the L.A. City Council must reject Bass’s harmful plan.
Several years ago, Los Angeles banned landlords and corporate investors from turning long-term housing into short-term rentals, which was done to protect the city’s limited stock of rental housing, especially affordable units. In addition to predatory landlords charging unfair, excessive rents, a shrinking housing stock results in less supply and higher rents.
Better Neighbors Los Angeles, a coalition of housing and labor groups, notes on its website: “Study after study confirms that the majority of short-term rental listings come from commercial operators, as opposed to individual homeowners, causing cities like Los Angeles to suffer from a loss of affordable housing and attacks on the nature of residential neighborhoods.”
In other words, Airbnb and corporate investors make a killing on short-term rentals while Angelenos struggle to find affordable housing and end up paying exorbitant rents.
What’s so alarming about Bass’s proposed deal with Airbnb is that L.A. continues to deal with one of the worst homelessness crises in the United States, and an important study by UC San Francisco found that sky-high rents is the primary cause for homelessness. So if the Airbnb deal goes through, rents across the city will increase and so will homelessness.
Such a scenario is literally life-threatening for Angelenos. According to Eviction Lab, the prestigious think tank at Princeton University, unaffordable rents are linked to higher mortality rates. Also, homelessness has become increasingly lethal: between 2014 and 2021, Los Angeles County saw homeless deaths increase annually for seven consecutive years. While homeless deaths decreased in 2024, 2,208 people still died on the streets.
Should the city of L.A. risk more homeless deaths and higher mortality rates just so Airbnb can make a profit off the 2028 Summer Olympics? Obviously not.
The Bass-Airbnb deal will also move tourists away from hotels and into short-term housing, impacting the livelihoods of hotel workers. Is that worth lining the pockets of Airbnb? Another hard no.
Fortunately, the L.A. City Council needs to sign off on Bass’s plan, and council members are concerned.
“I have a list of dozens and dozens of [rent-stabilized] units in my district… that are currently Airbnb units,” Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said at a recent Budget and Finance Committee meeting. “This is happening.”
Councilmember Bob Blumenfield said, “This is a huge policy. It’s going to require a lot of vetting.”
The city council must kill the Airbnb deal to protect Angelenos against skyrocketing rents and the prospect of homelessness. Seniors, working-class families, students, and many others shouldn’t suffer so Airbnb can make huge profits.
(Patrick Range McDonald is an award-winning investigative reporter and the advocacy journalist for Housing Is A Human Right, the housing advocacy division for AIDS Healthcare Foundation.)
