On any given day, about 500 rentals in Highland Park, Eagle Rock and Mount Washington are on offer through Airbnb and other short-term rental sites.
New rules proposed in September by the City Planning Commission could affect many of them.
The proposed rules, if approved by the City Council, would limit short term rentals to primary residences, defined as a home where the host lives at least six months of the year. That would stop investors and corporations from buying up properties for the purpose of renting them out short term. An analysis by the Boulevard Sentinel in June found that nearly a third of hosts in Eagle Rock had multiple properties listed for short-term rent, which suggests they are not people who rent out their homes for extra money but rather investors who run vacation-rental businesses in a residential area.
Initially, the proposed rules would let hosts rent their homes (including rooms in their homes or guest houses on their properties) for a total of 120 nights a year. But hosts could get permission to exceed the cap, up to 365 nights a year, if they meet certain criteria, including having no nuisance violations from the city.
The proposed rules would also let people living in rent-stabilized apartments engage in short term rentals, but those rentals would be capped at 120 days of year with no possibility of extension. Tenant advocates had pushed for a ban on short-term rentals of rent-stabilized apartments as a way to ensure that such apartments are preserved for people who really need them.
The proposed rules could still change, because the City Council must vet and vote on them before they become law. If approved, the new rules would take effect in July.
T.A. Hendrickson, a native of Eagle Rock, is the editor of the Boulevard Sentinel and a former member of the Editorial Board of the New York Times.
In 2007, I wrote a story for the Boulevard Sentinel regarding the Chicano mural on Meridian avenue and Avenue 56 that had been hit with far too much graffiti. One could not believe the lies and other crap I had to deal with from both Huizar and his staff when it came to them telling me why they could not afford to fix it (despite the fact that the city paid a Long Beach artist $180,000 around the same time to create a piece of artwork that was completed and set to be displayed at the Hollenbeck Police Station but never was due to it being deemed “offensive” by members of the Boyle Heights latino community). I predicted in a follow-up 2007 story that Huizar had no intentions on ever fixing the mural unless “re-election time was right around the corner”. Many readers did contact his office demanding the mural be fixed and yet, his cowardly response in the December 2007 issue of the Sentinel was to “take it up with AT&T since it’s their building”). He would finally end up fixing the mural in 2011…..just weeks prior to Election Day. The Boulevard Sentinel would mentioned my prediction in a 2011 issue.
Since then, Huizar has unsurprisingly made the news for the wrong reasons. He has fooled around with an intern behind his wife’s back, he has practically given the finger to the supporters of the Southwest Museum while favoring the wealthier Gene Autry museum, and now he is the subject of a harassment investigation, all this while continuing to turn his back towards the hard working Latinos who continue to fall victim to both rising rents and gentrification in the neighborhoods he serves, including Highland Park and his own hometown of Boyle Heights.
And yet despite all of the above that has happened, this clown (who along with Antonio Villaraigosa make up the “Dumb and Dumber” of Los Angeles Latino politicians) has continued to get reelected time and time again. If the latino community feels that it is that important for a Latino to represent them, then these members of the community deserve no pity when it is their turn to fall victim to both gentrification and rising rents during the remainder of his final term.
One cannot imagine how much I wait for that day in 2020 when Huizar is no longer associated with LA City politics. Still, God help us all if his wife ends up being just as bad and corrupt as him, should she end up being elected in 2020.