Airbnb Economic Trends

Will the Trump-era prove harmful to landlords? Having sympathy for the wealthy, while pushing their real estate schemes in a downward direction.

Reviewer Rob

Mission Beach, above the seagulls.
Mission Beach, above the seagulls. From the article in the Union Tribune.

According to this article in the UT, under a new San Diego city council action, Airbnb short-term rentals of whole homes there will be limited to “one’s primary residence only for up to six months out of the year. While there had been a move afoot to consider exempting the Mission Beach rentals that had been paying required transient occupancy taxes to the city, the council majority was unwilling to legislate any waivers.”

Many landlords are worried that this will diminish profits to the point where they would have to consider selling.

So sad. Let us pity the wealthy. It would be tragic if they had to sell their investment properties at a loss and then the new owners reduced the rents to a market rate that re-attracted artists and other working class people who had the time then to be creative and have and actual life instead of working to pay a rent that was more than fifty percent of their monthly take-home pay.

If this new ordinance does what it sounds like it’ll do, that is, regulate in a downward direction the growing AirB&B trend in San Diego and especially the beach areas, then GREAT. Anything to slow and possibly REVERSE the rising rents in that sunny Southern Californian community. The great and political collusion among the landlord classes there is stunning and unabated.

Perhaps it’s too much to ask that, nationwide, the municipal zoning laws return with the form of rent control seen in the post-New Deal era that led to cold-water flats in New York City being rented out to working class off-broadway actors for $28 per-month that persisted under the radar until this past March. But if it does then all the better. The arts are dying because of the rental economy. It’s time for the wrestling match to see a reversal.

Leave a Reply