Jaime Roberts
1 min readMay 18, 2022

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I know the city of Los Angeles has made very strict laws against Airbnb for all the reasons you list. But I would say there are actually many good reasons for Airbnb that are being overlooked.

The single best way to deal with the housing crisis is to build accessory dwelling units or ADUs. The only problem with ADUs at this point is creating a financial incentive to build them. If people knew they could cover all their costs for building an ADU by renting it out as a short term rental more folks would build them. Then, folks could determine what makes more financial sense, short term rental, or long term rental.

Los Angeles has create laws limiting short term rentals while trying to promote long term rentals. This has had a cooling effect on building ADUs in the city. Anything encouraging more units be built should be promoted, no matter if they are long or short term rentals.

Perhaps instead of fighting Airbnbs, cities should partner with them to add more long term rentals in addition to short term. That would be a more equitable solution. I hate corporatism, but in this case it makes sense. Cities have been incompetent in creating afordable housing for low income people.

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Jaime Roberts
Jaime Roberts

Written by Jaime Roberts

Architect writing about environmental design in an age of climate change.

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