There are storms brewing all across the Golden State, and the consequences for homeowners, families and public safety will be vast — negatively impacting Californians’ quality of life and even our public safety.
This battle has been simmering between investors who seek to set up lucrative short-term rentals — properties rented for less than 30 days, often for 2-3 nights to total strangers — against the wishes of longtime residents and families permanently living in communities who will have their lives disrupted and their public safety knowingly placed at risk.
Studies have shown communities that allow short-term rentals to come into their neighborhoods witness spikes in violent crime such as rapes, robberies, various sexual assaults and even murders, according to Bloomberg News, Yahoo! and WIRED magazine. The publications report that “violent offenses rose in neighborhoods where homes were converted into short-term rentals.”
Homeowners are starting to wake up and fight back against this potential public safety hazard — but that hasn’t stopped some out-of-town (or out-of-state) investors from fighting aggressively to overturn city ordinances banning short-term rentals for their own financial gain. In communities such as Oxnard and Ventura, investors viciously fought homeowners associations, filed expensive lawsuits and pushed cities to cancel the bans — in most cases succeeding — while leaving behind bitterly divided, bankrupt, divided homeowners associations in their wake. They appear to be attempting to gain the same footholds into Southern California beach communities as well.
The California Property Rights Association is urging the leaders not to abandon their duties to adhere to local governance and legal precedence on the issue and not to cave in to the pressure from out-of-town investors who seek to forever change the landscapes of our communities. Leaders must uphold their duties to protect individual property rights and perhaps even more importantly, to protect public safety.