WASHINGTON D.C. —­­ Today, a coalition of civil society groups and trade associations issued a letter urging the Los Angeles Department of City Planning to ensure that its home-sharing regulations are narrowly crafted to address legitimate concerns without infringing on the property rights of homeowners.

The letter states:

Many cities are proposing and adopting ordinances aimed at restricting the property rights of individuals who may choose to temporarily rent out all, or portions, of their homes for a fee. Despite a lack of economic analysis about how home-sharing affects hotels or long-term rental housing for city residents, your Department of City Planning is rushing to restrict home-sharing. Worse still, while the proposed ordinance ostensibly targets the purported problem of homeowners listing multiple properties on house-sharing platforms, in practice, it will disproportionately infringe on the rights of the very property owners that the ordinance purports to protect.

For centuries, Anglo-American tradition has recognized that the home, however modest, is a castle,” said Teddy Tanzer, Policy Fellow at TechFreedom. “Surely that should include the right to rent out a spare room, or the entire home, when you’re away. Of course, homesharing poses challenges for regulators, but rules should be narrowly tailored to address legitimate concerns without infringing on property rights. L.A.’s proposed rules are intended to target full-time hosts with multiple listings, but such hosts make up only a small subset of the Airbnb users who would be affected. If the City wants to root out so-called ‘illegal hotels,’ they can do so without a dragnet that hurts all home-sharers and their customers.”

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We can be reached for comment at media@techfreedom.org. See more of our work on the sharing economy, including:

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TechFreedom is a non-profit, non-partisan technology policy think tank. We work to chart a path forward for policymakers towards a bright future where technology enhances freedom, and freedom enhances technology.

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