Mid-City Messenger – Economist Jay Brinkmann: short-term rentals will ‘fundamentally damage the character of our city’

August 24, 2016
Sandra Stokes, president of Louisiana Landmarks Society, points to a well-quoted statistic from the website Inside Airbnb, which attempts to track the number of short-term rentals being occupied with Airbnb in various cities that lack such data elsewhere. As she wrote in a letter to Robert Rivers, the director of the City Planning Commission, even though short-term rentals are largely illegal already, whole house rentals comprise 72 percent of the ones available in New Orleans, according to InsideAirbnb.com. “The citizens of New Orleans have an expectation that they will be able to live in the neighborhoods they grew up in, and also live close to where they work,” Stokes wrote. “What we’ve seen over the past few years are investors purchasing available properties and converting them into de facto hotels versus providing homes for residents. The diversity and equity of our neighborhoods is in rapid decline.”…
Source: http://midcitymessenger.com/2016/08/23/economist-jay-brinkmann-short-term-rentals-will-fundamentally-damage-the-character-of-our-city/