The Issues

Reducing Rental Housing.

Converting homes to tourist accommodations often takes long term housing off the rental market. Santa Cruz already has very low housing availability. Low availability drives rent prices up.  We need to preserve rental housing for the 56% of Santa Cruz residents who are tenants. 

The Majority Loses.

There are 65,000 people in the city of Santa Cruz and 572 Short Term Rentals. The financial desires of this tiny minority should not supersede the interests of the majority to have real neighborhoods free from deregulation and commercial hotel units in homes.

Aren't Airbnb Hosts Making Extra Cash?

Airbnb likes to tell the world that its hosts are individuals just renting out a room in their house to make a little extra cash.  The truth is that 89% of their revenue comes from un-hosted whole house rentals. Almost 80% of the short term rentals in Santa Cruz are whole house rentals.
Turning Neighborhoods into Tourist Districts.

For decades the city zoning districts have reserved the residential neighborhoods for locals and the commercial districts (Ocean Street, Mission Street, and the beach area) for tourists. This way the two uses support each other. Tourists use our commercial districts for recreation. The residential districts are reserved for people to live and raise a family. Airbnb is commercializing our residential districts. They are taking housing off the market and putting hotels in the neighborhoods. How bad has it become? Take a look at the maps.

Airbnb encourages income inequality.

Local hotels, hostels, and bed and breakfasts provide jobs for locals in reception, housekeeping, reservations, food service, and maintenance.  These are predominantly medium and low wage jobs for Santa Cruz residents.  The more tourists use Airbnb the local hotels loose occupancy, and they reduce worker hours. The money that would have gone to the hotel now goes to the owner of an Airbnb property.  With the high cost of purchasing property in Santa Cruz the proceeds from Airbnb go to the 1%.


Airbnbs are Defunding our Schools.

Our local schools are funded based on enrollment. As property owners convert housing to hotels more families lose their housing and leave the city. Every child that leaves the city reduces the funding of our schools. There are roughly 572 short term rentals in the city (April, 2017). If we lost just one child from half of those units that would amount to a $3,000,000 loss for local schools. Airbnb also takes long term rentals off the market and that drives up rents. This makes it hard for teachers to live here.

Unsustainable Growth Rate.

There is currently a moratorium on registering a whole house short term rental in the city.  Even with the moratorium in place there are 5 new Airbnbs being listed every week.  As recently as 2104 there were only 45 short term rentals in the city.  Today, three years later there are over 500. This level of growth is unsustainable and will reduce our rental housing stock.


More Losers Than Winners.

Airbnb does produce a handful of winners: property owners who double or triple their income by renting by the night. However, the rest of us are losers. Neighbors lose friends and get a revolving door of people on vacation. Workers at local hotels lose. Schools lose as family housing is turned into tourist accommodations. Tenants lose as the number of rental shrink driving up prices and reducing choice in the marketplace. See an expanded list of who loses here.


We are Going Backwards on Housing.

The city has three planning documents that have already decided the core values and goals for housing. They talk about preserving residential neighborhoods, and conserving rental housing. In the last three years 246 new housing units were created in the city. That's good news until you realize in those same 3 years 263 new short term rentals were permited. That means we actually lost housing units.

Post A Flyer

Are there Airbnb rentals in your neighborhood?

Do you live in a part of town where there are lots of tourists?

Education is the key to helping people understand the true costs of property owners turning residential rentals into hotels.


Click on the flyer to print and post it in your neighborhood.

Help educate others about preserving our neighborhoods for neighbors.


What else can you do?

-Don't use Airbnb when you travel.
-Tell your friends not to use Airbnb when they travel.
-Send a letter to the City Council. Tell them to stop Airbnb.
-Attend a City Council meeting and tell them enough is enough.

Unfairbnb printable flyer
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