Cities Tighten Short-Term Rental Rules as Airbnb Pushes Back

Cities across the country continue tightening restrictions on short-term rentals, with Los Angeles strictly enforcing a primary-residence rule that requires hosts to live in the property they rent out for at least six months a year, while capping unhosted rentals at 120 days annually and imposing fines of up to $2,000 a day for violations.

Jersey City has taken a similarly restrictive approach, limiting eligibility to hosting only to property owners, capping unhosted stays at 60 nights per year, and requiring a permit application with associated fees before a listing can go live. New York City's Local Law 18, enforced since 2023, has already reduced Airbnb and Vrbo listings in the city by roughly 70%, a decline other cities are watching closely as a model, or a cautionary tale, depending on perspective.

The pattern holds broadly across popular tourist destinations: cities increasingly require platforms like Airbnb to share host data and remove non-compliant listings, and enforcement has generally correlated with how much a given destination struggles to balance tourism revenue against local housing affordability concerns.

Airbnb has continued to push back against some of the more restrictive ordinances through litigation and lobbying, arguing the rules unfairly target short-term rental hosts while doing little to address underlying housing shortages driven by broader supply constraints.