Illegal Airbnbs are rampant—enforcement is lacking
By Jack Brownlee
Don Whitehead lives on South Sierra Bonita Avenue in Miracle Mile, and he has an issue with his neighbors. His problem isn’t a typical one, like early-morning mowers or dogs doing business on the lawn. Rather, he has an issue with the five-bedroom, $1,000-per-night Airbnb next door, which sees groups of 10, 12, as many as 16 guests coming and going each weekend. “It’s destroying my life,” he says. “It’s loud; it’s a party house!”
Not only is the Airbnb next door, named Casa Bonita Resort, loud and disruptive, Whitehead also believes it’s illegal. Per Los Angeles’ Home Sharing Ordinance, to legally run a short term rental, it must be your primary residence and you must live there for at least six months of the year. Whitehead never sees the owners, a husband and wife. The wife claims Casa Bonita as her primary residence while the husband claims a house in West Hollywood. His residence is also an Airbnb.
SIXTEEN MEN were seen by neighbors leaving Casa Bonita Resort, an Airbnb on South Sierra Bonita Avenue.
Whitehead’s neighbors tell him they do indeed live there for six months, just not consecutively. He is skeptical. “This husband and wife…is moving in on Tuesday and leaving on Thursday for six months out of the whole year?” he asks. “Yeah, sure.” The owners did not return a request for comment.
To help implement the HSO, L.A. has hired a government contractor called Granicus to keep track of compliance data. Granicus reported in early 2026 that about 57% of STRs in the city were non-compliant. In December 2025, they reported 5,160 noncompliant STRs out of the approximately 9,000 STRs total in L.A., all with known addresses. Despite having this information available, Los Angeles only issued 15 citations that month—a rate of 0.3%.
Better Neighbors Los Angeles reports that L.A. is collecting $95,000 annually in HSO non-compliance fines. If they properly investigated and cited each violation, that number would skyrocket to $850 million in annual revenue for the city.
This discrepancy exists because there is no one assigned to enforce this law. LAPD and City Council representatives state this is a matter for the City Planning Department, which has jurisdiction over the HSO and STR regulation. However, the City Planning Department does not have the ability to enforce laws. This leaves noncompliant STRs in a legislative no-man’s-land, with laws against them but no one to hold them accountable. And nobody is really trying to, either.
As a corporation, Airbnb plays a major role in Los Angeles city politics. It regularly makes generous donations to local and state politicians. One of its primary lobbyists, Justin Wesson, is the son of former L.A. City Council President Herb Wesson. And recently, Airbnb spent millions on a local campaign called “Save Our Services,” which argued in favor of loosening STR restrictions so that more tourists could rent them during the upcoming World Cup, Super Bowl, and Olympics.
In late April, Mayor Karen Bass put forth a measure that would open an additional 5,500 STRs in the city. Hotel workers unions and affordable housing groups fiercely opposed the addition, as did City Councilmembers Bob Blumenfield and Nithya Raman. It is worth noting that, on May 8, a PAC led by Airbnb donated $999,000 to Bass’ reelection campaign.
As Los Angeles faces a housing crisis, however, Airbnbs and other STRs have come under criticism in recent years. Studies of the L.A. housing market by Harvard and McGill Universities find that STRs have raised average rents by $810 yearly and have significantly reduced the affordable housing supply, resulting in 5,000 extra people experiencing homelessness. And when the house next door is bought and peddled as a “resort,” like Casa Bonita, homeowners nearby see property values drop.
A spokesperson for Airbnb said the recent push against Airbnbs and other STRs is the result of hotel industry lobbying. They also mentioned that Airbnb meets regularly with an enforcement group at the City Planning Department to ensure any illegal Airbnbs are taken down. When asked, however, City Planning was unaware of such a group existing. “City Planning is not an enforcement agency,” said a spokesperson for the department. “We have no inspectors on our staff.”
Whitehead has been screaming into the void for years now. He has tried to meet with his City Council representative, Katy Yaroslavsky, who has repeatedly declined to talk. He, along with every homeowner adjacent to the Airbnb, signed a petition alleging that the homeowners have hardly been present over the past several years and sent it off to City Council, City Planning, and other departments to no avail. Yaroslavsky’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
The proliferation of illegal STRs is wreaking havoc on Los Angeles’ housing market and disrupting lives. It isn’t an issue of manpower or legislation. It’s that nobody in city government is doing anything about it and nobody seems to want to.
Category: Real Estate
