Airbnb "praised rules adopted in New Orleans"

In a better world, this would be the first sign something is amiss.

Still, Airbnb decided to cooperate with limits on home-sharing implemented in London and Amsterdam, and dropped a lawsuit challenging fines against people who post apartments in New York that were illegally converted to short-term rentals.

It also praised rules adopted in New Orleans, which limit room rentals to 90 days per year in non-owner-occupied homes, and allow website registrations to be passed through to city enforcers to make sure they’re on the level.

For Rhiannon Enlil, 34, the reforms didn’t come soon enough to stop her eviction from an apartment not far from New Orleans’s French Quarter, whose bars, music venues and restaurants attract tourists from across the globe. Her landlord said he wanted her two-bedroom apartment to rent out on the web. Enlil, a bartender, has been living with her boyfriend since June.

The "reforms didn't come soon enough." In fact nothing that will make a difference here has arrived or is expected any time soon.  If an apartment can be Airbnbed 90 days out of the year, that apartment is effectively off the local market.  Everybody knows this. Nobody says this for some reason. It's remarkable the things we'll tolerate around here. It's almost as if we've been conditioned to believe just living and working a minimal level lifestyle here is some sort of special privilege we don't deserve. 

“I’m deeply in love with New Orleans, and I will live in a refrigerator box under the highway in order to stay here,” Enlil said. “But there are a lot of people I know who are talking about how they can’t afford to live here anymore. They’re the very fiber of the city, like people in the service industry and people who are musicians, who don’t make a lot of money.”

Those boxes under the bridge are Airbnbing for $200 a night during Carnival.