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Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Nobody actually lives in the French Quarter

The French Quarter is a Neighborhood

The city announced a first round of citation hearings for violations of the new STR law. They're starting in the Quarter which is both the easiest and most difficult neighborhood to deal with. It's the easiest because it's where the violators are easiest to find.  Simply put, if you're in the Quarter (except on one short stretch of Bourbon St.) and you're Airbnbing your place, you are breaking the law. So far the city has found ten violations.
Of those 10 properties, two owners have mailing addresses in California, one in Fort Worth, Texas, and four in Louisiana outside New Orleans.

Some of the properties continue to be listed on short-term rental websites, said Jennifer Cecil, director of the city’s One Stop permitting center.
Recently the T-P also noted that some of the violators continue to be listed on Airbnb's website despite the companies agreement to begin taking such listings down.  Of course there's no mechanism in place to cite Airbnb for violations so we'll just have to depend on their good word that they'll get it in gear eventually.

Meanwhile, enforcement in the Quarter is also the most difficult since this is where one imagines the first lawsuits over the law itself are likely to emerge.  If some out of state investor, or sovereign wealth fund, or criminal front,  or  rich asshole with a pied-a-terre is going to court over their god-given right to profit maximization it's going to happen over one of these Quarter properties.  Which one, though?

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