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Wednesday, January 31, 2024

The best bet is nothing will fundamentally change

It's been over a decade.That's a whole lot of holding out hope that our political leadership plans to do something about the exploitative violence of short term rental proliferation as soon as "the data comes in" or "the stakeholders"have their say, or a judge tells them what to do.

It's not clear when Lemelle might rule, or how he might come down. But more changes for the city's rules could be ahead. City Council leaders have threatened to pass an outright ban on residential short-term rentals if the latest law is ruled unconstitutional.

An ordinance to impose a ban was introduced by the council’s at-large members, Helena Moreno and JP Morrell, in September, within a week of Lemelle's restraining order. It has been repeatedly deferred as Lemelle has presided over hearings over the fall and winter.

The council members have said little about the proposal since introducing it. They declined comment for this article.

Blossom and others want more clarity on what comes next.

They threatened to do this really big thing and haven’t said anything since they threatened to do it — or promised to do it, depending on who you are — and nobody knows what to expect,” said Blossom, who supports the ban. “Are they going to follow through? Are they going to back down?”

The "really big thing" should have happened 15 years ago.  There comes a time when we have to understand these politicians all work for the landlords. If we want something big to happen, we aren't going to have their help getting it done.

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