Airbnb says it’s enacting new measures to crack down on unauthorized parties ahead of New Year’s celebrations this weekend.
The short-term rental company has banned one-night bookings of entire home listings for guests without a positive account history or no previous bookings at all.
It’s something Airbnb has done over past holiday weekends and follows its announcement this summer that its temporary ban on “disruptive parties and events,” instituted in 2020, would become permanent.
Parties are a common concern among the neighbors of Airbnb hosts. A quick search on Airbnb’s website shows there are over a thousand homes in Charlotte available to book.
Mike Sullivan of CharlotteEAST isn’t satisfied by Airbnb’s new policy, which he says “has no teeth in it whatsoever.”
But he thinks the responsibility lies with the city to do more to limit the number of Airbnbs through the use of zoning laws.
“You wouldn’t allow me to operate a store in the middle of my neighborhood because that use isn’t allowed in our zoning,” Sullivan said. “Why the heck do you allow a hotel to operate in the middle of our neighborhood?”
An early draft of the Unified Development Ordinance that Charlotte City Council passed in August included language that limited the use of short-term rentals, but it didn’t make it into the final ordinance.
The Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department says that calls for service always spike around the holidays when more parties are occurring and that they respond to disturbances if there is a criminal or safety issue.