Editor,
I am replying to Billy Fried’s May 29th glowing endorsement of home sharing.
Billy, you open your “kibitz” portraying yourself as an open-minded world traveler who supports family, intimacy, and culture but you reveal a disdain for the democratic process. You state, “Public commentary… vilified the practice” of home sharing. So, it appears, you also disdain the public, which is entitled to its opinions and has been adversely affected by home sharing.
Let me ask you, Billy, why should my peace be disturbed so my neighbor can make a killing? What possible benefit do I have when my neighbor leaves his home in the hands of a stranger?
Furthermore, quit pulling that same revenue card about “opportunities that bring thousands more shoppers to our city to patronize our restaurants” and “temporary occupancy tax”. I don’t give (expletive deleted) about more tax revenue. A vast majority of residents are adversely effected by “thousands more shoppers”. I, like most residents, do not own a business, which will benefit from more crowds, more trash, more congestion, more noise, and more pollution. I am in the majority; a resident who wants a safe, quiet, and peaceful community. I, like the majority, want to know who my neighbors are.
More shoppers may mean more needed revenue, but they also contributed to the city’s increasing expenses.
Do quiet locals require the resources of the police to break up bar fights, arrest shoplifters, or investigate merchant fraud? I’m not leaving piles of trash, diapers, cigarette butts, condoms, and junk around for our increasingly taxed city workers to clean up. I’m not calling paramedics because I broke my ankle in my stilettos or crashed my Lambo and bruised my ego.
No. I, like most of us, am at home getting ready for work the next day so I can live in this quickly eroding paradise where I have to pay for beautification projects, which will make this city more attractive to outsiders.
Billy, I am grateful the city council is against home sharing. They should be because this is supposed to be a representative government and the voice of the residents, which you so disrespect, has spoken.
Michael Rybah, Laguna Beach
