The Tune ‘Sharing Economy’ Strikes a Familiar Note

Editor,

The marketing name for it is the “sharing economy,” but a popular country song from a few years back (about a cowboy’s divorce) better describes just how the “sharing economy” works when it comes to controversial short-term transient rentals like Airbnb, VRBO, and others.

The song is “She Got the Goldmine, I Got the Shaft” and while the whole issue of whether putting up a parade of total strangers under your roof is really a goldmine is another topic, the song title describes how the “sharing” part may not be so fair. In the case of the people operating unregulated, unpermitted short term rentals, while the “profit” may go to the person hosting the transients, many of the costs and impacts go to the immediate neighbors and to the rest of us in the city. And it’s the neighbors and the rest of the city that get the second part of the song title – we get the shaft.

While I’m sure there are perfectly nice, considerate folks who visit Laguna and pay to stay a few days in someone else’s home, there are also plenty who are here to party hardy and are less concerned about the fact that the neighbors may want to get a good night’s sleep because they have to get up in the morning and go to work, or that the neighbors would like their baby to be able to sleep through the night, or that the permanent, taxpaying neighbors may not appreciate the visitor’s innovative parking solutions, taste in music, or less than artistic beer can arrangements on the front lawn.

With 1,300 perfectly acceptable hotel rooms, Laguna has a long tradition of hosting paying guests, but over time, the best locations for housing visitors have been figured out and institutionalized with those pesky restrictions called zoning.

John Thomas, Laguna Beach