Allen Johnson reminisces about a bygone era. The Faubourg Marigny resident remembers a time where neighbors all knew each other, sat out on their porches and chatted while walking their dogs.
“I would sit out on the balcony at night, and I would see people coming from the French Quarter going to their homes in the Bywater and in the Marigny,” Johnson said, adding that he could tell they were service industry workers: The dark-colored pants and white shirts were dead giveaways.
Johnson, a past president of the Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association (FMIA), said it’s just not like that anymore. And this isn’t a distant past. No idealized, romantic vision of The City That Care Forgot, like something out of “A Streetcar Named Desire” — this was 2016, the year before short-term rentals became legal in New Orleans.
“The explosion of short-term rentals in our neighborhood has pushed people out of the historic core, further and further away from their jobs, and we’ve been losing residents,” Johnson said. Short-term rentals (STRs) are any rental less than 30 days. They’re often advertised and rented through sites like Airbnb and Vrbo.
For some, short-term rentals can be a good thing, an easy way to help pay the mortgage or make some extra cash by renting out the other half of a double-shotgun. In a sense, STRs have been part of New Orleans real estate for decades. Before the apps and smartphones, homeowners took advantage of the tourism economy to make extra money and rent out a room for seasonal events like Mardi Gras or Halloween.
But when entire homes — in some cases, entire city blocks — are gobbled up by corporate or commercial entities, it can force out residents and families, driving up real estate prices and turning residential areas into small scale hotels. This in a city that has an affordable housing crisis and saw the steepest population decline, losing more than 45,000 residents, from 2020 to 2023.
The city is working to address the problem. But residents, Realtors and housing advocates are concerned about how effective or committed enforcement may be.
“I think before we can start talking about what works, the city needs to show that they can enforce it,” Johnson said. “There’s the old line with babies: The baby has to learn how to roll over, then crawl, then walk. They’ve wanted to go to Olympic sprinting.”
Some of the proposals to help address the problem include fining sites like Airbnb and Vrbo if they list properties that haven’t been licensed by the city. Right now, STRs are limited to one per square block. Property owners can apply for an exception, but it must be approved. But the city may suspend this exemption program as well, citing concerns over how the exemptions are granted.
“When STRs are allowed to proliferate without density restrictions or adequate safeguards, they have deleterious impacts on quality of life,” said City Councilmember JP Morrell, who proposed fining STR sites and ending the exemption program. “Entire city blocks have been transformed from long-term housing to hotels. The commercialization of residential spaces has displaced families when landowners decide an STR is more lucrative than a long-term tenant.”
Morrell said the problem is systemic. Both unpermitted and permitted STR “party houses” have been used for parties that ended in gunfire, he said. “When we look at the system as a whole, it is clear that to protect quality of life, we need strict regulations and robust enforcement.”
Echoing Johnson, Morrell said the commercialization of neighborhoods is very concerning to him.
“When you buy a home for your family, you do not expect your neighbor to be hosting a rowdy bachelorette party every weekend,” he said. “You expect you will at least know your neighbor’s name. But when your neighbor is essentially a small hotel, the constant rotation of people in and out inhibits the ability of residents to build communities.”
The most obvious impact of STRs, Morrell said, is with the availability of housing stock for single-family homes and rental units. New Orleans has a critical need for affordable housing and investor-purchased units reduce the number of potential homes for people who need them.
“Short-term rentals have become like a lot of the tourism economy,” said Andreanecia Morris, executive director for HousingNOLA, a 10-year partnership between the community leaders, and dozens of public, private and nonprofit organizations working to solve New Orleans’ affordable housing crisis. “Most of the direct benefits, most of the sales tax and other benefits, the financial benefits that the city can reap, instead of going back into the community, those funds are going back into the tourism industry.”
Morris said STR taxes should be invested in neighborhoods to create more affordable housing. She said there have been attempts to make this happen, but they’ve all fallen short. “It’s disappointing to say the least,” Morris said.
For Morris, STRs are an easy answer to a complicated question, noting they can be either a solution or a problem, depending on who you’re talking to.
“One big issue is that [STRs] distract from impactful solutions that could create more affordable housing,” Morris said. “People think, let’s just get rid of STRs and that will solve everything. When short-term rentals were virtually nonexistent in the first 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, evictions for Black women-headed households skyrocketed.”
There’s also the impact that STRs have on the housing market. Realtors say they’ve seen the impacts firsthand — both positive and negative.
“While perhaps it’s not the most popular opinion, I am very supportive of allowing property owners with a homestead exemption — meaning they are declaring this one property as their primary residence — the opportunity to earn income by renting out apartments on those properties,” said Michael Verderosa, Realtor and principal of the Historic 504 Properties Team with Latter & Blum.
Verderosa said he’s had multiple clients who were only able to afford home ownership because of the ability to rent out the other side of their double or a detached accessory dwelling unit, like a rear dependency unit, or a “mother-in-law cottage,” as a legal STR. “The option made homeownership viable for many who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford it,” he said.
Verderosa said he’s also had clients who bought a home as their primary residence believing they would have the revenue stream of an STR available to them. With that revenue stream cut off, they could no longer afford the homes they bought for themselves and their families and had to sell.
Verderosa, however, doesn’t support whole-home rentals, even with a homestead exemption, or corporate ownership of STRs in residential neighborhoods.
One thing is clear: The debate around STRs is far from over, but any solution proposed by the city must prioritize the well-being of New Orleans’ communities, making it possible for people to actually live here, not just pass through for Mardi Gras or a bachelor trip.
But more than that, they have to be actually enforced — or at least enforceable. Back out on his balcony in the Marigny, Allen Johnson points out illegally operating STRs.
“The numbers are astronomical, where two-thirds of the streets in the city are illegal,” he said. “It’s almost impossible, like a game of whack-a-mole, for city inspectors to enforce it.”
Drew Hawkins is a writer and journalist in New Orleans. He’s the health equity reporter in the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration among public radio stations in Louisiana (WWNO and WRKF), Alabama (WBHM) and Mississippi (MPB-Mississippi Public Broadcasting) and NPR. He’s also the producer and host of Micro, a LitHub podcast for short but powerful writing.
