Chicago City Wire

The Liberty Justice Center has filed a lawsuit against the City of Chicago for its new ordinance that targets home-sharers by levying fines, new taxes and other potential punitive measures for renting homes to non-residents.

“The only regulations should be things designed to protect the public’s health, safety and welfare, and we already have rules that do that,” Jacob H. Huebert, the director of litigation at the Liberty Justice Center, said. “So, I don't think you need special rules to restrict home-sharing. The city should just have a framework that makes it easy for people to do home-sharing.”

The new rules would establish fines of up to $3,000 per day, an additional 2 percent surcharge on Airbnb and other home-sharing services, random and unlimited home inspections by the city, and possible noise violations for any levels above “average conversational levels.”

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel

The rules, however, would not apply to hotels. 

“Obviously, the hotel industry’s lobbyists have a lot of influence, and I think that played a major role in what the city council did in enacting the city’s home-sharing ordinance,” Huebert said. “There are things in [the ordinance] that don’t serve any purpose related to [the] public’s health or safety, but [they] do serve to protect hotels from competition from home-sharing.”

The ordinance comes despite home-sharing’s positive impact on Chicago’s economy. A recent study by Airbnb claims that its economic impact on the Windy City totaled approximately $77 million in 2017, which is up from $49 million in 2015. Hosts housed approximately 500,000 guests, which spent roughly $171 per day in 2017. 

Attorneys for the city have argued that home-sharing has a negative effect on the housing market, Huebert said. Additionally, it will make housing unaffordable and property values could also go down because home-sharers will not take proper care of their properties.

“I think, in general, home-sharing would improve neighborhoods because… if you are trying to attract customers to your place, you are going to have to take care of it,” Huebert said. “It should be a good thing for having homes well-maintained. I suppose that will increase property values for the people that have them, but I don’t see that as a bad thing.”

Mayor Rahm Emanuel also wants to use the taxes against home-sharing services to pay for a 50 percent increase in shelter capacity and support services for domestic violence victims. Huebert believes this is unfair because it targets specific members of the community to provide services for the entire city.

“There’s no reason why a particular industry or particular homeowners should be singled out to pay a tax to fund something,” he said. “If there are things the government should be funding, why shouldn't that money just come from taxpayers generally and the burden be borne evenly?”