by Dave Duricy
Home is a place of safety and rest. Home is a place to plan the future and raise a family. AirBnB, and any other corporate STR (Short-Term Rental), is a business.
AirBnB can turn a home into a bunkhouse, a party house, a no-tell motel, a drug den, or worse. A family buying a house in a residential zone has a reasonable expectation not to be neighbored by any of those businesses. AirBnB abuses that expectation, and, as experience and academic studies have shown, deteriorates neighborhoods.
We live in Highland Park. Highland Park sits in the middle of three schools: Highland Elementary, Wilson, and Hamilton High. We have many families. Their kids walk to school, set up lemonade and slushie stands in the summer, and they play outside riding bikes and playing ball. Those kids deserve the same safe neighbors from one day to the next. Those kids deserve all the residential protections their parents bought into when they bought a home in Highland Park.
Help keep your Highland Park home safe. Support the ban of short-term rentals.