Philadelphia is cracking down on unlicensed short-term rental operators who host on online platforms, potentially shuttering a couple thousand properties.
. “They’re going to have to go back to hotels, where it’s so expensive. How are they going to cook? How are they going to do laundry?”The city estimates that 85% of the properties reviewed by L&I are unlicensed, or between 1,500 and 1,700 rentals. Industry advocates say the number is as high as 2,500. The agency did not have a count of how many properties had been delisted, although Patterson and several other hosts interviewed by The Inquirer hadn’t received warnings yet.
, as the city reached out to online platforms to secure the addresses of rental properties listed on their platforms. Now they are putting that information to use. But Squilla noted that his law passed in June 2021, and its implementation was delayed twice because of the protests of industry advocates. Even after the new rules officially went into effect at the beginning of this year, it’s taken until late July for the city to actually begin cracking down.