Outraged California residents successfully petitioned to ban short term rentals in their neighborhood after reaching the breaking point with partying neighbors.

Andy Oliver, 50, formed a coalition to end un-hosted rentals in his Long Beach neighborhood when a shooting victim staying at a rental next door crawled into his home seeking shelter on January 2.

He launched the Long Beach Neighborhood Coalition and began petitioning in his census block group to restrict un-hosted short-term rentals in the College Estates section of their neighborhood.

Members of the group spoke at a city council meeting in April, where officials voted to start looking at increasing restrictions on short-term rentals.

‘Imagine that you buy your dream home and then all of a sudden, your next-door neighbor turns his house into an Airbnb. You spend over a year putting up with loud parties, marijuana smoke wafting into your vents, film shoots, hourly rentals, strangers coming in and out all the time and many other issues,’ Oliver said.

Outraged California residents successfully petitioned to ban short term rentals in their neighborhood

Airbnb rentals in the quaint neighborhood of College Estates range from $179 to $433 per night. Pictured: a $433 per night rental in the College Estates neighborhood

‘Then on a sunny Tuesday morning with children playing outside, a 21-year-old renter who is targeted from this Airbnb is chased by a masked gunman and shot right in your front porch.’

‘The victim jumps your fence, tries to bust in your house seeking protection, spilling his blood all over your property. Your house is turned into a crime scene, you miss work, families are forever traumatized and then new renters come in that very same night,’ said Oliver.

Melissa Rakiey said renters staying at her neighbor’s Airbnb often block her driveway and threaten residents.

‘On March 16, customers of the short term rental hosted a birthday party which escalated and resulted in the Long Beach PD breaking up a party of 52 people in a three bedroom house,’ Rakiey said.

‘The Airbnb brought into my neighborhood a large group of hoodlums, flushed them into the streets with open containers, smoking weed and racing cars.’

Melissa Rakiey (pictured) said renters staying at her neighbor’s Airbnb often block her driveway and threaten residents

On Friday, Oliver was informed his petition had passed. According to the Long Beach Community Development Department of the 735 petitions delivered, 375 came back signed, meaning it passed with 51 percent support. 

‘I don’t have the final count, but there are something like 755 homes, and we just got enough signatures,’ Oliver told the Los Angeles Times.

‘I heard it was close and I don’t have confirmation of the final vote, but I was informed [last week] that we succeeded.’ 

‘There were two previous petition drives that failed, so I wasn’t sure if we would have success,’ he said. 

Now there are eight other census tract block groups with pending petitions to ban un-hosted short-term rentals through out Long Beach. 

Long Beach banned un-hosted short-term rentals in 2020, but loosened restrictions to allow people to use their second properties as Airbnbs. Pictured: College Estates Neighborhood

According to the Community Development Department there are 626 non-primary short-term rentals registered in the city. Pictured: a $350 per night rental on the border of the College Estates neighborhood

Airbnb rentals in the quaint neighborhood of College Estates range from $179 to $433 per night.

Long Beach banned un-hosted short-term rentals in 2020, but loosened restrictions to allow people to use their second properties as Airbnbs.

According to the Community Development Department there are 626 non-primary short-term rentals registered in the city.

Jean Young, 67, is one of those short-term rental owners who told the LA Times she understands the backlash from the shooting at Oliver’s home but would be sad to lose the ability to earn money from her rental.

‘I’m a part-time writer, and the income from rentals just smooths out the rough edges and has been wonderful,’ she said.

‘My son has since moved on to college and my mother passed away, so there’s all this room in my house to share. It would be sad to lose that ability.’ 

California could soon deploy generative artificial intelligence tools to help reduce traffic jams, make roads safer and provide tax guidance, among other things, under new agreements announced Thursday as part of Governor Gavin Newsom’s efforts to harness the power of new technologies for public services.

The state is partnering with five companies to create generative AI tools using technologies developed by tech giants such as Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google- and Amazon-backed Anthropic that would ultimately help the state provide better services to the public, administration officials said.

“It is a very good sign that a lot of these companies are putting their focus on using GenAI for governmental service delivery,” said Amy Tong, secretary of government operations for California.

The companies will start a six-month internal trial in which state workers test and evaluate the tools. The companies will be paid $1 for their proposals. The state, which faces a significant budget deficit, can then reassess whether any tools could be fully implemented under new contracts. All the tools are considered low risk, meaning they don’t interact with confidential data or personal information, an administration spokesperson said.

Newsom, a Democrat, touts California as a global hub for AI technology, noting 35 of the world’s top 50 AI companies are located in the state. He signed an executive order last year requiring the state to start exploring responsible ways to incorporate generative AI by this summer, with a goal of positioning California as an AI leader.

In January, the state started asking technology companies to come up with generative AI tools for public services. Last month, California was one of the first states to roll out guidelines on when and how state agencies could buy such tools.

Generative AI, a branch of AI that can create new content such as text, audio and photos, has significant potential to help government agencies become more efficient, but there’s also an urgent need for safeguards to limit risks, state officials and experts said. In New York City, an AI-powered chatbot created by the city to help small businesses was found to dole out false guidance and advise companies to violate the law. The rapidly growing technology has also raised concerns about job losses, misinformation, privacy and automation bias.

While state governments are struggling to regulate AI in the private sector, many are exploring how public agencies can leverage the powerful technology for public good. California’s approach, which also requires companies to disclose what large language models they use to develop AI tools, is meant to build public trust, officials said.

The state’s testing of the tools and collecting of feedback from state workers are some of the best practices to limit potential risks, said Meredith Lee, chief technical adviser for the University of California-Berkeley’s College of Computing, Data Science and Society. The challenge is determining how to assure continued testing and learning about the tools’ potential risks after deployment.

“This is not something where you just work on testing for some small amount of time and that’s it,” Lee said. “Putting in the structures for people to be able to revisit and better understand the deployments further down the line is really crucial.”

The California Department of Transportation is looking for tools that would analyze traffic data and come up with solutions to reduce highway traffic and make roads safer. The state’s Department of Tax and Fee Administration, which administers more than 40 programs, wants an AI tool to help its call center cut wait times and call length. The state is also seeking technologies to provide non-English speakers information about health and social services benefits in their languages and to streamline the inspection process for health care facilities.

The tools are to be designed to assist state workers, not replace them, said Nick Maduros, director of the Department of Tax and Fee Administration.

Call center workers there took more than 660,000 calls last year. The state envisions the AI technology listening along to those calls and pulling up specific tax code information associated with the problems callers describe. Workers could decide whether to use the information.

Currently, call center workers have to simultaneously listen to the call and manually look up the code, Maduros said.

“If it turns out it doesn’t serve the public better, then we’re out $1,” Maduros said. “And I think that’s a pretty good deal for the citizens of California.”

Tong wouldn’t say when a successfully vetted tool would be deployed, but added that the state was moving as fast as it can.

“The whole essence of using GenAI is it doesn’t take years,” Tong said. “GenAI doesn’t wait for you.”