The California State Assembly is considering at least two dangerous bills related to the 2028 Olympics. AB 1953 would remove local restrictions on short-term rentals (think Airbnb, VRBO, etc.) for “special events” like the Olympics, opening up our region to rampant displacement of long-term tenants to make way for high-paying tourists. Join us in opposing this bill by submitting a letter to the California Legislature Position Letter Portal as soon as possible. Here’s our letter explaining why we say NO! to AB 1953. (Learn why we also oppose AB 2411 here.)
April 10, 2026
Re: Opposition to AB 1953 (Short-term rentals: emergencies and special events)
To the California State Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, and Tourism and Committee on Emergency Management,
We write in strong opposition to AB 1953 “Short-term rentals: Emergencies and special events.” AB 1953 incentivizes evictions and erodes democracy, all in the name of addressing a non-existent problem.
NOlympics LA is a growing coalition of over 40 LA and Southern California organizations that advocate and organize around housing and homelessness, policing, environmental justice, immigration, and the rights of informal economy workers. We oppose the Olympics coming to LA because hosting mega-events creates and intensifies multiple risks to poor, working-class, and racialized Angelenos, imperiling our coalition members’ work to build a more just Los Angeles.
AB 1953 pretends to be a solution to a problem that does not actually exist. Research shows that the Olympic Games, the “special event” specifically mentioned in this bill, does not consistently increase tourism levels, even during the period of the event. Tourists and business travelers who might otherwise visit but do not want to deal with Olympic chaos avoid the city, creating a tourism displacement effect. For example, economists found that hotel occupancy rates around the 1996 Atlanta and 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics showed no significant difference from the corresponding months in non-Olympic years.[1]
More worryingly, AB 1953 would incentivize landlords to evict long-term tenants to make way for more lucrative short-term rental stays. Currently, local governments lack the resources to enforce short-term rental regulations and ensure that landlords do not convert long-term rental units into short-term rentals. The answer to this problem is not to remove or override local regulations, as AB 1953 proposes, but to provide the resources for municipalities to protect tenants. Loopholes to existing tenant protections like the Ellis Act allow landlords to displace tenants in stadium-adjacent neighborhoods en masse, as is already happening near Exposition Park in South Central LA. Ellis Act enforcement is too weak and under-funded to prevent landlords from converting newly vacant units into short-term rentals. AB 1953 will accelerate displacement and the conversion of affordable community neighborhoods into luxury vacation destinations.
The incentives for landlords to replace long-term housing with short-term housing will be particularly high in Los Angeles, where local business and political leaders openly plan to host as many sports mega-events as possible going forward. The “special event periods” are left undefined in this bill. There is no limit to how many of these states of exception can be declared, or what criteria an event has to meet to be declared a “special event period” besides the Office of Tourism’s discretion. This means that this law could effectively suspend a city’s regulations so often that the regulations become meaningless.
As a result, this law would restrict cities from using regulations that Californians democratically decided would benefit our communities. We cannot exempt mega-events like the Olympics from following the regulations our communities have already determined they need to keep us safe and housed. A four-week party for the wealthy cannot come at the expense of working-class tenants.
Stop trying to use homes as hotels for short-term events and start working on the permanent public housing that California actually needs. We strongly urge you to reject AB 1953.
Sincerely,
The NOlympics LA coalition
Footnotes:
[1] Philip K. Porter and Deborah Fletcher, “The Economic Impact of the Olympic Games: Ex Ante Predictions and Ex Poste Reality,” Journal of Sport Management, 2008,
https://media.clemson.edu/economics/data/sports/Stadiums%20and%20Econ%20Impact/Porter%20Olympic%20G;
SAJE, “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t: The risks to LA of hosting or withdrawing from the 2028 Olympics,” 2026. https://www.saje.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Olympics-Report-FINAL-2.4.26.pdf