Is tourism destroying NoLA’s neighborhoods?
23rd April 2018 · 0 Comments
By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer
Residents complain that tourists treat New Orleans’ historic neighborhoods like an “Adult Disneyland.” Watching their “quality of life” deteriorate, many long-time African-American inhabitants of the Faubourgs around the French Quarter have moved out. Others have chosen to fight back.
As over-commercialization seemingly destroys the very character of historic neighborhoods; as Vieux Carre residents contend with street-swallowing “ghost tours,” all-night parties, and an ever increasing tide of tourists; and as online “Short Term Rentals” threaten to convert of the surrounding centuries-old neighborhoods into little more than sprawling hotels, making rents and assessments unaffordable to locals, calls have come for the New Orleans City Council to take action.
Leading this preservationist fight is Meg Lousteau, Executive Director of VCPORA, the Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents & Associates. In an interview with The Louisiana Weekly, she express-ed little surprise that residents of historical districts demand change. “When people feel like they don’t have any recourse, when they feel like the government has not done its job of protecting them, whether that’s from crime or just from quality of life, then they take action.”
“[We have] let tourism grow, and grow, and grow, and have used the sheer numbers of tourists as the sole measure of whether [we] have a successful tourism industry. And, I think the ethos that is really germinating now within the travel industry… is ‘Should we manage tourism?’ ‘Is there a way that we can still reap all the benefits of the tourism industry, and still protect the places that are drawing these people here in the first place?’”
Has the crush of tourists become too great, Lousteau wondered? “In the [French] Quarter, the number of residents was 4,000 people and visitors were 9,000,000. That’s for every French Quarter resident, that’s 2,250 visitors. These are numbers that really are not sustainable. I’m sure what the solution is. I’m not saying I have all the answers. But, I think our city and other cities really need to engage in a public discussion with tourism leaders, elected officials, residents, and businesses, on how to make sure tourism is a ‘rising tide that lifts all boats’ and not just a few at the expense of others.”
“I spoke at a national trust conference a few years ago, and the panel was entitled ‘Living with Success,’ because every city does want tourism. Tourism is the number one industry in the World. Cities really depend on tourism; it’s the lifeblood for a lot of us, for economic development.”
“There is nothing about this that is anti-tourism. The question is ‘Are we managing tourism to insure that it benefits New Orleanians first and foremost?’”, Lousteau queried. “’Are those residents really the ones that are reaping those benefits?’ ‘Or are they facing things because of tourism that they really shouldn’t have to be facing?’”
“One of the things that we hear all the time about the Quarter is ‘We don’t want it to be Disneyland.’ Well, the reason it’s not is that it STILL HAS RESIDENTS. Well, our organization—which is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year—has been all about protecting the French Quarter as a neighborhood.”
“There are plenty of other policies and decisions made at the governmental level to support the commercial elements of the French Quarter, which is great, but we really haven’t seen a concerted effort to make sure that the residents of the French Quarter can live there with a decent quality of life. And, we can actually attract more residents back to the Quarter. We have lost so many of them, and the Quarter has really lost a good deal of the socio-economic diversity it had back in the 80s and 90s.”
“In other cities, they have taken these concerns to heart. Charleston is probably the best example. Since the 1970s, they have had an office of tourism management. They have looked very carefully at the things that make neighborhoods livable and make them unlivable. They have restrictions on the numbers of events that can happen in the Kingspoint area, the peninsula of Charleston, where most of the tourism is centered—essentially their French Quarter. They have policies that may not be appreciated by individual businesses from time to time, but the overall impact is to make sure that district is not just a party zone. That’s its still a neighborhood. It’s a mixed-use area that is sustainable—not just for the people who live there—but as an ongoing tourism destination. We really run the risk of destroying of that which people are seeking at this point.”
Governments can be sensitive to the needs of residents. It’s happened, before Lousteau recollected. Restrictions on guided tour size and audio amplification on streets proved successful in New Orleans when first enacted thirty years ago. But, as the cost of tourism has fallen, the massive size of crowds has taken on a life of its own, overwhelming those past reforms. Besides regulating the size and frequency out-door activities, she also contended that “Homeshare” services like Airbnb threaten historic neighborhoods. Pointing to the success of the 30-year-old moratorium on home rentals in the French Quarter, the VCPORA Executive Director recommended the ban’s expansion to other historic neighborhoods.
Lousteau has lived in the Faubourg Treme for many years, and observed that her street, which once housed a row of families, now sees houses empty during the week and filled with partying tourists on the weekends. At the same time, the onslaught of “Short Term Rentals” have driven housing costs so high that many of the long-time predominately African-American residents now find these historic neighborhoods too expensive to afford.
Just over a year and a half ago, New Orleans legalized STR rentals for less than 30 days everywhere in the city but the French Quarter, mandating that those who employ online platforms such as Airbnb must register with the city, obtain one of three licenses, and pay a small fee per rental–a sum mostly earmarked to contribute to an affordable housing fund.
Widely hailed as a model for municipal partnership with homeshare services, the legalization of Airbnb under Mayor Mitch Landrieu also proved a case study on the inflationary impact of the online rentals on the housing market. Airbnb’s expansion was drastic in the wake of the law. In 2015, 1,746 entire homes were listed on Airbnb. Today, there are 5,125 total listings on Airbnb, with 82 percent listings for entire homes and only 16.5 percent listing an owner-occupied unit. Put another way, there are more Airbnb avails in the Crescent City than there are public housing apartments.
The ordinance restricted Airbnb and other online homeshare rentals to sell just 90 nights per year in residential areas, as a method to make it uneconomical for developers to maintain full-time STR properties. However, during the debate, it was noted that such a restriction would still allow homes to be rented out every weekend in a year, if desired. Since most visitors come to see the historic areas of New Orleans on the weekends, critics argued that the 90-day restriction would do little to elevate their concerns, and ultimately, the long-time Black residents of these neighborhoods would literally pay the highest price.
However, a March 28, 2018 study by the Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative’s suggests that their fears may have been justified. “Short-Term Rentals, Long-Term Impacts: The Corrosion of Housing Access and Affordability in New Orleans” contends that historically Black neighborhoods—ones that previously did not have a tourist focus—have felt the greatest racial out-migration, in part perhaps due to Short Term Rentals.
As the study notes, “From 79 to 46 percent in Treme, 90 to 65 percent in Mid-City, and 75 to 45 percent in Leonidas/Pigeon Town, the historically Black neighborhoods with the highest concentration of STRs have all experienced tremendous declines in number of Black households. [Comparing the maps] [a]longside one another, the displacement and license maps lead us to infer that STRs are capitalizing on and contributing to the displacement of Black Communities.”
In the historically African-American Faubourg Treme, two years ago, a two-bedroom apartment rented for $1000 per month, or $32 per night. As of February 15 according to Inside Airbnb, the average STR apartment rents for $187 per night, meaning that it just takes six days for an owner to pocket the same amount. The Jane Place Report contends that this has led to a swath of evictions in favor of converting properties to Airbnb and other homeshare rentals.
“Airbnb pretends they are home-sharing service, that their users are homeowners who are making ends meet by renting out their homes,” Jane Place Initiative program manager Breonne DeDecker said. “But our report exposes that lie. What is happening in New Orleans is not home-sharing, but the hotelization of residential housing.”
As of March 2018, according to the report, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the city increased to $2,107, or $65 per night, driving up housing costs across the board. In fact, large-scale property owners or real estate corporations own a large percentage of the STRs, with the top 10 short-term rental operators controlling 568 units in New Orleans.
“This is heavy commercial use,” DeDecker observed. “The data is clear, our cities permissive (homeshare rental) laws have enabled and encouraged intense disruption in the housing market due to speculative investments and spillover costs for residents due to higher rents, higher purchase costs for homes and higher property values.”
Fearing just an effect on the other side of the 17th Street Canal, the Jefferson Parish Council recently banned Airbnb from virtually all residential neighborhoods, mandating that STRs could only legally occur upon commercial thoroughfares or within specified business districts, just a small percentage of the properties within the parish. In response, the New Orleans City Council has ordered a complete review of the current STR law and its effects, mandating that the City Planning Commission produce a study for the council to vote on in July.
As for affordable housing, only $230,000 has been generated in the fund since Airbnb was legalized despite a huge number of properties being rented—less than the cost of a condominium in New Orleans, much less a home. Still, just restricting online homeshare is not the only answer to preserve neighborhoods. What may be ultimately required is to focus on a different type of tourist.
One of the leaders of the cultural tourism movement, Christopher Kyle of Oakland, California, agreed. His company, Uncommon Journeys, specializes in mounting tours for upscale travelers to historic North American cities by train and riverboat. And he has seen what happens when municipalities do not seek to protect their historic neighborhoods. He recommends that they need to focus on the “cultural tourist’ more than the ‘weekend partier.”
As he explained to The Louisiana Weekly, “Having been in the travel/tourism business for over 40 years in a variety of places, I have always felt that for both the good of the traveler and the destination ‘strategic’ or ‘revenue based’ tourism the wisest approach to take. Take any site with historic buildings or treasures to preserve and protect, whether it be Venice, Prague, New Orleans or Old Montreal. All of these places suffer from a crush of visitors that in addition to overwhelming everything, makes life miserable for residents and travelers.”
“To my mind, the smart destination would use pricing to both limit the overall demand and to insure that the sights visited were in superb condition. There are few travelers that could not afford an extra $50-100 a day on a trip to a destination like [New Orleans] and if this is the price that needs to be paid to yield a first-rate visitor experience, so be it. Not only more revenue but far less crowds. If a destination really wanted to appeal to fewer but higher spending customers, the strategy would be to stress authentic local experiences, whether it be culinary, art, music, etc., to fewer people, at a far higher spend.”
Of course, Lousteau countered that one need not price out the college student or poorer cultural traveler deliberately. Just concentrating on the atmosphere of the historic districts, prioritizing their survival as neighborhoods, as well as focusing on the cultural over the “party” experience, will fulfill much of what Mr. Kyte recommended.
This article originally published in the April 23, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
