旅游業驅動了美國港口城市新奧爾良的經濟——去年旅游業錄得創紀錄的90億美元收入。新奧爾良的大部分工作崗位，都與服務業及賓館業有關，讓新奧爾良的經濟幾乎完全依賴于那些來參加聚會、聽音樂和參加幽靈之旅的人。

但12月1日短租房新規的出臺，或將改變新奧爾良的財運。與澤西城、洛杉磯、多倫多和歐洲大陸一樣，新奧爾良也在收緊出租資格，以及出租方式——那些把儲蓄都投在短租房市場的人，顯然會很焦慮。

他們準備好戰斗了。市政廳里充斥著居民的抗議，要求市政府尊重他們的產權、對當地就業和社區經濟的貢獻。已經有一項訴訟案，要求推翻這些新規，并稱新規只對賓館和汽車旅館運營者有利。

作為美國最窮的都市區之一，新奧爾良的工人收入比全國平均水平低14%，當地的人們起初成為短租房的房東，是因為他們需要增加收入。如今，在短租房平臺所構建的無法解決的困境中，他們因短租房而需要錢。

“房產價值已經失控了。”短租房新規制定者克里斯汀·吉斯勒森·帕爾默說，她也是一名代表新奧爾良游客最飽和地區的市議員。最近的評估顯示，房產價值以及房產稅在一些區域翻了一倍甚至兩倍。

帕爾默解釋說，房產所有者將越來越“被迫地用Airbnb出租房子”，以便補償巨大的繳稅支出和更高的房屋收購價格。“通過短租，你可以（比通過長租）獲得更多收入來彌補支出。”她說。

該市的新規包含一些引發爭議的條款，首當其沖的是家宅豁免條款。該法規要求，通過Airbnb、Vrbo和HomeAway等平臺出租的房子，其房東必須始終居住在該房產中，不允許投資客買房產進行出租。新奧爾良試圖保護其房屋租賃市場的可獲取性和可承受性，特別是為了保護那些世代以新奧爾良為家的社區。

“很明顯在城市的某些地方，短租房有一個明顯的效果，就是把人們趕出了這些社區。”杜蘭大學研究移居問題的一位教授克里斯多夫·奧利弗說。帕爾默告訴我們，拿特雷米來說——這個地方本來地價便宜，充滿活力，主要居住者是黑人群體，位于法國區的斜對角——自從短租平臺來了以后，黑人人口減少了20%。

有一些新奧爾良人為了維持高昂的生活成本，使用了類似Airbnb等平臺，然后待在家中——甚至還能改善生活質量。

當吉姆·維甘德和史蒂芬·格拉菲奧于15年前在拜沃特買下他們的排房時，這里完全是典型的新奧爾良式社區——一排排油漆亮麗的房屋、本地酒吧、街角的咖啡館。每周四晚，吹號手克米特·拉芬斯會在沃恩之家的地方提供他特制的紅豆和米飯。

2005年的颶風卡特里娜，使得新奧爾良80%的面積淹沒于水下。但拜沃特沒有被淹，只是遭了點風災，因為它的位置處于密西西比河的頂端，是個位于高地的天然防洪堤。所以人們開始遷入拜沃特。

維甘德說，“這是更好的投資。這地方不太可能被淹。”

1994年時，這處房產價值34000美元，2004年他們購買時的價格是19萬美元。如今，根據最新的地產評估，價值已達330800美元——這一價值部分原因是拜沃特獨特的地理位置和快速的人口遷入。

那些能夠負擔稅收增加的人，正在把短租房的影響變為正面的有利事項。維甘德和格拉菲奧希望這房子能夠幫助他們養老。“我們所在的地方，已經不像我們父母一輩時，我們沒有養老金。”55歲的維甘德，一輩子都生活在新奧爾良。

為了養老，這對夫婦還花了數萬美元對房子進行裝修翻新，房子前部有一個小的雙人床房間，而他們居住在后部。

“當我準備退休時，我可以把前面的房間租出去，拿一點收入，我就不需要擔心維護房子所需要的巨大支出。”他說。

他們的鄰居卡門·米爾斯在2011年買了這套分列式套房。她住在一邊，另一邊租給Airbnb，她說這比長租房每月多賺800美元到2000美元。

她說，“Airbnb確實幫助我養家糊口了。我和丈夫在五年前離婚了，如果我沒有Airbnb的收入，我肯定得把房子賣了。但房產稅的問題很嚴重，我要繳的稅一年內翻了一番！”現在米爾斯打算在后院再蓋兩間小房子租給Airbnb。

Airbnb肯定喜歡聽到這些。在向《財富》雜志提供的一份聲明中，Airbnb的發言人勞拉·里羅斯說，房間共享“是每個家庭都具備的少數幾樣手段之一，可以讓他們留在他們熱愛的社區，并把最大的一筆支出——他們的房子——變成一種收入來源。”

目前來說，新奧爾良的短租房新規主要針對那些擁有多套旅游出租房的個人和公司，同時保護了像維甘德和米爾斯這樣的人，他們都永久居住在他們所出租的房子內。

如同許多實施了更嚴格的假期房間租賃措施的地方一樣，新奧爾良認為成功的關鍵是市政府和平臺都要認真執行。而這一點并不容易達成。在西班牙馬略卡島的帕爾馬市，2018年的一條禁令不允許通過Airbnb之類的平臺租房，但禁令未能阻止人們將房子租出去。

短租房并沒有制造經濟不平等，但它成為了不平等加劇的幫兇。新奧爾良已經苦于低質量的房屋、低于平均水平的工資收入、糟糕的公共交通，以及一些地區瘋狂的人口遷移。

但是像Airbnb、Vrbo和HomeAway這樣的平臺，他們讓想要在那些地方居住的人，更加負擔不起居住的成本。除了高企的房產稅和房屋價格，杜蘭大學的研究人口遷移的學者們認為，在城市核心地段的短租房增長，事實上在把低收入長租房居民趕離市中心，越趕越遠。現在對一些人來說，沒有短租房收入就無法存活在這里，而要想遷移到新奧爾良的人卻更覺困難。（財富中文網）

譯者：宣峰

Tourism drives the economy of New Orleans—to the tune of a record-breaking $9 billion last year. A majority of the city’s jobs are tied up in the service and hospitality sectors, making New Orleans almost wholly dependent on the people who come to party, listen to music, and take ghost tours.

But come Dec. 1, new rules on short-term rentals may change New Orleans’s fortunes. Alongside efforts in Jersey City, Los Angeles, and Toronto, and across Europe, New Orleans is buttoning up who can rent to tourists, and how—and it’s sending some who sank their savings into the short-term rental market into a state of anxiety.

They’re ready to fight. Comments have flooded into City Hall from residents demanding the municipal government respect their property rights and their contributions to local employment and neighborhood businesses. A lawsuit seeking to overturn the rules, meanwhile, alleges the new rules would favor hotel and motel operators.

In one of the poorest metro regions in the U.S. where workers currently earn 14% below the national average, people in New Orleans first became short-term rental hosts because they needed to supplement their income. Now, in a catch-22 that short-term rental platforms have created, they need money because of short-term rentals.

“Property values are out of control,” said Kristin Gisleson Palmer, an architect of the new short-term rental rules and a city councillor representing some of the most tourist-saturated parts of New Orleans. Recent reassessments have seen home values, and therefore property taxes, double and triple in some areas.

Palmer explained that homeowners will be increasingly “forced to Airbnb” in order to offset their big tax bills and higher homebuying prices. “You can make more money to cover your expenses by STRing [than renting to long-term tenants],” she said.

The city’s new rules contain a few contentious items, with the homestead exemption at the top of the list. The rule requires that hosts live full-time on the properties they rent out on platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo, and HomeAway, outlawing investors from scooping up property that would do well as a rental. This is New Orleans’s attempt to protect availability and affordability in its rental housing market, especially for the communities that have called New Orleans home for generations.

“We can show pretty clearly that in certain parts of the city, short-term rentals are certainly having an effect of dislocating people from those communities,” said Christopher Oliver, a professor researching gentrification at Tulane University. For instance, Tremé—once an inexpensive, vibrant, predominantly black neighborhood kitty-corner to the French Quarter—has lost upwards of 20% of its black population since short-term rental platforms came to town, according to Palmer.

Some New Orleanians are trying to hold on for dear life and are turning to platforms like Airbnb to stay in their homes—and even improve their quality of life.

When Jim Wiegand and Stephen Graffeo bought their single shotgun home in the Bywater 15 years ago, it was a typical New Orleans neighborhood—rows of brightly painted homes, a local bar, a café on the corner. Every Thursday night, trumpeter Kermit Ruffins would serve up his special red beans and rice between sets at Vaughan’s Lounge.

Then Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, sending 80% of the city underwater. But not the Bywater. It escaped with only wind damage because of its position on the edge of the Mississippi River, a natural levee on higher ground. So people started moving in.

“It’s a better investment. It’s less likely to flood,” said Wiegand.

In 1994, his property was worth $34,000, then $190,000 when they bought it in 2004. Now, according to the latest property assessment, it is worth $330,800—a value based partly on the Bywater’s prized geography and rapid gentrification.

Those who can afford these rising tax bills are turning the short-term rental impact into a positive. Wiegand and Graffeo are hoping it helps them afford retirement. “We’re in a place now where, unlike our parents, we don’t get pensions,” said Wiegand, 55, a lifelong New Orleanian.

The couple has poured tens of thousands of dollars into renovating the house as they prepare for retirement, creating a small two-bedroom apartment in the front and their living quarters at the back.

“So when I am ready to retire, I can [rent] out my rooms in the front and have a little bit of income, and I’m not going to have to worry about the huge expense of maintaining all this,” he said.

Neighbor Carmen Mills bought a double Craftsman house in 2011. She lives on one side and rents the other on Airbnb, which she said nets her between $800 and $2,000 more per month than if she’d rented it out to a long-term tenant.

“Airbnb definitely helps me to afford my home. My husband and I divorced five years ago, and I certainly would have had to sell the house if I hadn’t had the Airbnb income,” she said. “The property tax situation is outrageous here. My taxes doubled in one year!” Now Mills has plans to double down on Airbnb by building two tiny houses in her backyard.

This is music to Airbnb’s ears. In a statement to Fortune, spokesperson Laura Rillos noted that home sharing “is one of the few tools available to any family that would like to stay in the community they love and turn their greatest expense—their housing—into an economic opportunity.”

For now, New Orleans’s new short-term rental rules primarily target people and companies with multiple tourist rental properties while protecting people like Wiegand and Mills, who live full-time on the properties they rent out.

Like most places that have enacted tighter measures on vacation home rentals, New Orleans has found its key to success lies in rigorous enforcement by both the city and the platform. That’s not always easy to achieve; in the Spanish city of Palma de Mallorca, a 2018 ban on Airbnb-style rentals hasn’t stopped people from renting out their properties.

Short-term rentals didn’t create economic inequality, but they have helped deepen it. New Orleans already struggled with poor-quality housing, lower-than-average wages, terrible public transit, and in some areas, rampant gentrification.

But companies like Airbnb, Vrbo, and HomeAway have contributed to making it more unaffordable for the people who want to live there. In addition to rising property tax bills and home prices, researchers at Tulane University studying gentrification say the growth of short-term rentals in urban cores is pushing lower-income long-term rental residents farther and farther out of city centers. Now some people can’t stay without short-term rental income, making it just that much tougher to get ahead in the Big Easy.