Reda & Des Jardins is pleased to represent the non-profit organization Keep Chicago Livable in a lawsuit that seeks to block the City of Chicago’s new restrictions on Airbnb and other home-sharing service providers, set to take place next month.
Keep Chicago Livable President, and named plaintiff, Benjamin Thomas Wolf, filed the lawsuit in Chicago Federal Court on November 4, asking the court to strike down Chicago’s Shared Housing Ordinance, according to the Cook County Record. A Chicago Sun Times article about the lawsuit said Keep Chicago Livable is a non-profit formed by current and past Airbnb hosts.
Reason Mag reported that the plaintiffs say the regulations constitute an “outright ban on the use of internet home-sharing services” and “violate the constitutional rights of Chicagoans…to use their own property, to have privacy and to not be subject to arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement of the laws.” The lawsuit asks a federal judge to block the city from enforcing the regulations, passed in June by the Chicago City Council in a 43 to 7 vote.
The ordinance levies a 4% surcharge on Airbnb and other home-sharing providers, requires a $10,000 annual license for each of the web-based companies, and imposes a $60-per-unit fee to raise funds for the enforcement of the new regulation, as reported by ChicagoInno.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune says that Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration will “vigorously defend” the ordinance that was negotiated by Emanuel aides and approved by the City Council. The ordinance is “incredible complex and impossible to understand” said Benjamin Thomas Wolf of Keep Chicago Livable, according to ABC 7 Chicago News. The lawsuit that Reda & Des Jardins filed as co-counsel is just 15 pages shorter that the ordinance itself, lending credibility to the notion that the new regulation is very complex and difficult to understand.
The Chicago Tribune reported that there are 6,400 Airbnb hosts in Chicago, and about 371,000 guests stayed in the city between November 1, 2015 and November 1, 2016.
The Law Firm of Reda & Des Jardins is proud to assist in this lawsuit that justly seeks to protect home-sharing service providers from the “vague, unreasonable, and difficult to abide by” aspects of this burdensome ordinance.
