The Tech Fix
Meet Jay Goldberg, a 42-year-old Google engineer who is lowkey leading a one-man revolution against San Diego’s housing crisis. While he spends his day working in tech, he spends his downtime acting as a digital detective to track down properties that have ditched long-term tenants in favor of lucrative Airbnb tourists.
Goldberg and his watchdog group, Nice Neighbors, have already filed over 2,000 reports with city officials. Their target? A loophole in San Diego law that allows building owners to kick out residents via buyouts or no-fault evictions and then flip those units into full-time vacation rentals. Basically, the vibes are off, and it’s turning residential neighborhoods into ghost towns for tourists.
The Real Tea on the Loophole
Since May 2023, new city ordinances have attempted to regulate short-term rentals, but they aren't foolproof. The law doesn't stop owners from getting rental licenses even after they've cleared out original tenants.
Goldberg’s investigation led him to former tenant Michael Flore, who lived in the same apartment for over a decade before new owners bought the complex and offered him money to move. Shortly after, the building popped up on Goldberg’s radar as having multiple short-term rental licenses. As Flore put it, “I was just finally like, ‘Oh, somebody does care about what’s going on.”
Why it matters
San Diego is currently short about 134,500 affordable homes. Activists like Goldberg argue that every apartment converted into an "apartment hotel" is another family getting priced out of the city. While Goldberg says he isn't anti-Airbnb, he’s tired of seeing power imbalances where tenants get pushed out for profit. He’s already helped get at least a dozen problematic hosts shut down, but as the housing market continues to struggle, the plot thickens for local renters.
