I'm really curious about this. There are places like say Balboa Island and Newport Beach that have had hundreds of vacation rentals since I was a kid in the 1970s. The same is true of Venice Beach in LA. I would have assumed the same was true of Manhattan Beach in LA as well. Yet apparently those will all be banned soon.

In fact you can just go on the waybackmachine and look at craigslist listing from 10+ years ago and see there were short term rentals happening. I suppose those were technically illegal.

Maybe it was just a matter of amount. Before AirBnB there were less of them or less people using them?