Latest news with #AirBNBs
Yahoo
20-04-2025
- Yahoo
The seaside resort residents say is plagued by prostitution and noise
It's a popular seaside resort which boasts a promenade, beach and rides, but residents have told how their lives are being made hell. People living in Blackpool say their lives are being blighted by anti-social behaviour, noise disturbances and even prostitution. They raised their concerns as tens of thousands of holiday-makers are set to flood Britain's resorts and tourist hot spots for the Easter Bank Holiday weekend. In England, the short-term let sector is unregulated, except in London where there's a 90-day per year cap on letting out properties, SWNS reports. READ MORE: 'I couldn't ignore what I found at beauty spot - there are families here' READ MORE: Woman, 29, who can't wee barred from Greggs disabled toilet 'until she showed catheter bag' Blackpool City Council says it's received just one complaint about short-term lets since 2019 – but the council doesn't know how many are in the area. A total of 16 planning enforcement notices have been issued in the same period. Residents of the seaside resort town, known for its traditional B&Bs, tell a different story. Saima Arif, 41, has operated three hotels in Blackpool's town centre for eight years. She says the proliferation of AirBNBs and other short-term lets, where owners are not present, have brought the character of the street down – with rooms being used for parties until the early hours of the morning and even prostitution. She said: 'The ones now, there's nobody there. If somebody's booked a double room, they know the code. If they meet friends with a girl, they use that code, go in, use the room, and go out. 'It's like one person's booked the room, a couple who's out for the night and give the code to another couple. They use the room and just go out after an hour.' She added: 'The people who ran these places for 20-odd years did it right. As soon as they left, it's like everybody started making their own rules. I'm just thinking 'am I the daft one?'' B&B owners Sandra Spriggs, 52, and husband John, 69, have owned the Bianca Guesthouse on Blackpool's Palatine Road for 20 years. The couple says they have heard loud stag and hen parties inside unattended AirBNBs. Sandra said: 'My friend lives next door to an AirBNB. It's bloody noisy, especially in the summer – she actually goes to her daughter's for the weekend so she hasn't got to put up with the noise.' It's not just B&B owners who are concerned. Marie Fisher, 62, has lived in her flat overlooking Blackpool's south promenade for 20 years. The block, made up mostly of elderly people, was quiet for years. Now, she lives above an AirBNB. Marie, who works at Blackpool tourist attraction Madame Tussauds, wants to see short-term lets like AirBNBs banned from residential building blocks. She said: 'You can't go down and knock on the door, you don't know what you're going to be faced with, to be honest with you. It's just frustrating. You try and sleep through it and hope they're only here for one night and going to go. 'Over the space of a week, you could have no-one, or you could have three lots of people. I think the worst thing was when we had rap music blaring out until the early hours, two or three, Eminem blasting out at that time. It was so loud. 'It's stressful, no two ways about it, especially when it starts in the beginning of the night and you think 'oh, here we go again'.' Tourist organisation StayBlackpool's Ian White, 64, says short-term lets from companies like have been on his radar since 2014. He's heard from families who have been forced to leave their own homes and sleep overnight in a camper van just to escape the disruption of short-term lets. Despite this, Ian says the town is currently experiencing an oversupply of beds as it struggles to compete with foreign package holiday deals. Because of this, many guesthouses are now turning to house people from out of the area and prisoners on early release, which can give more consistent income. The 64-year-old said: 'They bring in a certain amount of antisocial behaviour and other issues. Some traditional holiday accommodation have started to lose business, where regular guests won't come back.' Ian wants short-term let accommodation to be subject to the same rules as guesthouses in an effort to tackle the oversupply and help bring the guesthouses back to normal operations. He added: 'Blackpool is looking quite vulnerable.' Of 15 local councils in England and Scotland, including Blackpool, Glasgow, Manchester, Westminster, and the Isle of Wight, none knew how many AirBNBs were in their area, according to a Freedom of Information Act request. Only Manchester provided a figure, 98 in 2022, but it said this was 'informally recorded' in 2022 and that the true figure was 'likely to be significantly higher'. Westminster Council also said it knew about properties when a complaint had been made. Residents across the country been making hundreds of complaints about noise, rubbish, parking, and other issues with short-term let properties. Since 2019, a total of 12,891 complaints about short-term lets were received by the 15 councils which answered a Freedom of Information Act request – the bulk of which were in the City of Westminster, which received 11,459. This was followed by Glasgow, at 463, and Brighton at 264. Manchester was the next highest, at 225, and Liverpool was at 161. Some councils, such as Manchester, issue informal warnings if a complaint is received, but most do not. AirBNB, Blackpool City Council, and the Ministry of Housing have been contacted for comment.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Kennon Lumber Co. opens in Elgin
ELGIN — A new retail lumber store is opening in Elgin. The Union County Chamber of Commerce hosts a ribbon-cutting to mark the opening of Kennon Lumber Co., 810 Inkwood St., Elgin. The ceremony is at 9 a.m. Saturday, April 5. More details will be available on Kennon's Facebook page. 'The public is warmly invited to attend our soft opening and browse through our beautiful showroom and outside planter displays,' Tyler Kennon, sole proprietor said. 'Every wall inside our building will display the cedar products that we offer.' There will be a drawing that day so the public may enter their names for the door prize, a fully assembled cedar planter with lattice valued at $150. The winner of the prize will be announced at 5 p.m. on Kennon's Facebook page. After the soft opening, normal business hours will be Tuesday through Saturday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., and he will adjust that as needed. The store number is 541-805-1190. 'My hope is that the business can keep busy enough so that he can employ a couple of people and be open six days a week and regular business hours,' he said. Kennon hails from La Grande, and in February, he purchased the 4,000 square-foot building on 3.8 acres on Inkwood Street from Elgin High School. Kennon Lumber occupies half of the building. 'We'll see how things go after the first year in business,' Kennon said. 'Then we might get another retailer in the other half of the building, maybe someone who deals with farm feed and hardware. If that can happen, that would be great because right now people in Elgin have to travel to La Grande to buy a box of screws.' He said he has worked with lumber his entire life, but as far as the retail side of lumber is concerned, this venture is a first for him. 'Prior to this, I worked as a handyman, small contractor doing building maintenance for a lot of AirBNBs and commercial structures,' Kennon said. 'I'm also a farmer, rancher, horse rider — all of those things, and I have livestock and horses.' Kennon and his wife, Kylie, and children relocated from La Grande to 40 acres on Cricket Flat, where they live in a 750 square foot cabin 'that is fully sided in our cedar siding,' Kennon said. Kennon has a private investor, formerly from Union County, who owns and operates a lumber mill in Northern California. This mill supplies Kennon Lumber Co. with cedar, pine and fir wood products. 'We can do custom orders, and I can submit them to the mill and have it up here in a couple of weeks,' Kennon said. 'That's interesting to bring up here because I do not see any real wood siding up here anymore, and I'd really like to bring some of it back.' The couple also involve their son, Seth Kennon, in their family business. He makes the cedar picnic tables that are for sale at Kennon Lumber Company and manages the store at times. 'He is homeschooled, a math whiz, and a talented craftsman,' his father said. In the future, Kennon Lumber Co. will create a website with a full catalog listing of products and pictures of all its wood products. 'I would say that about 75% of what I have will be cedar products of all sorts, including all kinds of cedar fencing in every shape, form, thickness and size,' Kennon said. He also will sell cedar dimensional lumber and all kinds of cedar siding, interior and exterior that a builder or contractor would possibly want. Kennon Lumber also will sell some blue stained pine, some board and batten pine, and some fir products, but the majority, Kennon said, will be cedar siding and interior wall finishes. The California mill will send Kennon its off-cuts, in-cuts, and scrap pieces so that Kennon and his son can build furniture, including planter boxes, Adirondack chairs, benches, swings, picnic tables and chicken coops. Cedar is a popular choice of lumber because it is insect resistant and rot resistant. 'We're big in the gardening and greenhouse stuff, too,' Kennon said. 'Because we're making these things out of smaller pieces from the mill, we can build these things more affordably.' The inventory is rolling in. Kennon had 10 loads of lumber in from the California mill coming in before April 5. He will see how the first six months of business goes and order more inventory if needed. Inside the store, its walls are covered with sample displays of cedar paneling and siding for homes and cabin construction. Kennon sells cedar cabins that buyers can put together because they are notched and pre-drilled. They are ideal for small sheds, accessory dwelling units and custom ordered larger sizes of cabins. He offers delivery of orders to builders and contractors on site when requested. For more information about Kennon Lumber Co.'s lumber products, call or text at 541-805-1190 or use Facebook Messenger or email at kennonlumber@ 'We'd like to invite the public to come in, meet us and see our showroom,' Kennon said.
