OAKLAND — Airbnb landlords came out in force Thursday evening to defend the short-term rental platform, occasionally sparring with affordable housing advocates as they implored city officials not to restrict their ability to rent their homes.

During a two-hour meeting at City Hall, two-dozen Oakland residents — most of them Airbnb supporters — talked about how the platform helped them afford to keep their homes, or about how their guests brought money to neighborhood businesses.

“Short-term rentals changed my life in a positive way,” said William Shuford, who said he would have lost his Oakland home if he had not been able to rent it on Airbnb while he was in Detroit making arrangements after his father’s death.

Thursday’s public meeting was Oakland’s first on short-term rentals, which have become an explosive issue in the Bay Area as critics in San Francisco — and now increasingly in Oakland — blame the area’s affordable housing crisis on Airbnb and similar platforms. Oakland’s City Council has vowed to start regulating these rentals, saying it wants to prevent landlords from taking long-term rental units off the market and turning them into Airbnbs.

Under Oakland’s current rules residents are prohibited from renting their homes or spare rooms for less than one week at a time, though that policy is not widely enforced. The council is expected to adopt a new set of rules later this year.

“We know this is not going to be an easy task,” Darin Ranelletti, Oakland’s interim director of planning and building, said at the start of the meeting. “There are a lot of opinions on this topic. There’s a lot of passion on this topic.” About 60 people showed up for the two-hour session.

There are 2,252 active short-term rental listings in Oakland, 60 percent of which advertise an entire home or apartment, according to a report presented Thursday by Ulrik Binzer, founder and CEO of Host Compliance, a San Francisco-based consulting company that helps cities regulate short-term rentals. The majority — 71 percent — of Oakland’s short-term units are rented for less than 90 nights per year, posing little threat to the city’s pool of available housing. But Binzer identified 333 properties that he called “commercial” in use, meaning they are entire homes rented for more than 90 nights per year.

That may not seem like a huge number, but it’s still a problem, said Mia Carbajal, administrative projects coordinator for East Bay Housing Organizations.

“Those should be accessible not just to tourists, but to long-term residents,” she said Thursday.

But Carbajal was in the minority Thursday, as was evident by the push-back affordable housing advocates received from the crowd when they called short-term rentals “hotels” or proposed that some types of rentals be made illegal.

Some residents worried that if Oakland over-regulates Airbnb use, they will lose their homes. Most said they did not mind cracking down on landlords who “abused” the platform by turning what should be long-term housing into Airbnb rentals, but balked at the idea of the city dictating how many days per year they could rent their own homes.

Others spoke of the non-monetary benefits Airbnb brings to neighborhoods that do not have many hotel options and don’t usually see tourists.

Cynthia Mackey, who rents a room in her Lake Merritt home, said she directs guests to her own favorite local watering holes.

“My guests spend an inordinate amount in the businesses in the neighborhood,” 56-year-old Mackey said, “whether it’s dry-cleaning, whether it’s restaurants, whether it’s the movie theater, and my concern is if you pull the plug … it’s going to affect some of our favorite businesses too.”

LaTonya Price, an Airbnb landlord who said she was born and raised in Oakland, challenged the idea that city leaders have the right to tell her how to use Airbnb.

“I just feel like there shouldn’t be any regulations or stipulations if this is something we want to do with our properties,” Price said. “I don’t want Airbnb to go anywhere. And I hope all people can have short-term rentals.”

As she finished speaking, the audience applauded and cheered.