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Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

> But people certainly should have some degree of autonomy when it comes to their personal property. The question is, what is it?

That is why we elect people. To answer these kinds of hard questions.

> What I never understood is why short term rental regulations aren't modeled more closely off BnB laws than hotel laws.

Part of the whole kerfuffle is because AirBnB was encouraging people to break the laws that actually existed.

For example, if I buy a house in an area zoned "residential", I don't expect to have someone next to me running different people in an out every week as part of AirBnB. If you want to do that you should have to be zoned "commercial", thanks. Then, we'll get to discuss this at the next council meeting when you ask for a zoning exemption. If it's your hunting lodge, probably nobody is going to object. If it's right next to the elementary school, people are probably going to complain. etc.

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The heart of your argument is that there is some clear distinction between residential and commercial which doesn't actually exist. Residential properties have always been used for profit - its called an apartment. These visitors are renting in a residential area precisely because they want a residential experience.

The "burden" on your neighbors from short-term visitors is highly overblown. What actual impact on the elementary school is short-term visitors going to have? Is their driving to & from the home ever so more frequent than a full-time occupant? Do you think they are having rowdy parties despite self-selecting to stay in a residential neighborhood? Or that they would be a pedophile (which federal laws already ban from staying within a short distance from an elementary school?)

"The heart of your argument is that there is some clear distinction between residential and commercial which doesn't actually exist. Residential properties have always been used for profit - its called an apartment."

That's a completely different situation, and not at all relevant to this conversation.

"These visitors are renting in a residential area precisely because they want a residential experience."

And I want a pony. Why should I care what they want?

"The "burden" on your neighbors from short-term visitors is highly overblown."

You're gonna have to prove that.

What is the burden of short-term visitors? I've heard that said before, but I've never heard any actual examples of problems that occur from short-term visitors that aren't present with long-term residents.

Bedbugs are one of the big ones that I have heard reported where landlords had to pump a lot of money in. The risk obviously goes up linearly with the number of unique visitors. A very genuine problem when one tenant of a multi-unit decides to do AirBnB.

As for detached dwellings? If you're hosting out of country people, how do I, as your neighbor, prosecute them if they damage my property (bust a fence, hit my car, swim in my pool)?

I can keep going, but our current laws were set up with the recognition that transiency does represent a risk. Clearly people DO recognize this as a risk or it wouldn't be explicitly banned by so many HOA agreements.

The fact that something is banned by HOA agreements hardly proves its risky or even seen as such. I've seen many HOA agreements that ban painting your house a non-approved color.

I'm not sure I follow your comment about detached dwellings and foreign visitors. The biggest issue will be identifying who harmed your property which will be significantly easier if your neighbor used Airbnb as their identification will be on file. Whereas if they just drove by and damaged your property or stayed at your neighbors house through a less formal rental system that will never be as well regulated (Craigslist, local word of mouth, etc.) or a hotel a mile away then it would be much harder to track them down.

You can prosecute the owner of the property, and no reasonable court would deny you on that.

> Clearly people DO recognize this as a risk or it wouldn't be explicitly banned by so many HOA agreements.

That's circular reasoning - we ban it in HOA agreements because it's dangerous, and it's dangerous because look - it's banned in HOA agreements!

Owners give a crap. Long term renters less so. Short term renters not at all.

Here's one scenario. A family, with two kids, lives in a single family house in a neighborhood zoned for single families. A house on the block goes on the market.

Several families, with children around the same as the neighbors, tour and bid on the property. However, an enterprising person (who doesn't need the bedrooms for kids) uses the anticipated income from airbnb rentals (not to mention the absence of childcare costs) to outbid all those families. The SFR zoned house, on a SFR zoned block, is now a hotel, for all practical purposes. Guess the kids will have to find neighborhood friends somewhere else.

The visitors are quiet, polite. So, no harm no foul?

I understand that this scenario can occur in the absence of airbnb or even short term rentals(plenty of people rent out rooms in their houses), but there's an order of magnitude difference here. Also, I still see more benefit to this if these are permanent, long term rentals. They may be students who need a place to live, long term residents who need a place to live. I also think that unregulated and unresticted[1] airbnb makes this scenario much more likely (which is one reason why the company is so profitable, it has made it much easier to rent out "spare" bedrooms, creating a new market).

[1] properly regulated airbnb, which allows someone to rent out their house while they are on vacation, now and then, would not cause any of this harm.

> That is why we elect people. To answer these kinds of hard questions.

In California, its arguable that the premise of the model of government we have (as articulated in the State Constitution) is more that we elect people to exercise legislative power in the regular case not because we have other things to do on a day-to-day basis, but that the people reserve superceding legislative powers of initiative and referendum specifically because we don't think that the people we hire to deal with the day-to-day drudgery of dealing with legislation are necessarily any better or more trustworthy when it comes to answering the tough questions.

Indeed. In a situation where the people who have been elected operate in a way that benefits corporations or special interests rather than the people who have elected them, there has to be some way for the people to override the decisions. That's what the referendum process is for.

Similarly, a private right of action is meant to deal with situations when the city isn't willing to act. The article makes valid points about the downsides of this, but it's also an accountability mechanism. Should it apply in this case? Seems like a good question for the voters.

> That is why we elect people. To answer these kinds of hard questions.

Yes, and the people we elected actually already answered this question wrt short-term rentals. Propositions like this one undermine this process.

How many people do you think voting for Prop F will have read it?

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