Hacker News Reader

Comment by pbreit | Hacker News Reader

I have trouble feeling sorry for AirBnB with this. It has had numerous opportunities to put forth a reasonable view on how this should all work and AFAICT, has not.

First, most (all?) HOAs and landlords forbid short term rentals, and for good reason (short term renting is generally disliked by neighbors).

Second, city zoning policies are implemented for a reason, again, a good one. Residential neighborhoods generally prefer little or no commercial activity as well as inhabitants who care about the neighborhood.

I have not seen AirBnB weigh in reasonably on these important issues. For that, it's possible it deserves Prop F.

View on HN

The thing that troubles me the most about AirBNB is the general feeling I get from them that they feel concerns about their social impact are simply not worth addressing. Not just disagreeing about the degree to which the things you cited might be problems but being dismissive about the whole idea that there may be any problems at all.

feel concerns about their social impact are simply not worth addressing.

Welcome to VC land. The game is: collect everybody else's money and resources for yourself at any cost. It's even easier when laws and regulations are either toothless or only get applied across 8 to 16 year time periods, so you can flaunt them with no repercussions.

After spending some time dealing with social impact concern activists, I've personally found that it's something of a bottomless pit. No concern is too small, every concern is hugely important, no concern is irrelevant, everything needs immediate addressing with all the money, every concern is your immediate direct personal problem, etc.

So it's easier to not bother at all and catch flak than it is to do an "insufficient" amount of addressing concerns and get the same amount of flak from the same people.

Yeah, saying airbnb is good for housing prices is like the people who think a universal income will help people live easier. hint: if you give everyone an extra $20k/year, housing will magically go up by $20k/year to match.

with airbnb, if you can't afford your $3,000/month rent so you take in a share tenant, maybe now you can afford $5,000 month in rent. now housing prices know everybody can make $5k/month appear through tenant-izing, so all prices go up. now nobody can afford a place unless they take in co-habitating renters or are DINKs.

It's not magic, it's economics. There are frameworks to think and model this, and they do not support your conclusions.

but does your model take into account ė, the derivative of evil in the hearts of humans with respect to time?

Yes.

The article states that "75% of Airbnb hosts in San Francisco say that their income from Airbnb helps them stay in their homes". I don't really see how economics would get in the way of that driving up rents.

I agree on the income-elastic pricing part, but the demand capacity for AirBnB is tiny compared to the supply. Not that many people are able to subsidize their income and move up.

The AirBnB (airbnb, Airbnb, AirbnB?) argument actually has two facets, and any argument with more than one part is too nuanced for arguing in public, sadly.

The two parts are: fast-flux roommate discovery versus entire apartments.

Fast-flux roommate discovery is generally okay. You may have a roommate anyway, but this just lets you cycle them out daily/weekly/monthly. Plus, if the person is bad/rude/evil, you have to deal with them as well as your neighbors. You've got skin in the game.

The fast-flux roommate thing gets shady when the owner says "i'll just sleep on the couch while you visit" or other variations of not really having enough room for a roommate, but making do. A lot of listings have that weird dynamic.

The second, and more damaging, part of the AiRbNb story is when people become management companies and rent a dozen or a hundred apartments in a city to be 100% aIrBnB units. That is where real problems start. Rent apartments for $2,000 per month on a yearly lease then turn around and market them as short-term rentals for $200 per night. It's so common there are multiple concierge startups focused around cleaning and key-providing for short term sharing economy rentals taken out of the local for-natives housing supply. It's so common there are routine 'airbnb lies' your bookings are supported to tell to all the neighbors or doorman or building security if they get asked who they are (oh, I'm Sally's cousin!!!)

(oh, and the third way, a middle ground between the first two, is when you rent out your apartment just while you're on vacation or whatnot. This is more of a traditional sublet scenario, just facilitated by an evil megacorp who charges too many fees. This falls into the "generally okay" bucket like fast-flux roommate discovery.)

Right, the management agency supply problem would only exist if AirBnB demand were high enough to impact the housing supply.

But as the article said, less than 1 in 1000 units rent enough AirBnB nights to break even on rent in SF, which means that unless the agencies are subsidizing their income elsewhere, it's not a problem.

The second, and more damaging, part of the AiRbNb story is when people become management companies and rent a dozen or a hundred apartments in a city to be 100% aIrBnB units.

Which is already illegal in SF, so if this is happening (the article states that it is not), SF needs to actually enforce its laws. This isn't a problem or criticism of Airbnb.

You sound awfully sure about what you think will happen to housing costs in the face of a universal basic income.

Do you have anything to back that up?

City zoning is only voted on by the people who currently live there, not the people that would like to live there. They use threats of violence (government force) against property owners that would like to help others move into the city.

I'm not sure how a better solution would be implemented -- allow people to choose which jurisdiction their vote applies to?

That is how representative democracy works. You decide how things work in the area where you live. Imagine if I got to decide how things worked in your neighborhood without living there, that wouldn't be fair.

People who _want_ to live somewhere have no rights to it. They are by definition not yet part of the community. That's like allowing job applicants vote on company policy. I'm sure they would want to, but communities are defined by those in them.

This works until you can vote to screw your neighbor for your own gain. Then things get messy.

A lot of the people who would like to live in San Francisco work in San Francisco and have their income taxed by San Francisco.

It's kind of frustrating.

I guess you're referring to payroll taxes which is kind of a stretch.

How so?

Well, obviously income taxes are assesses by where you live, not work. The only thing I could think of is payroll taxes.

Yeah, no https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-income-tax-rate-on-a-100k-...

I get what you're saying, and what you're saying does indeed sound fair to a certain extent.

The problem is that it encourages and allows NIMBY attitudes to proliferate, and creates an environment of stagnation. I certainly think we should balance the wishes of current residents, but there has to be limits.

I do live in SF, and I'm pissed that other residents are allowed to slow down housing development. SF is turning into a less desirable place for me to live because of the housing crunch... and I'm not even talking about my rent costs. I don't want to live in a city where only high-income people (and entrenched incumbents with ridiculous rent control) can afford to live. The NIMBYs are the problem, here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com