The government can do all manner of proscriptions for your residence. For instance, no, you cannot run a brothel from your house. You cannot turn it into a bouncy house park. And you cannot have short-term rentals in an area that the community has decided to use for permanent housing.
It's called "zoning", and collectively we've agreed to the allowed uses of our property. You live in a community of others, and your property lines do not define "The Independent Republic of JJordan", so yeah, the government does have some authority over your use of your property. You might not like it, but you'll be going against the flow. Because, personally, I'd rather not have the house next to me used for short-term rentals "shared" with those that don't give two shits about the community they'll be leaving on Sunday afternoon.
You also don't get to just decide not to follow the rules after the fact. One moved to a community, and directly or indirectly agreed to abide by the community standards. If one decides that's just not really working for them anymore, well, move to a community that has standards more to your liking. There do exist places that will have no problem with you throwing all the loud parties you like, and renting to college students on spring break. Those places are not in SV, however, so good luck in your search for remote work.
That would be OK, but renting for short term should be illegal? If AirBnb residents are noisy and disrespect the laws, call the cops on them. If owners don't pay their due taxes, call IRS on them. It's no reason to make it illegal to rent for short term.
I have used AirBnb in many cities on 4 continents and was always respectful to the locals and even tried my best to follow the specific recycling rules and such.
What I enjoy the most is the organic feeling of being in a real apartment vs being in a hotel room. Hotel rooms all feel the same, wherever you go. What I want is to experience the same perspective as a local, well, at least to attempt to do that, and that is because I appreciate the different cultures.
Banning short term apartment rentals would send a bad message to people who just want to appreciate your culture.
And what happens when that leads to calling the cops every weekend, for a different group of people?
I'll tolerate my neighbour having a loud party on his 25th birthday, or him accidentally banging his suitcase down the stairs at 5.30 when he's catching an early flight. I'll do the same, equally infrequently.
It's simply not fair to have that behaviour every fucking weekend, which was what happened when an apartment in the building was put on AirBnB.
Fortunately, the listing was removed the day after I sent it to the landlord, and the noise has stopped. I highly doubt any tax was paid on the income, which is also wrong.
Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser wrote about this in his Op-Ed, Build Big Bill: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1....
Before you can build a newer, bigger building, you first need to buy a large enough contiguous area from potentially several owners who don't particularly want to move. That adds friction and years of extra work to any new building, which will discourage new construction, lower supply and raise prices regardless of the zoning.
Unless you're proposing that the government begin seizing tracts of land in Manhattan on behalf of high-rise developers?
[1] http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/zoning/zoni...
More directly, it's one of the reasons NYC real estate is so valuable in the first place. The way the city has managed density (and parks, open space, and its waterfront) has in general worked out pretty well, over the years. Which has helped the city thrive in ways that its direct competitors (such as Boston and Baltimore) have not.
If AirBnb wants to make housing more affordable in NYC, they should lobby to remove these zoning laws that benefit wealthy landlords such as Donald Trump.
It shouldn't be legal to tell someone who owns a home that they cannot rent it out. We're not talking about someone running a business out of their home, where the zoning laws actually apply.
> I'd rather not have the house next to me used for short-term rentals "shared" with those that don't give two shits about the community they'll be leaving on Sunday afternoon.
How about the ones who let that druggie sister down on her luck move in, she's ok because it's for over 30 days?
This is just whiny bullcrap from someone who wants to be able to control their neighbors.
> You also don't get to just decide not to follow the rules after the fact. One moved to a community, and directly or indirectly agreed to abide by the community standards.
We're not discussing a housing authority here. If you and your neighbors get together and decide the community cannot abide someone allowing another person to use their house for less than ... what 6 months? a year ... you write that into the bylaws, set out the financial penalty, and then you enforce it.
And that's your right.
But when these kinds of things become illegal across an entire state, there's a problem. This law should have never been on the books in its current form to begin with.
Short term rentals are a business, by definition.
We, as citizens, have ascribed them that right. And it is what protects me from having my neighbours run a brothel or smelting plant in their house.
Your definition is wrong.
I honestly do not understand the willful ignorance in this thread. Short term rentals is commerce. Everyone knows it's commerce. When you say you think it isn't (or you don't understand how it could be) you sound like you're denying the earth goes around the sun. This isn't even a particularly nuanced area of permitted use laws (zoning) or the appropriate role of government. You are all basically advocating for elimination of all zoning and/or pretending it doesn't exist as a totally normal type of regulation in the US (and all over the world).
This is where the original poster went off the rails. Just because there's an exchange of money does not mean these laws do, or should, apply.
I think it's silly, but there it is.
That's not what relevant the laws say ("You can't rent your property, period!"). Just that you can't use a residential property as a de-facto hotel.
If you and your neighbors get together and decide the community cannot abide someone allowing another person to use their house for less than ... what 6 months?
30 days. The point is that short-term rentals have a very different character (in terms of impact on neighbors, and impact on property values) than long-term rentals.
This is just whiny bullcrap from someone who wants to be able to control their neighbors.
No, it's just life the big city. Though I agree that whether these issues should be of interest of the state (as opposed to municipalities) is very much open to question. Then again, the Empire State is known to be messed up (and to have lopsided control over) a great many things, in this regard.
Your right to do as you please with your property ends where my property, and interference with my enjoyment of it, begins.
Or do you also think that if you buy some property straddling a river, you can dump waste into it and say "my property, nobody can tell me what to do with it" while making everyone downriver pay for the cleanup of what you did? Because that's the ultimate moral grounding of laws restricting property -- you don't own an isolated island in the middle of nowhere, you own property that's adjacent to and can affect other pieces of property owned by other people who also have rights.
You can't actually own the land around a river, but I get the point you're trying to make regardless.
The point is, if they're causing a ruckus, report them and have it shut down. If they're not, leave it alone. And having multiple different vehicles in the driveway isn't causing a ruckus.
This is basically FUD. What if they do something the neighbors don't like!?! Then deal with it at that time, stop being thought police.
I mean, a majority of our forebears thought it should. The original law was passed by a representative democracy. And so was this one. You're one of the (totally guessing) 48% of people that disagree. That's democracy. You have to live with getting out-voted.
Why do you believe that guests wont give "two shits" about the community. This sounds incredibly xenophobic to me.
Anyways, I was being sarcastic by using the tools of a leftie. (declaring the parent to be a xenophobe)
Or did it do more harm to what is otherwise a legitimate viewpoint and possibly deserving of discussion?
I'm btw sure that many Socialists would actually agree that the statement undoubtably displayed hatred and xenophobia. He did argue against allowing people from the outside to come and live in his community because he by default perceives foreigners as not giving "two shits" about the community. This is obviously not true, you can't just declare that all foreigners want to harm your community.
You may be absolutely correct. The HN Hivemind is frequently wrong.
But please use this as an opportunity for introspection, wherein you centralize the idea that the community of peers with whom you choose to associate, think you are an ass.
edit: Cleary comedy isn't my fortè.
If you own a property and operate it as a hotel while not actually living in it you're violating the zoning laws that every business/hotel operation have to adhere to.
AirBnB's use of the word "sharing" is laughably liberal. By their standard if I'm running a convenience store I'm "sharing" my property with every customer who wanders in.
Fire marshals have limited the amount of people you can have in a particular building for more than a hundred years.
I don't know the rationale in this case, but there are very good rationales for government to have more control of your house than you do in some instances. Mandatory fire suppression systems can end up saving not just your apt unit, but your whole neighborhood.
If you don't want to live by those community rules then it would best to live outside of a community.
It's called "zoning" and it's been around for quite a while. You know, those pesky laws that says someone can't just build, say, a giant slag heap directly behind (and towering above) your house with nothing but rusty wire holding it together.
Which laws (a.k.a. zoning laws) you unequivocally agree to abide by when buying a piece of property, in just about any jurisdiction on the planet.
It's probably good that they do. I may not agree with this particular exercise of authority, but I'd like to be able to do something about it if my neighbor decides to build bombs in his spare room.
Also, I don't see how your point about neighbors is relevant to it. Is it a serious risk where you live? A common occurence, would you say? And how exactly, in constitutional sense, would you be able to do anything about it?
Edit: I just realized I probably misunderstood you. The point about neighbors is meant to be relevant to the notion of the government having a degree of control over your property in general, not the specific question of who's allowed to stay there. Most of my response is no longer relevant with that clarification, so I've removed it.
-- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter XIII
There was some house of horrors where a 5 family was converted into an AirBnb ersatz hotel with 30 beds.
Where does that argument end? At what point can we just call it what it is: advocacy for disbanding government entirely?
Consumption taxes are a much fairer way of funding the government, IMO. Rich people consume more and pay more in taxes. Those with less consume less and pay less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_tax
The 1st refers to the government, not to housing communities to which you willingly moved. Don't like HOAs? Don't live in an HOA community. The government has no hand in this.
> Don't like HOAs? Don't live in an HOA community.
That's becoming harder and harder. Currently 68 million Americans live in some sort of community association [1] and that's constantly rising.
These are essentially hyper-local governments. I can "willingly move" between cities and states and yet city and state governments also can not infringe upon constitutional rights (though they certainly sometimes try).
It doesn't seem like a big stretch to hold HOAs to the same standard when you're talking about putting restrictions on something as fundamental as someone's residence. That isn't to say they aren't allowed to make any rules governing the community.
1. https://www.caionline.org/AboutCommunityAssociations/Pages/S...
Ex: https://www.calhomelaw.org/doc.asp?id=460
You can also say something similar about corporations.
The answer is that the GOVERNMENT enforces its will.
Like the fact that the HOA can lien your house for as little as $100 in dues.
And can then sell your house out from under you.
If you're _really_ unlucky, they'll sell it to a landlord who sits on the board of the HOA, and the board of the HOA will accept the sale for less than half of the market price, with the landlord buying the house being one of the deciding votes...
The way the bill of rights is applied to municipal governments isn't clear, but in my opinion this is an overreach.