Comment by willholloway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by willholloway | Hacker News Reader

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My town had a recent dustup over prohibiting AirBnB, some people claimed that it was against zoning regulations, the town attorney and planning and zoning looked into it and decided it was beyond their power to regulate tenure, or the length of a lease.

Short term rentals are considered residential use in my town, and they make up the backbone of the local economy. A public forum was called and almost two hundred locals, many of whom have lived here for decades, spoke in favor.

Only two cranks got up and spoke against. There reasons were all about hypothetical harms and imagined worst case scenarios.

My town is a popular vacation destination for families and weddings. There are about 200 short term rentals and the two opponents were unable to come up with any actual examples of misbehavior, there was not one noise complaint, prostitution, drug use or any other worst case scenarios trotted out against AirBnB. There was a recent prostitution arrest at a local hotel though.

The difference between AirBnB and hotels, is that AirBnB runs an extensive criminal and sex offender background check on hosts and guests. They even check the terrorist watch list!

One opponent at first tried to say that an AirBnB house was hosting loud parties on weekends, and people were drunkenly sleeping in their cars and knocking on their windows. The newspaper ran this story prominently. It turned out it was the owner's young adult children that were throwing the parties when it wasn't rented to families on AirBnB.

My state has struck a deal with AirBnB to collect occupancy tax directly and we are contributing a lot in taxes in a state with a budget crisis.

Homes and rentals are still abundant and affordable, and our town gets all kinds of cool visitors that enrich our town.

I love AirBnB, my town has been doing vacation rentals for a hundred years but it has made it more popular and better. The new visitors are supporting a bunch of nice new and more upscale restaurants and bars. It's really revitalized this town and made it a much for fun place for young professionals to live.

Short term rentals started the revitalization, then new eateries opened, and next I hope we can attract a few tech companies now that we are a more desirable place to live.

>The difference between AirBnB and hotels, is that AirBnB runs an extensive criminal and sex offender background check on hosts and guests. They even check the terrorist watch list!

I stayed in an Airbnb condo once, and neither Airbnb nor the landlord ever knew my name. That's because the arrangements were made by a friend, and it was 4 people staying in an oceanside condo.

Did my friend violate the TOS by not providing them my name and SSN?

Is it a desirable place to live? Or a desirable place to vacation? It sounds like your town was already a destination if it supports 200 short term rentals.

The town is highly desirable waterfront community, the region has a bit of a jobs problem, and the town was in a funk, visitors were down, local businesses were struggling, all the towns talented young people move off to larger cities, to places that are fun.

Now this place is fun too, we have a nano-brewery opening up, hipster restaurants, new boat tours...

The town planner loves AirBnB because it lets the town use some slack housing supply like guest cottages and in-law suites to host visitors in the downtown area, where it would be impossible to build a new hotel.

And short term rentals bring in a different kind of visitor than the hotels ever did. People come and stay for a week with their family.

It's all really nice actually.

And a large majority of AirBnB hosts are women. AirBnB is empowering a lot of women to become micro real estate entrepreneurs and earn money.

When people support blanket bans, they are cutting off income and opportunity for people, mostly women.

Punish bad guests, have the police fine them. Towns make money off speeding and parking tickets, I see no reason they can't make money off the occasional guest violating a noise ordinance.

> extensive criminal and sex offender background check on hosts and guests. They even check the terrorist watch list!

What elements make it 'extensive'? Also, what's the point in checking the terrorist watch list? Someone on that list isn't going to act in a way to draw attention to themselves before they're ready; it's not much of a check to brag about in terms of 'will this tenant behave?'

> The difference between AirBnB and hotels...

And that hotels have public liability insurance... and don't suddenly become unavailable because of the cultural origin of your name... and generally comply with public-safety legislation designed for short-term accommodation (like fire exits)... so on and so forth.

Clearly AirBnB offers enough benefits to its users to continue, but it's far from the rosy picture you're painting to society as a whole. If AirBnB was such a uniformly rosy proposition, then they wouldn't need to lie about their activities.

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