I wish AirBnB took more responsibility for the damage they are doing to the NYC housing market
For my part, having lived much of my adult life in New Paltz, AirBnb has greatly increased the availability of NYC housing for me, as I typically only live in NYC for 3-10 days at a time.
I can understand that, if your desire is to live there perpetually for years, you might have a different perception.
Perhaps living in a single place in perpetuity (especially near the center of a major metro/cosmopolitan hub) is just not as sustainable in an environment where smallish organizations like AirBnb (or the decentralized versions to come) can easily subvert statutory attempts to force a particular market outcome.
Also, in NYC in particular, the role of "rent control" is worth taking into account.
Christ. Hotdesking for houses. This is already the reality for a lot of precariously-housed or non-street-homeless people. It's especially bad for children and will cost them grades at school when moving frequently.
In a civilised society, you don't get to pick and choose which laws you think are worth following, and just ignore the rest. Don't like a given law? Then engage in the political process to seek changes to it.
I live in downtown Toronto and here are some of the issues i face due to Airbnb:
i) Some of the residents make living a hell. They come to party, don't respect the neighbours, are loud till late, trash the place and some have even gone to break the buttons in elevator.
ii) With Airbnb, new owners and renters are priced out of market. People with more money but new units as secondary investment and just Airbnb it instead of renting it, thus creating artificial shortage of available units to full-time renters.
One of the fascinating things about NYC is it's vast array of local businesses. Guess who do these local businesses need? Full time employees who go to work every day and not for 3-11 days.
Another short-term resident would be there in his place on the days he's not in NYC. Year round there will almost always be someone staying in his unit.
And short term renters tend to spend more per day than long-term residents, so they probably contribute significantly more to the city's tax base.
Per day costs, sure. But if you add recurring payments, don't think they are outspending it. Also, you are ignoring the entire point to begin with. A City should look after it's long term residents first and foremost. Unless you want it to eventually become a ghost city.
>>A City should look after it's long term residents first and foremost.
I don't see why it should. A city should look after those within its boundaries, whether they're there for a day or a year. It shouldn't set up walls and promote long term residence over visits.
So a citizen of a country and a visitor of the country should get equal rights and opportunities as well?
Opportunities? Yeah, although that's not the case now, I'm ready for a world where people have the same opportunities regardless of the text on their passport.
You mean like 99% of people? When you work in the city, grew up in the city, have met almost everyone you know in the city, to then be forced out of the city because people want to rent their apartments out for 3-10 days at a time instead of 1-3 years means that people who need the stability of a permanent address now have to either shell out much more cash than a land lord can get (illegally) on airbnb, or move out of the city and abandon the thing they have known their entire lives.
I'm not saying I have a good solution to it, other than the typical protectionist idea of tax the things that are destroying us, but at least that way there is money in the treasury to try and save a portion of the people affected by it.
You are saying that 99% of people live in the same residence for years?
I'd love to see a source on this.
Between transient people, houseless people, digital nomads, business travelers, jetsetters, RVers, and all sorts of other people who don't live in one place all year, I have no doubt that the various modes of nomadism, taken together, account for far, far higher than 1%.
Heck, in NYC alone, I'll wager that less than 70% of today's population has lived in the same domicile for the past 2 years. There's no way it's 99%.
> When you work in the city, grew up in the city, have met almost everyone you know in the city
I made clear in my post that people in those circumstances might have a different experience. But is this the only audience NYC is designed to serve? People who grew up in the city? What about those of us in the Hudson Valley? Do we not deserve any of the economic benefits of the city (for which we pay in many ways, not least of which our watershed) just because we were born 50-150 miles away?
I think it's about time that real opportunities to live in the city for a few weeks out of the year become available to other NYers and not just the super rich.
I didn't grow up in NYC, but I consider it my city too. I know the best open mics, the places where I can order authentic Mexican or Puerto Rican food en español, the incubators and co-working spaces, the subway system, etc.
Just because you grew up there doesn't give you exclusive ownership of the culture of NYC.
The amount of NYC-born privilege being waved around in this thread is astounding.
I have paid, in many ways, for NYC my whole life. It's my city too, even though I wasn't born there. I identify with its culture. I know its geography and social norms. I play its open mics to enthusiastic audiences of a size that I simply can't reach upstate.
Why do you think that people who are born in NYC are entitled to these things to the exclusion of the rest of us?
>Why do you think that people who are born in NYC are entitled to these things to the exclusion of the rest of us?
Did I say that? Just because I noted it was gentrification doesn't mean you can treat me like a straw-man punching bag.
Rent Stab/Control exists for a reason, had those generations of people not been there, NYC wouldn't be what it is today. But when the entire neighborhood becomes too expensive because of landlords preferring to run hotels, and the only apartment stock that is affordable is the failing NYCHA properties, then I would consider this a gentrification.
Why have 10 million lucky individuals get year round access to it, rather than giving 1 billion people 3-4 days each to visit it?
Maybe one day the typical life will consist of visiting a different theme-park-like city every few days, and people will identify with their planet rather than a few hundred square miles that's designated as their city of residence.
Where, exactly? Central Park?
That's not living somewhere. That's visiting.
If that's not living, then where do I live? I don't have a long-term lease or anything similar. Do I not deserve the same quality of life and opportunities as people who happened to have been born in the East Village?
It's a simple question
No, no more than I deserve a passport from every country I have ever traveled to.
Most US states consider you a resident if you stay more than 90 days. That's when you'd be expected to change your driver's license, car registration, etc.
You seem to be conflating the ideas of birthright and residency. I don't think anybody is arguing you shouldn't be allowed to become an NYC resident if you want to; what they're saying is that visiting doesn't make you a resident.
I'd wager that anybody who suddenly had an illegal hotel running out of her neighboring appartment will very strongly disagree with that statement.
Unless you personally made that experience, in a house where parties live for 30 years+, you are not aware what a massive impact this can have on your quality of life.
Since I've been there I stopped using AirBnb, period.
I think that the availability of short-term housing in NYC in particular is a net benefit for society, even if it adds an uncomfortable dose of reality for many people who had the extreme privilege of growing up there.
I don't understand the strawman - what argument did I mischaracterize in an attempt to make it appear weaker for the purposes of responding to it?
You're ignoring the fact that millions of people already live for only a few weeks out of the year there by posing that people shouldn't be doing that in this day and age. It doesn't matter what your opinion of those people are, the fact is that it is the current condition.
Being born in NYC doesn't mean the city belongs to you. I'm a New Yorker too.
1) Tourist tax on all hotel rooms, including AirBnB. Initially a fairly small amount. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/27/edinburgh-le...
2) For whole-unit owner-not-present lets, require planning permission for change of use. You wouldn't be allowed to run a woodworking business in your apartment that inflicted noise on your neighbours, so the same should apply to turning it into a hotel.
3) Keep upgrading the transport infrastructure. The newly rebuilt Border railway is a victim of its own instant success - someone should start the process of widening it to two tracks immediately so it'll be ready in 20 years. And so on.
(Before someone says "build houses", there is a lot of family home construction going on in the outskirts. It's the historic centre that's under consideration, and "demolish the existing 4-6 story historic dwellings and replace them with much taller residential buildings" is an absolute non-starter)
No one contemplates Leith or Newington. Neither of those places are beyond a short walk (1-2 miles) to city center, also there are more options for food and drink (especially on Leith Walk).
The festival makes this worse; the city as a whole becomes overbooked.
But the gentrification wave is heading into Leith. You can practically watch it progressing down Leith walk. I suppose the giveaway will be when someone builds a luxury hotel in the old dockyards.