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Comment by matchbok | Hacker News Reader

More bad behavior that is encouraged by the AirBnb leadership. Disgusting. They could solve this problem overnight with their software but choose not to because it makes ~70% of their revenue, while at the same time claiming they are a "home-sharing" site.

AirBnb needs to go into the trash. They consume resources and push costs onto the community and neighbors, while making millions.

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> They could solve this problem overnight with their software

Can you expand on what the software solution would look like here? I'm curious why the hotel lobby doesn't scrape Airbnb and report all the properties that are breaking regulation.

Eliminating all listings without a host present would solve 99% of these problems. That's what the site sells itself as, anyway. Problem is there isn't much money to be made there.

Or just do a tiny bit of host/property verification. Again, too much money to be made from illegal/unzoned hotels.

I see. So, the legality of short-term rentals in NYC hinge on the presence of the host during the rental. And, that's not easily detectable by just scraping Airbnb.

I still think it'd be straight forward to scrape reviews off Airbnb that have telltale signs of the host not being present e.g. lockbox mentions. Filing complaints/lawsuits against even a small minority should create a chilling effect for everyone else who's running illegal hotels.

Or, in a high density environment like NYC, prediction from scraped listings plus an actual person who verifies the host's absence and records it. Work on contract for... "The hotel industry consortium", idk how that works. It sounds fun if the market is big enough

All or very very nearly all host not present rentals in NYC are illegal. That the software allows such listings is evidence that Airbnb doesn’t care. I suspect rather the opposite that they value the revenue they get from these illegal transactions.

People using it would beg to differ. Just don’t use their service.

The same could be said for all foreign realestate investment where homes sit empty. (Granted that could be solved by a vacancy tax.)

But people already buy places and rent them out as income property. This puts a burden on renters and increases the incentives for builders to only construct larger apartments and homes. It raises the price for everyone and poor single people suffer the most.

Im not following how airbnb is worse than individuals who have profited off the community and neighbors since forever?

Because renting != hotel. There is a huge different between how a tourist treats a building/apartment/neighborhood and a resident does. There are many good reasons why hotels have regulations. Mini-hotel platforms are not subject to the same things.

All of the laws regarding noise, littering, loitering, smoking, etc. don't magically vanish. You have the same recourse against a renter as you would a tourist.

> All of the laws regarding noise, littering, loitering, smoking, etc. don't magically vanish.

The guests do, though, which means when you call the cops again next week, it's a new person getting their first noise warning.

So these apartments and condos don't have rules where you just complain to management and they kick you (the leaseholder) out?

Plenty of landlords won't want to do battle with the lucrative tenants who've rented out half the building and always pay on time.

Nor do they really want to do all that work - evictions cost money, and are hard! - just to have another AirBnBer sign the replacement lease.

Simply not true, at all.

If only there were some way, a technology, even, of increasing the total number of units on a given plot of land, such that those who want to live in a city or visit a city wouldn't have to compete so vigorously for livable housing units.

Alas, we can only dream that such a technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_frame

Is your argument that tall buildings are not built in NYC?

They obviously are, but there are still not nearly enough. If you walk through lower manhattan you see innumerable 3 and 4 story buildings.

The interesting thing about AirBnb is not in the raw space consumption, but that it's driven down the cost of hotel rooms by changing what "hotel" means.

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