Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments
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Cities and counties need money to provide us with the services we depend on to run our little business. Reasonable taxes and fees are a fair, expected, and necessary price. The little town we're in has struck a decent balance price-wise, and they also have a decent regulatory system set up that's designed to ensure that neighbors' complaints about parking, noise, and trash are addressed.
We're very by-the-book operators. I want the city to see money from me because I want them to have an interest in protecting my business.
There are a couple of hotels under construction in town, which makes me nervous. Hotels hate vacation rentals. I'm not fond of AirBNB as a corporate citizen, but the Hoteliers cartel is dirtier. I wouldn't be surprised if the new hotels lobby the town to ban vacation rentals outright, or craft lethal regulations like those in Tennessee recently that require all vacation rentals to install fire-suppression sprinklers [https://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2015/jan/3/cities-acro...].
The bigger issue is the people not doing these things. There are hosts (and guests) that simply don't give a fuck about others. Hosts (especially ones that don't live in the area) couldn't care less about their impact on the neighborhood as long as money keeps coming into their bank account, and will try their hardest to take shortcuts and avoid responsibility. Some "hosts" are more like wannabe slumlords. "Bad actor" guests also don't care about what happens to a place they are going to leave, which leads to things like trash, disturbances, and stealing.
A problem with Airbnb is that properties are not siloed; there is an environment around them. There's many places on Airbnb that are better than hotels, and there's a lot of economic impact on local communities. Airbnb needs to re-evaluate how these places are part of a community rather than isolated from one.
The "sunshine and rainbows" sentiment behind why Airbnb exists is a nice thought, but the platform is rolling into a snowball of consequences and externalities. Assholes are going to be assholes, so many bad experiences are not from normal transactions, but from assholes using Airbnb to their advantage and Airbnb turning their cheek.
AirBNB should behave better, no doubt. And if they don't, they should be made to behave through thoughtful regulation that doesn't endanger the economy and character of places all over the country that are coming to depend on travelers.
What I like about hotels is the consistency of service and cleanliness, availability of nearby food or other services.
Don’t get me wrong: even though I’ve had some bad experiences with individual hosts on Airbnb, overall many host rentals are nice too.
I just don’t understand your negative comments towards hotels. They pay their taxes, they bear their own costs of demonstrating compliance with the law, provide a good standard of safety, cleanliness and service.
Obviously the hotel lobbying sucks, but I don’t see how anyone can think it’s worse than what Airbnb does. The hotel lobby is gaming a system in terms of competition, but from within a system overall that is not trying to in principle externalize all the burden onto citizens by skirting taxes.
Airbnb is doing something very different, trying to flip tax collection and demonstration of compliance around to make it an optional nicety they choose to extend to local governments on their own terms.
That sounds nice, and it suits a lot of people just fine. But try doing that with a family, and on a limited budget.
I'll give you an example: last year I "rented" my own place for a week with family. We crammed thirteen of us into our house (it's properly equipped to sleep 12 but we've never had that many aside from our own family). My father-in-law took us out to dinner the first night, and we ate breakfast at restaurants most mornings. The cost of food was likely over a thousand dollars for the week, but it could easily have been double or triple that if we'd eaten out every day. As it was, some of our money went to the local grocery store instead of restaurants, and we were able to afford a week-long vacation instead of just a weekend.
You can't do this in a hotel with mini-fridge and a microwave. If you want to bring your family on a week-long vacation in the Colorado Mountains, and if you're not wealthy, then you do it by renting my house, which has a full kitchen, enough rooms, beds, and foldouts for a large family, and costs half or even a quarter of what the same space a hotel would cost.
So it's not that hotels are worse than vacation rentals. They're just different. They serve different markets. If places like mine didn't exist, the groups and families that stay there aren't going to stay in hotels instead; they're not going to come to this town at all, because hotels can't provide comfortable longer-duration vacations that are also affordable for most people.
This is extremely important for ski vacations. Skiing is expensive enough as it is, that most people can afford just a few days a year with the hotel, food, and fuel costs that come with it. But my place can make it downright cheap in comparison.
And then I've had experiences where I wonder why I didn't get a hotel for slightly more. Usually in the city where the host owns 20+ properties and really don't give 2 shits about the experience.
I do think this service needs to exist, if only to improve the overall travel experience, but yea they need to do some vetting or figure out a much better pricing structure. I love the idea of living like a local in some apartment building, but so far this experience has usually been pretty subpar for me.
Why would renters cause more wear on those resources than full time occupants?
Guests are usually groups of blended family and friends, so there are more cars. This is true for us when we visit our own place; we often bring family or friends, and they bring more cars. The dirt road leading to our house definitely notices the traffic.
And then there's the water and trash. Bloody fucking hell vacation rental guests generate a lot of trash. I'm working on some ways to encourage reduced consumption, and I stock only recycled paper products -- toilet tissue particularly is a sore point with me. I con't believe how much toilet paper people use. It pisses me off enough that I'm playing with the idea of charging for it.
Otherwise, we've had mostly good luck with our guests. Mostly. I won't rent to anyone under 25, and I'm really strict about that. I also completely banned smoking of any kind anywhere on the property, inside or outside. These things have helped.
You know what else I hate? Fucking Keurig. I hate the packaging, I hate the shitty brewing machines that don't brew hot enough or saturate the pods, and I hate the racketeering company. Nevertheless, one of the most consistent compliments I get in reviews is about this dinky little coffee and tea station we have set up on a bread rack. Nothing fancy, just a Keurig and another normal coffee machine and some boxes of tea and cocoa and stuff. To me it looks kind of chintzy, but a lot of guests are super charmed by complimentary coffee pods and variety packs of tea. So I grit my teeth and keep the little drawer stocked with pods.
Toilet paper again: at some point I intend to install bidets in the bathrooms. Toto makes one that reviews well. Then I'll put up some signs with cute bears and bunnies and a maybe a folksy limerick about conserving and some encouragement to wash before wiping. If people used them it would cut way back on our paper consumption.
How do you ban smoking outside? Are you on property keeping tabs on your guests every move?
Smoking outside is a different problem. Until recently I didn't forbid it, but earlier this year I found cigarette butts in the brush below the deck, along with a burn mark on the dining table and cigarettes in the trash. That was from a large group of college aged boys.
In normal dry conditions, Colorado mountain country is like a big pile of kindling just waiting for some dumbass to toss a cigarette butt into the pine needles and set the town ablaze.
This incident really freaked me out. I took their entire security deposit, and added rules and a stern warning to my listing. At some point I'll install a camera outside to watch the deck and back yard, because I know it will happen again.
When you travel, how many people do you cram into a single room? How much are you driving around the town you're visiting?
The answer to both is: probably a lot more than someone who lives there.
Our place is busy, and our guests make a significant impact on the town, spending a lot of money in local shops and restaurants.
The town's grocer is pretty dependent on vacationers. Locals do more of the 45 minute drive to Walmart once a week.
The restaurants in town get more local business, but I'm aware from comments and reviews that our guests eat out a lot. Even with a full kitchen, it's common for people to eat out more on vacation than they would normally at home, especially when the restaurants are seen to be part of a town's charm and reputation. Which is why I put out the menus on a side table in my home's entryway, just like the hotels do in their lobbies.
When we bring family there, we eat out a lot. We walk downtown to get ice cream in the little candy store. We never do that at home in Denver. I don't take the kids to ice cream at home. That's what vacations are for! I say, "You are naughty, awful, disappointing children, but if you be good from now on maybe we'll go on vacation again and get ice cream". I know I'm not the only one.
Do you collect the same taxes as hotels do? Have you registered as a business with your city?
Yes, we have a Colorado sales tax license and a city-issued business license, both hanging on the wall like any other business. Every vacation rental in town -- many dozens of them in all -- does the same. The town is small, neighbors are watchful, and city enforcement is strict.
We pay lodging and sales tax, same as a hotels. My rental rates are about half the cost for the same space in a hotel, and it's way nicer. You don't get a full kitchen in a hotel.
We pump a lot of money into the local economy -- much more than we would if we lived there full time. My cleaning lady made about $8000 off our house last year. Guests tend to be pretty active patrons of restaurants and shops, and when they eat at the home they buy food from a little grocery in town. The nearest supermarket is 45 minutes away.
It sucks that your neighborhood is suffering. But I rather doubt your situation would be much better if all the tourists were staying in hotels rather than airbnb's. Touristy destinations all face challenges, and there are myriad ways a city can screw it up.
But not everywhere is like Miami. A lot of our mountain towns are slowly dying. Some of them of tried to stay alive by legalizing casino gambling. It seems to work, but it turns your town into a casino town. Other towns are trying to navigate a delicate but potentially rewarding transition to being the kind of vacation destinations that people want to stay at for a week or more. Hotels can't help your town get that kind of business. Again, no kitchens. If I can help my town make that transition and also have a successful business for myself, it's a win-win for everybody.
A drunk airbnb user tried to break into a neighbor's house around 11 pm last week while the residents were inside. He was lost and thought he was at his rental, but that wasn't apparent to anyone else in the beginning, so my wife gets a call for help from another neighbor and we go to check it out.
When we get there, we discover the assailant has been treed on a shed roof by the woman whose door he had beaten on. She was home alone with her baby at the time. She was (understandably) waving a ball-peen hammer at him and shouting.
Let's call him Trey.
Trey is around 6' 3" and a bit on the husky side. He is maybe 25 and he is wearing a worn out Auburn hat and a nice polo shirt. Trey is crying and refusing to speak to any of the small crowd that has gathered, some of whom who are darkly muttering about burglars and drugs. Trey is talking into his phone, quietly, holding it like a slice of pizza.
Trey has called his mom.
My SO and I figure out what has happened about the same time. "Hey buddy, are you looking for your airbnb?" I called.
Luckily, we were able to de-escalate before Metro PD arrived or Trey was beaten to death with a hammer by a 5' tall woman. It turns out that Trey had given his Uber driver the wrong adress on the way home from Broadway; he was supposed to be about one street over. We get a hold of the groom whose bachelor party Trey was a part of, and the police give Trey a ride home.
So, that can happen.
Is that AirBnB's fault? Is it the hosts fault? Is it the cities fault for not regulating this? Is it our society's fault for allowing drinking to the point of forgetting your address?
I think in the end it's just a series of unfortunate events, that give you a really great anecdote, which might have turned out much worse. I wouldn't claim this as evidence for or against AirBnB but man did it make me laugh.
Good on you for de-escalating the situation and keeping your head! Hopefully, Trey had the decorum to apologize later on and try to make things right.
Chicago had 2948 shooting victims in 2018. That's 8 shooting victims a day.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/chicago-murder-total-2018-...
To someone living in Europe, these rates defy belief.
I would say however, that while shootings are rare in the US, so are events where people run to grab a weapon. We can agree that the prevalence of guns means there is a high chance a gun is the most dangerous weapon available.
I would guess that in events where there is banging on a house guns are "involved" more in the USA than in other countries. It'd be hard to collect that data because a gun in the hand of one person can quickly de-escalate a situation.
I don't think Airbnb is a bad thing by any means; it's our go-to for day trips in many cases. I can also understand the need for cities having licencing and/or residency rules!
He wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for AirBNB. He likely could have asked the concierge at the hotel he was staying at for help finding his room in his drunken state.
What if instead of the host using AirBnB he was just a local Bed and Breakfast (those existed before AirBnb). Who's fault is it then?
I forget the term for it, but there is a legal definition that limits liability in a lot of these kinds of cases because it can get very broad. I personally, find your assertion that AirBnB is to blame to be too broad. I can easily think of a situation that this same scenario happens without AriBnB.
This individual fucked up, the situation was handled really well by the OP and a few others.
Conversely, I'd say that from the article AirBNB fighting regulation and to not pay taxes is their fault.
it doesn't seem like you actually disagree, but I wasn't sure where to put this post in the somewhat disjointed thread.
I was glad to hear the jury agreed that the action was appropriate.
Drinking to excess has consequences, including death. Either from liver failure or lead poisionong.
AirBNB has often provided me a better alternative to a largely terrible hotel market that often takes racket prices and makes me pay for services I don't need. On the other hand I completely understand when people are annoyed about party folk living in the flat above them or when they lack safety regulations or don't pay the same taxes hotels do.
But none of that justifies an outright ban, there should be solutions to regulate the bad while allowing the good. Make them pay hefty fees that they may pass on to their customers if they violate night rest times. Make them follow safety regulations and pay takes. (Yeah, that will make it more expensive, but I can still avoid paying for daily room service I want to opt out and sometimes even can't and 24/7 reception staff I don't need.)
It's simply that they don't.
In much the same way that Uber skirts the laws of background checks, Airbnb responds to complaints and attempts to introduce regulation with lawsuits. I wish the Hotel and Cab markets were disrupted by companies that wanted to optimize within the rules of the game, but they, either through lawsuits or just ignoring laws, don't play in an even setting, these traditional companies end up being burdened with more regulations than the "disrupters" adhere to.
They break down into 3 groups. The smallest are people between jobs. They're doing something that's better than their best alternative.
The next largest group are the occasional drivers, meaning Uber is not their main job. These people typically already own a car, so the fixed costs are leaving their pocket every month whether or not they drive ride sharing. Ride sharing more than comfortably covers their variable costs, so they're making money.
The largest group (in terms of rides given/taken, not in terms of drivers) are people who are driving Uber essentially full-time. Many of them have bought a car specifically for its Uber suitability (good gas mileage, low maintenance, etc) and I think these drivers are properly thinking about their expenses (because they're pretty compartmentalized).
I know it's common to think that the drivers are not fully and rationally evaluating the value proposition that Uber offers, but I see pretty frequent evidence to the contrary. There are fewer than 5% of people for whom I ask the question who respond in a way that makes me think that they think their predominant expense is "just gas money".
To optimize within the hotel rules, you’d need hosts to get a hotel/rooming house license...
Hotel/rooming house licenses aren't un-affordable, there are regulations around them but both motel6 and mom&pop B&Bs can acquire them, so the bar is generally pretty low. For instance in Cambridge, MA it looks like it'd cost about 200$[1] to file for the license, Airbnb could probably offer legal services to help people properly apply if they cared to.
[1] https://www.cambridgema.gov/iwantto/applyforahotellodgingori...
Or creating a shortage of supply for actual people looking to rent in the cities desirable areas, which results in increase of rent. That's the biggest one imo.
Stupid people are abundant everywhere.
I was on the association board, it's kinda thankless job as we had to deal with this house.
We got the usual riot act / pushback from the folks operating that short term rental about how the association was terrible and oh man the government and how we just were protecting hotels (like man, I don't have any connection to hotels...). They tried to organize the other folks who rented out their places (traditional long term rentals) to push us off the board, they actually got several to go along with it, but they failed (it wasn't even close, we had a limit on how many units could rent out at once anyway so they never were going to have enough numbers).
In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association / neighborhood. Fortunately the law was on our side and they eventually sold the unit and left.
Local governments are run by the locals and they should get to decide where businesses like that operate and zone and so forth. The idea that Airbnb should just get to be the almighty "disruptor" and land on your neighborhood with no recourse is pretty absurd at face value, especially when the argument is usually about how folks should have some freedom, but what they mean is their freedom, not the communities.
By joining a HOA, you've delegated away to the collective the right to dictate to your neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property. In your case, the system worked - because you are in a HOA. If people want to exert that kind of collectivist control over their neighbors, that's the kind of organization they should be buying homes in.
But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property? All kinds of small businesses are routinely run out of residential zoned properties. "Renting a room" seems like the kind of small business that's ideal for this situation - it takes no more infrastructure to house a vacation rental than it does to house a longer-term resident. "Hotels" require employees and elevators and truckloads of supplies delivered weekly; vacation rentals have none of that, and so the comparison makes little sense beyond "they are noisy". Leaseholders can also throw parties and be disruptive; there is an existing legal process to deal with noise complaints.
This category of complaint seems like a thin veneer around the core of truth that people who sink a colossal chunk of their nest egg and future earnings into one asset are knee-jerk averse to anything perceived as a threat to it.
The local laws which are at least indirectly decided by the people who live there decide whether people have a right to do business in residential areas or not.
> This category of complaint seems like a thin veneer around the core of truth that people who sink a colossal chunk of their nest egg and future earnings into one asset are knee-jerk averse to anything perceived as a threat to it.
I'm not a homeowner. I just dislike the idea of a company profiting off blatant disregard of the law. I personally don't really care about rentals, but if you want to do them then I hold the opinion you should get the laws changed to allow for them.
If anything, allowing vacation rentals would actually increase the value of homes in that area because it probably increases the rent.
While people have qualms with the effect of short term rentals on housing markets, they usually don't show up on an HOA level.
The real problem is they were being bad neighbors, not that they were short-term neighbors, and once your neighbor starts to ruin your ability to enjoy your home you have a just argument to take action.
> But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property?
The fact that you live in close proximity to them so many of your activities can affect them, and that it's only by communal agreement that you even have "property" at all.
This is literally the core of the concept of zoning.
If you don't like it work against zoning laws, but there's generally a consensus on the broader topic here.
"But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property?"
Zoning. Literally, most cities and towns have laws about where someone can run a hotel. A huge number of AirBNB rentals are highly illegal.
Because any livable set of laws recognizes that externalities are a thing and need to be addressed.
I, as a homeowner, can't start amassing a large pile of radioactive material on my property. I can't start a home-based waste incineration company, even if the structure exists entirely on my property. There's a ton of stuff I can't do, because there are laws prohibiting it.
If the laws right now don't address "you can't invite enough strangers to your house such that it causes a lot of waste or damage to your neighborhood," then that's just because we didn't have broadly accessible systems in place to invite those strangers; it doesn't mean that that's now or has ever been okay, just like collecting a pile of radioactive waste in my backyard hasn't been okay since we learned about the harms of radiation poisoning.
"Why can't people do x?" Because we live in a society.
Your rant about people not knowing better than to diversify investment is completely oblivious of the fact that most people out there have no reasonable way to do so, and that their only protection is the existence of such rules.
Yup. And they typically have something in common - they don't bother the neighbors or create an atmosphere that is noticeably different than that of a residential neighborhood without the home business.
Work from a home office? No one will notice (other than the fact that you're home a lot). Teach piano lessons? As long as your students' parents don't park in front of other houses, probably not a big deal. (But people will notice.)
Want to run a metal shop out of your garage M-F? You'll get shut down because it's a disruption. Want to do metal shop projects on the weekend? No big deal, as long as you don't start too early and bother the neighbors.
> "Renting a room" seems like the kind of small business that's ideal for this situation - it takes no more infrastructure to house a vacation rental than it does to house a longer-term resident.
It's not about the "infrastructure" (when reduced to simply "a place to stay"), but about the externalities of everything that comes with frequent turnover of for-pay visitors. A vacation rental inherently means frequent turnover of residents, whereas "renting a room" means having a long(er) term resident with much less turnover.
> Leaseholders can also throw parties and be disruptive; there is an existing legal process to deal with noise complaints.
Yup, and it's easy to do because a leaseholder, well, lives there so the law can take its course. A vacation renter is gone pretty much before you can pursue any existing legal processes apart from calling the cops to come by and tell them to turn the music down. So, the AirBnB renter doesn't have to live with much/any consequences; the AirBnB "host" doesn't necessarily have consequences since they'll say "I won't rent to them again"; but the folks in the neighborhood do suffer from it.
Perhaps the law differs where you live, but where I live, local ordnance on repeated noise complaints gradually ramps penalties up from warnings to fines, so hosts have a strong interest in preventing partying at their properties. That seems a more appropriate legislative response than banning short-term rentals entirely.
Or maybe buy in a city that makes the decision to not allow that kind of rental?
I don't see a significant difference in a step up from the association I was in where you deemed that ok, to a city making the same decision.
I was just following his logic that he felt it was ok that the associating decided and that if a city decided the same, then I don't see much difference.
Ha. Don't come in Europe cities. There _are_ regulations in cities about that. And rightly so.
AirBnB is making it easier for individual people to ignore these rules, and the to date enforcement hasn't been particularly strong.
Noise complaints are a downstream symptom. It's often unproductive and ineffective for laws to try to back-propagate policy by regulating downstream symptoms and hoping upstream symptoms get fixed as a result.
This is a really well-crafted statement that applies widely to all kinds of issues in governance.
I don't object to you running a hotel next door, but I expect your guests to behave themselves well..
Perhaps if the root issues were given some easy way for one to satisfactorily resolve when they arise then their would be far less support for outright bans.
The problem is that any law or rule is only as good as its enforcement. People forget this too often when writing regulations, ending up with rules that are too costly, or involve too much invasion of privacy to get right.
I think the lesson is that you should always consider enforcement when writing policy. It needs to be front-and-center, not a secondary concern. A worse policy may end up being better if it's more easily enforceable.
On the other hand, if they behave themselves just as well as long-term owners, then no, you really shouldn't have any say whatsoever about who lives in your neighbor's property.
We live in a society.
The fact that what you do with your own property often has direct effects on your neighbors. This is why zoning regulations exist, for example. And noise ordinances. And building codes. There isn't a magical forcefield that ends at your property line that prevents what you're doing from having an adverse affect on others.
Just like people who don't like noise should be careful about living close to other people, people who like to be left alone to do what they want with their own property need to take the same considerations into mind.
Texas has barely any zoning and it’s doing fine.
There is tons of zoning in Texas; I think you're thinking of Houston.
What does this mean? If I owned a house in your neighborhood and had to move away for work, my options are to sell the house, or get on a waitlist till the number of houses rented out reduces?
As someone that's never owned a house, that sounds like a shitty rule that should be disrupted. I'm assuming there is a positive side to that only homeowners can see.
For starters, several federal agencies actually require COA's to limit the number of units that are not owner-occupied as a condition for government-backed mortgages. Some states and local laws also place caps on this to prevent condos from being used as unregistered hotels (see eg timeshares).
As for your options? Generally, for cases like this your option would be to sell the unit or request an exemption. If you're moving far away, it's very likely that the COA will not grant the exemption, because units rented out by distant absentee landlords tend to generate the most and worst problems that COAs deal with.
This seems incorrect. They are more common than you think, especially in neighborhoods built within the last 30-40 years.
But, most of those mid-70s neighborhoods have fairly light-weight rules... Some architecture review, but generally not the crazy "can't leave garage door open" or "potted plants must all be in pots 13.25" in diameter" stuff.
https://foundation.caionline.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/...
I don't think I've seen a development in the last 30 years that doesn't have an HOA, and it seems like like all of Florida/Texas is HOA.
I'm on a condo board currently and those are an entirely separate thing, much more intense, much more money, and much more service (when run well).
So, yes, there is a positive side. Most people have lived in places with absentee landlords. Many people don't want a preponderance of absentee landlord properties in a place where there is such direct impact from doing so; the thinking goes that if you rent out a house across the street from me, they might be annoying, but if you rent out a condo unit above mine, your tenants might flood my apartment because they didn't tell you the toilet had problems. Important difference.
If you don't like that, don't buy into a condo association that does it. It is extremely rare for a rental-limit rule to be put in place these days, so in practice you should know going in whether those rules are in place. If by some chance you live in the one in a thousand that does try to put those rules in place today, sell and move on.
Folks can debate if government backed mortgages should be a thing, but as far as an association we decided we wanted to preserve the opportunity for folks to sell easily (well as easily as possible) by matching the government limits.
Some of the folks renting at the time were quite upset... until I explained for the 12th time to them that everyone renting on that day still could rent, and then there would be a limit... so they were actually in a good spot. Takes people a while to understand sometimes ;)
eropple kinda touches on a side concern about absentee landlords and such and that was very much on our mind as well.
I did say in another comment that we allowed some exceptions if the limit was reached. In fact we approved all exceptions that came our way as there were very few requests. We wanted folks to be able to rent if they had to move fast, family event, and couldn't sell quickly. We didn't want to put anyone in a bind.
HOAs no longer are able to do that directly (even though naked racial discrimination was actually central to the original purpose of HOAs and the covenants which give life to them), but they continue to enforce cultural standards that are designed particularly to enforce the behavior preferred by a particular subculture and exclude others.
As you say the laws to destroy them already exist, all it takes is the effort to use it.
10 people per room.
As the Wikipedia article I linked states, flophouses were typically rented by transients -- what we generally call "the homeless" these days. The term "flophouse" originated with hobos and propagated out to the larger culture.
I was homeless for several years. The prices listed in the thing you linked are comparable to what I sometimes paid for one night for a hotel in Fresno.
There are people these days who are without permanent residence who live in hotels. Some definitions of homelessness count them as homeless.
What you linked really doesn't fit what I am talking about. I have seen articles about illegal rentals stuffing multiple people into one room in big cities. They usually found them via Craigslits, iirc.
Most AirBnB listings are along the lines of the cost of a hotel or more. From what I gather, they wind up being a hotel alternative in most cases, not something dirt cheap with no amenities that a homeless person might rent for a night or two.
I blog about homelessness. I still talk to homeless people at times. I've had a college class on homelessness. I'm not uninformed on the topic of homelessness and what homeless people today are doing to get by.
AirBnB rentals are not some bog standard coping mechanism for today's homeless, from what I gather.
As for your tight local control, fuck that. No, you shouldn't get to decide exactly what happens in your neighborhood just because you got there first. You don't own the neighborhood, you own single plot of land, and people who want to buy other plots of land and collectively evolve the neighborhood in new directions should have just as much of a right as you do.
Having had a AirBnB rental two floors down: no, they did not. Most guests are reasonable, but a sufficiently high number are not. Unlike a hotel there’s no way to walk up to someone and tell them to shut the party down, so you’re stuck with talking to the guests which laugh in your face (quote: we’re here to party.) or calling the police. Neither is an attractive option. You can’t just complain to AirBnB and the host won’t - if you know how to reach the host.
AirBnB does about everything to isolate themselves and their clients from complaints.
I think you got it all wrong. This is not a pitch for AirBnB. If anything, the company is creating the problem, not solving it.
>As for your tight local control, fuck that. No, you shouldn't get to decide exactly what happens in your neighborhood just because you got there first.
You're taking what OP wrote out of context and molding it to fit your simplistic thinking. There are laws to protect residential neighborhoods for a reason, and they certainly are not based on "who got here first" rule.
The commenter you're replying to was a member of the Board of an HOA. Meaning that he lived in a condo or townhouse development or a private community. In all of these cases, all of the owners are bound by the common rules of the HOA (which, as owners, they have the right to vote on, amend, etc.), and "tight local control" is pretty much the point.
That's right I don't get to decide because I was there first.
I get to decide because the majority elected me to the association and I carried out their will. I was a representative of the neighborhood and the neighborhood got to decide.
I say "get" but I'm not there anymore, so I don't get to anymore.
You can change the property under the purview of the association. It would be stupid to assert that you cannot. But you must win a vote to do so--and you agree to adhere to the results of association votes by buying into the property and into the association.
Such positive tyranny one must endure. Makes my heart break. But you have a way out! You can always choose...to not buy a place with a condo association or HOA.
(I didn't. Single-family home. Would recommend!)
I think you mean sui iuris (legally autonomous) not sui generis (a unique case).
I'm no attorney but to me it's pretty clear that AirBnB shouldn't be allowed to exist as a business the way it stands today. It's incredible they've made it this far.
I'd love to hear some concrete rebuttal as to why what they're doing is OK besides the "less government/regulation" angle.
So, that gets back to the problem. AirBnB has not solved the problem because the people who are affected are the neighbors of the AirBnB. If the people renting the apartment are not in the apartment itself, they will give the guests 5 stars if the house is clean at the end. However, the neighbors might give that same guest 1 star because they were partying at 3AM, keeping the neighbors awake.
So, we get back to calling in the police and making the place worse for everyone. A hotel has people on the premise to monitor; an AirBnB is not guaranteed this.
They have not solved this problem at all. I lived next door to an illegal AirBNB (all short-term whole-apartment rentals are illegal in NYC).
It was a nightmare, and there's nothing I could do about it. AirBNB does not consider me a customer and has no contractual relationship with me. They didn't provide any way to determine the owner's listing when you know the address, and even if I had, there's no formal way to lodge a complaint against the owner.
The only way a neighbor can take action against their problematic AirBNB neighbor is to report them to the city government.
AirBnBs bring randos into closed, private, residential areas that don't want to have to deal with people partying. Sure, it may just be fun and games for the renters who are on vacation, but for everyone else, who have to deal with it 24/7? It's not fun. It's annoying and rude.
Local governments are the wrong level for those sorts of decisions to be made. You don't have any right to tell your neighbors what to do with their property. Now, it's legitimate for the government to make rules of general application for everyone, but local governments have too much conflict of interest to make these decisions in a globally optimal way.
Japan, which has a national zoning law, is the right model. In our system, we'd apply it at the state level.
In theory, this is how the system is supposed to work here in California. We have the statewide Regional Housing Needs Allocation, which is a kind of statewide zoning that sets targets for cities, which can then zone as they want to meet those targets. Unfortunately RHNA is not enforced, and there are too many loopholes that let cities circumvent their legal obligations. The Housing Accountability Act closes some of those loopholes, but not enough. :(
I agree with you on this, however, Japan regulated AirBNB because renting a room for a short period of time is a pure commercial activity and not allowed in Residential areas.
The catch is that it just doesn't work that way.
I lived, several times, a few doors down to someone who did all this and didn't run an Airbnb. They're just shitty people, and they're going to be shitty neighbors regardless of Airbnb.
I'm sure local governments would love to collect a big check from Airbnb instead of hunting down thousands of tax-dodgers; but doing local tax collection authorities' work for them isn't exactly Airbnb's responsibility.
Not by default, sure, but nothing prevents a local government from creating a law that says, "where an organization takes commissions in connection with its marketing and/or or the facilitation of payment for short-term rentals of property within our jurisdiction, the organization is responsible for collecting any occupancy taxes associated with the transaction."[0]
[0]https://www.arnoldporter.com/en/perspectives/publications/20...
I personally like the idea of a world as simple as many imagine it, but sadly I don't think it is that simple.
A great man once said: “People don’t think it be like it is, but it do."
She simply didn't give a shit about the noise and trash she generated and all of us had to deal with it. The landlord didn't care either.
The police told me to deal with the landlord, because the noise wasn't at 3AM and wasn't "an event" like a concert. But her music was loud enough to shake my walls such that pictures fell off of them.
The town never returned phone calls. I simply vacated the apartment and told the landlord he would be more than welcome to sue me in court for the remainder of the lease.
Strangely, he never did, but I have a feeling that I would have had a hard time defending myself in court.
Though it is an unpopular opinion, I now feel that single family homes might be peferable to apartment buildings, if the caveat is that "the town and police will not do anything about anti-social behavior" as it is so rightfully called in the UK.
Long term rentals can have problem tenants too, but long term rental owners at least had way more leverage over their rentals than short term (who really in our case didn't give a damn).
Its very straight forward and quick to evict a short term renter for violating terms of the lease(noise violation etc).
Whereas its a lengthy and pricey process to evict a long term tenant in many jurisdictions
What I feel like is missing is a communication path from the community to the platform. Because people start by calling the police to complain it immediately becomes a legal and local ordinance issue. If it were easy to report abuses to Airbnb directly, or if local police were instructed to contact them, the platform could better regulate itself.
Can I open a nightclub in my house?
What about parking? Can I pave my front lawn and rent the space out as parking spots? Or maybe put a dumpster there for local businesses to put their trash in?
There's a tree on my boulevard. Can I cut the tree down and park a truck on the boulevard?
I decided to run a grow-op in my house. When I turn the electricity on, the lights fade in my neighbours houses because the load on my grow-up is so much bigger than the equipment is designed to support.
Tough luck for my neighbours, correct?
Houston managed an impressive urban sprawl without zoning laws.
Because infringing on people's right to do what they want with their property deserves a hell of a lot more scrutiny than it gets right now. Trying to centrally manage what can be done where doesn't scale. See SF housing prices.
>Can I open a nightclub in my house?
As long as it meets the standards that night clubs have to meet then sure. You're unlikely to be able to do these things and be commercially successful enough to subsity in primarily residential area.
>What about parking? Can I pave my front lawn and rent the space out as parking spots? Or maybe put a dumpster there for local businesses to put their trash in?
Sure. Just be aware that you might be on the hook if you do a half-assed paving job and the runoff affects your neighbors. Once again if you truly are in a residential area where this kind of thing is not appropriate you will have a hard time being successful enough at it to annoy anyone who isn't already annoyed by everything.
>There's a tree on my boulevard. Can I cut the tree down and park a truck on the boulevard?
This is more complicated because you get into right of way issues and the city usually has a pretty substantial right of way beside the road (sidewalk?) but sure, if none of that is an issue then feel free to cut it down.
>I decided to run a grow-op in my house. When I turn the electricity on, the lights fade in my neighbours houses because the load on my grow-up is so much bigger than the equipment is designed to support.
If the power company was worried about QoS to the other customers on the street they wouldn't give you the massive breaker you need for that operation. If the neighbors are really bothered by it they can complain to the power company and if they complain enough then it will get addressed. There is no need for laws for this sort of thing. Once again if you're really in a residential area you're unlikely to get that kind of service if you really are somewhere it would be a problem. The power company has internal rules about what service gets installed where (basically their own zoning) in order to ensure that breakers on bigger equipment upstream are not tripped during times of peak load.
Good luck finding anyone to live in that kind of neighbourhood by choice. If you have an area with zero controls, it quickly will become a race-to-the-bottom.
The kinds of people who want to live in a nice neighbourhood, and be nice neighbours, will go live somewhere else.
It turns out that people feel the same way about freedom to do what you like with your single-family home as they do about the freedom to drive a car without getting a license or being insured, and the freedom to drive on whichever side of the road you like, and the freedom to drive a vehicle without smog regulation or safety rules.
Most people don't want your freedom, because the upside of their freedom is greatly outweighed by the downsides of their neighbour's freedoms.
They'll all just go any set up gated communities where everyone buying a home must contractually agree to the neighbourhood's own regulations.
And that's fine?
> and doesn't affect tenants much if
> they hold the guests to the same
> behavioral standards as the original tenan
Because it is mostly used by rich property owners to artificial prop up the value of their capital investment, to the detriment of renters and people who cannot afford to purchase properties.
I don't think Airbnb really cares to do that... and that kinda is where the problems start in terms of what Airbnb is really all about.
It would be delightful if AirBnB were to be the exception, but as Reagan(?) said, "Trust, but verify."
Who does the verifying if we remove local government from oversight?
1. I don't think Airbnb cares to do it at all.
2. It would be a very hard job even if they tried to do it.
Also wonder how many of them structurally work to disrupt themselves into a sort of untenable situation.
Like can Facebook exist at its scale ... and not sell everyone's data or just behave as it does?
Can gig economy companies exist without grabbing into tips / passing risk off onto delivery people?
I don't know.
"If you can’t find the listing’s web address, enter the street address and we’ll try to locate the listing. In order to protect our hosts’ privacy, we won’t be able to confirm the existence of any Airbnb listings or follow up with you."
This supports your point and should be changed.
And the fact that they don't have a feature for this shows that they don't care. They just think that a few lawsuits here and there are cheaper than adequately dealing with community complaints.
That's because in the kind of "upscale but not too upscale" kinds of places where AirBnB tends to flourish conflict resolution is such a lost art that calling the police on each other is what people do.
Simple conflict resolution works great with reasonable people, but those aren't the kinds of people blasting techno and screaming all through the night.
It may even be that more often than not, it is people where simole interaction would suffice on an individual basis, but there are two factors that still weigh in favor of summoning law enforcement:
(1) The social context of one where any individual you deal with would lose face by backing down to anyone without compulsory power, and
(2) Even if the above was not sufficient to tip the odds to “most probably individual interaction will not be productive”, the potential cost of interaction with “coked up aggressive young men” or the like doesn't require a very high probability that that is the scenario before it becomes an unacceptable risk even if the expected net benefit of individual interaction is positive.
Why? The issue is between the homeowner and the community. The fact that they're using AirBnB or anything else is irrelevant. The homeowner is responsible for what occurs on their property, and the community has a right to set standards via HOA's, city/local ordinances, etc.
The communication path should be between the property owner and AirBnB to discuss issues with their private contracts/arrangements/deals.
They have made plenty clear that they don't really care about how people near the rental unit are affected. They will never make this happen unless "NIMBY impulses" put enough pressure on them to do so.
I’m a by-the-book guy when it comes to business, so registered the place as a guest-house business premises with the council. They even remarked that I was the first Airbnb operator to do this in over a year - and there are over a thousand Airbnbs in town.
Because the place is under a certain rateable value, which is based on location and size, it is eligible for a 100% rebate on business rates. I’d gladly pay them were anything due, but nothing is.
So, not only am I in the clear with local government, but being so saves me several thousand pounds a year.
I moved there 9 years ago and have spent the last 8 years living on Ocean Drive in South Beach. When I first moved there the neighborhood was full of high-class tourists, a lot of Europeans. The beach was not extremely crowded, you had nice restaurants and upscale shops and the vibes you were getting were similar to what you would see in the Mediterranean (Spain / south France).
Within 3 years of Airbnb expanding, the character of the neighborhood changed completely. By 2014, a lot of restaurants and shops had closed down, to be replaced by 5 dollar souvenir shops (surf style!), kebab and pizza places. Noise levels increased dramatically. Crime too. This kept getting worse and today I would describe the place as little more than a crime-ridden hood. The ghetto criminal element is numerous and ever present. The classy European tourists have left, never to return. Ocean Drive is barricaded by tons of police every weekend (soon to be every night). The beach itself is full of trash and drunken, noisy, unruly people. Spring Break (and memorial day weekend) used to be finite events. Now the same chaos is happening every night. Street racing, fights, urinating in public, condoms, dog and human feces on sidewalks, all of that and more under a lingering stench of weed smoke.
If that's not testament to how Airbnb can ruin entire communities, I don't know what is.
The locals are complaining [1], [2] but nothing seems to change except more money being thrown at police and local interests.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/Residents-for-a-safe-Ocean-Drive-13...
[2] https://www.facebook.com/SouthBeachSludgeReport/
[3] https://wsvn.com/news/local/video-shows-spring-breakers-atta...
Typical night in SOBE.
Spring Break is fairly new to the area. Prior to that the college students would hit Daytona, Panama City, or Key West. And long before that Fort Lauderdale was the Spring Break destination (showing my age).
The traditional family-owned restaurants started being driven out in 2014, to be replaced by new investor backed concepts because the rent was too high. Joe's Stone Crabs owns it spot and isn't going anywhere, I can't say the same for the restaurants around it. AirBnB didn't cause restaurants to close, speculators did.
Finally, it is the season of the snowbird. Every beach is packed with foreign tourists staying in their vacation homes on 6 month visas. When June arrives they'll leave, they always do.
Also, prior to this spring break there was only a few reasons to go to Ocean, Spring Break, Memorial Day, and Fourth of July. Now, city council and local organizations have planned street festivals basically every weekend between here and eternity.
All to say that very little of what's going on on Ocean Dr has anything to do with AirBnB.
And when I talked about shop/restaurants closing I emphasized their replacements. It's one thing for restaurants to close in Miami Beach (happens every year). It's quite another for same restaurant to close and be replaced by a kebab or pizza place. Entire streets that were lined with upscale shops have been turned into cash extraction mechanisms for unsophisticated, drunken passers by. What does that tell you about the character of the neighborhood?
Today's SOBE bears little resemblance to SOBE of the pre-Airbnb past.
> I moved there 9 years ago and have spent the last 8 years > living on Ocean Drive in South Beach.
Hello neighbor! Interesting connection - I never linked the two together but it's certainly possible.
The story of Miami Beach the last 5 years is so true and so sad.
Your idea is that AirBnb provided cheaper lodging that made South Beach open to people outside of the European tourists that the hotels were targeting?
I'd blame Winter Music Conference and the constant stream of other huge party events as much as anything.
These people have been enabled by dirt cheap Airbnb prices. Traditional hotels have higher prices but also enforce codes of behavior that tend to limit if not outright ban the incidents I described. Simply, you can't get away with behaving like that in a hotel. You have to keep up appearances. Even in a party town like Miami Beach. Not to mention there's competition for the rooms with regular tourists. Airbnb allows a gang of 20 ppl to rent a single room and come here to wreak havoc.
Surfer's Paradise and the Gold Coast saw >40k students in 2011, about 10% of the total number of graduates, and the event is gaining in popularity. Other locations also see a large influx of young adults reveling together one last time before life comes at them. Many of these beach towns have had a pull-and-tug relationship with the event and short-term rentals have always been a part of it.
So, the issue is not AirBnB and it's effects. It's that young people tend to be inconsiderate.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309380/
Second, whatever the problem is (I assume rowdy, drunken college students?), it's a human behavior problem, not a problem with a service that enables value exchange like Airbnb.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/travel/airbnb-miami-beach...
> Airbnb and Miami Beach Are at War. Travelers Are Caught in the Crossfire.
> The Florida city, like others around the country, is trying to control the home sharing market. Renters often find out their weekend home is illegal when they get a knock on the door.
Flamingo Park being one of them.
The only people Airbnb benefits in a given city are the landlords/hosts. It's not a "neutral" effect on other residents - it either crowds out supply that could otherwise go to a full-time resident or creates a safety/quality of life issue for neighbors who live adjacent to these properties that are being constantly filled with strangers.
Not that I'm a fan of big government, but I don't understand why, if they really are just ignoring the law in most jurisdictions (which they are), none of these states just issue arrest warrants for the people in charge of these decisions? Why isn't there an outstanding warrant for the CEO of AirBnB from any one of the 50 US states for flagrant tax evasion? Or even going further to actually request the state where that CEO is present in to be arrested and extradited to that state? The CEO can't possibly claim they didn't know this was an issue. So then the battle will be forced in court for them to prove that they weren't responsible for collecting the tax and that if instead the property owners were in fact responsible, that AirBnB wasn't guilty of facilitating criminal tax evasion.
I'm sick and tired of these Silicon Valley companies deciding that their big idea is to decentralize so that they can ignore regulations and licensing requirements by saying "we're just a platform, the users need to do that". Same bullshit with Uber claiming their drivers aren't employees but rather "independent contractors", even though Uber sets all the rules, prices, etc. I've never heard of an independent contractor who can't determine how much they charge.
Similarly, these AirBnB places aren't legally zoned for the activity they are engaging in, nor are virtually any of the property owners licensed to do business as a lodging facility or registered and authorized to collect the occupancy taxes. AirBnB knows this and the grand scale of the illegal activity, at bare minimum, proves that the purpose of the platform is to circumvent the laws/regulations but not with an actual loophole, just by ignoring them and hoping they can grow fast enough so that they aren't just shut down hard.
I want a thriving, stable society and I’m well aware on an intellectual level that if faced with the constant decision whether I should donate here or donate there or pay more for child-care so that they can subsidize people with less income, I’ll become overwhelmed and fail. I already fail at deciding if and where to direct an end of year donation.
A thriving society needs money to serve all the needs that a thriving society has: infrastructure, education, governance, just to name a few. I don’t always agree how and where tax money is spent. I also sometimes feel cheated when paying taxes, but more often than not it’s because I see someone else, possibly a large Corp such as AirBnB actively avoid paying their due share.
So please, make me pay taxes, but make everyone else pay theirs.
If you really want to pay taxes and feel the tax rate for your bracket is too low, you are more than welcome to make a donation to the treasury at any time: https://www.pay.gov/public/form/start/23779454
You can also skip claiming deductions on your tax return to increase your liability and reduce/eliminate your refund (assuming you get one). This also eliminates the stress related to the end of year donations you mentioned.
IME, most people do want to exchange something for the goods and services they consume. For some, if not only so they can complain about them. I personally don't like handouts, and will go to lengths to avoid them.
Donate to the US Treasury: https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html
At every turn their solution is to sue small towns and cities so they can continue to extract wealth from our neighborhoods.
Disgusting.
You can see it is such a convenient place for illegal business and money laundering. Some Airbnb has hidden camera for you know what it does. And as a matter of fact, many Airbnb in Japan is ran by the yakuza. They will use a pretty girl as profile pic. When you call the host, it is a yakuza guy respond to you. Actually, no problem with that as long as it is a smooth trade, but if something happens, god knows who can help you. And Airbnb only care about the host and don't give a fuck about guest.
I won't say don't use Airbnb, but just be reminded that use it if you can take some risk for some adventure.
AirBnB doesn't make the little guy make a few extra bucks renting out a room as much as it makes those who already have money buy up studios and one bedroom apartments. The effect is that such apartments get more expensive for those who just need a place to live.
If only there were some way of increasing the number of housing units on a given area of land, this problem could be solved and we could have enough housing for everybody. This kind of technology could really ameliorate such problems.
https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/urban-sprawl-housin...
Those "landlords/property investors" have enough cashflow and collateral to continue to expand their portfolios and get lines of credit to do so, which puts 'normal people' looking for housing at a disadvantage.
In high-demand housing areas, there needs to be more housing regulation to balance the businesses vs. individuals. It's good that there are cool places that encourage visitors to temporarily stay and spend locally, but there are also people wanting to live there that would also spend locally. The property businesses are making such a $/day killing on Airbnbs that they would rather keep that system than rent units for people to live there (and have to adhere to all the landlord laws).
Airbnb is a convenient loophole that offers more money with less effort as long as demand is high.
I'd wager that's 80% of their business, nowadays.
If someone buys or rents a property that is bigger than they need, for the sole purpose of AirBnB-ing the extra space, that is a commercial mini-hotel.
In some jurisdictions this is probably a good thing, where you don't have the tourism volume to warrant building a proper hotel but where there is demand for tourism accomodations; in other jurisdictions it represents a wantonly inefficient use of real estate resources.
This has been my experience. Super-hosts with more than one listing. Apartments/homes that were obviously full-time rentals. So, not run by big corporations, but definitely run by somebody who has enough money on hand to buy property as a business venture.
Or maybe just vote manipulation.
More than a few. Check out AirBnB listing in Miami Beach, for example.
But, again, I don't have a horse in this race.
I can see this being an issue in a city, where housing is hard to find. But that's not the case in this instance.
On some level people have the right to do whatever they please with their property. That's kind of the point of ownership to begin with.
Ownership literally doesn't mean you can do whatever you please, that's the point of the top-level comment here.
And on some level they don't (or, perhaps more precisely, on some level it's never entirely their property if they aren't the sovereign—even if they are a member of a group which collectively constitutes the sovereign), that's kind of the point of sovereignty.
An HOA is a community-owned development. The individual lots are owned subject to the (HOA) rules of the development. That subordination is quite literally written into the deeds of the individual plots. So in this case, the other owners have a right to tell the individual owner what they can't do on their property.
Get a social housing unit, pay €500 per month. Rent it out for €90 per day on AirBNB. Profit.
Down vote with no answer?
I think tourists have to understand that when they use Airbnb they are giving a massive middle finger to the locals. You do not have a right to a cheap holiday and it should not come at the expense of those just trying to live their lives.
This was in Hong Kong if anyone was wondering so all the America specific issues don't apply.
Seems like the journalist could've figure out what really happened here and just reported it rather than printing two conflicting accounts and wiping their hands of it.
Our Airbnb got shut down after a year by the local government. It wasn't a safety thing, it was a competition thing. Our Red Roof Inn charges 60 a night, but we charged 80 a night.
Our reviews could make me tear up. People saying they had the best stay of their life.
Asking them what they wanted for breakfast, hot tub temp, Nerf guns, and chatting. People loved it.
But we stopped. Government....
First we couldn't buy and we were forced to rent because wealthy folks would buy the real estate in bulk to rent it and/or use it as a speculative investment, driving prices up and making it unafordable. Now they don't even bother to rent it long-term to locals, they're better off putting it on AirBnB for tourists at a much higher rate. Try renting a flat long-term in Lisbon these days and tell me how it goes.
I obviously don't know your situation and maybe there was some overreach in your case but in some cities government meddling is absolutely necessary lest the place turns into a Disneyland resort for wealthy tourists.
This is just passing the buck. If AirBnB is driving up rents you have a supply problem, not an AirBnB problem.
As much as it pains me to use a reductionist metaphor, I'm going to. Suppose my community has a finite amount of resource X available to us that we need to live and and we only require 75% of that resource. A company comes along and offers individuals a whole pile a money to sell of their claims to the resource, so much so that the company now controls 90% of that resource. The company begins boxing up that resource and shipping it off to people who will pay more money for that resource. My community now has meet their need another way, and probably in a more expensive way.
Regardless of how the resource should have been managed, and what the authorities in my community should have done to ensure we had the necessary access to our resource I think I can still point a finger at the company say "If that company didn't exist they wouldn't control our resource."
Obviously the metaphor is riddled with unconsidered complexities but I use it as a way of raising the question of at least an ounce of culpability of the company.
> The company begins boxing up that resource and shipping it off to people who will pay more money for that resource.
Unless you live in Christiana this is probably already the case. AirBnBs tend to be in expensive neighborhoods.
Do you know the cost of destroying + rebuilding bigger buildings in a city center ? Much higher than closing a few semi legal "airbnb hotels". And that's if you can even build in the city at all.
Edit: downvoted for asking a question you disagree with? What is this reddit?
> There's a finite amount of tourism/visitors
Yes, but that could be much larger than the current level. A discussion in the context of Edinburgh: https://www.hotelmanagement.net/own/edinburgh-looks-to-limit...
If entire apartments are made into AirBnbs, there's less apartments in the market which turns the prices up, what's so hard to grasp ?
It's naive to only look at one factor and ignore the others, yet that's often how far this debate goes.
It might be finite but it's exploding. Even semi remote places get crowded these days.
There's clearly demand.
I don't buy the idea hotels are disruptive, in my urban community there are zero, but tons of commercial space there'd be no problem at all with one across the street.
In fact, it'd be good for business. Tons of offices, zero hotel space. Not good.
Some innovation in management i.e. no checkin, cleaner only come when you've gone, etc. etc. and we might get some material efficiencies.
Also, messing around near people's homes tends to illicit a primal response.
If airbnb hosts aren't paying taxes properly, then the hosts are committing a crime, not airbnb. Cities may want airbnb to collect taxes on behalf of hosts, because it makes enforcement much easier. That's a reasonable thing to want. However I don't see what conceivable jurisdiction Palm Beach county has over Airbnb that would enable it to coerce airbnb to collect said taxes. Accordingly, I can't imagine why anyone in airbnb's position wouldn't sue, in order to avoid the formation of precedent that allows every municipality in the country to impose whatever requirements they want on airbnb.
You may think airbnb is a net negative for many communities, and you're entitled to your opinion, but that's not evidence that crimes have been committed.
As for why US Attorneys and State AGs aren't bringing criminal charges, probably because they are actual lawyers who understand that you would have to provide evidence that a law has been broken.
And tax evasion is a completely different topic, that is not why Airbnbs are shut down. Every industry has tax problems.
There's also the meta level issue that holding site operators responsible for the actions of their users is a very slippery slope. Anything that chips away at the communications decency act could have terrible effects for the internet as we know it[2]. For example, as it currently stands if I were to libelously claim that Paul Graham has a meth lab in his basement[3], I could be charged with a crime, but not HN. If the CDA were weakened, blog operators could be liable for comments posted on them. I don't think anyone reasonable wants that.
I think SF's law did a good job balancing things - hosts need to be licensed by the city (the app lists their license #) and can IIRC only lease 90 days out of the year. I looked at a recent receipt for a stay, and they even collected taxes.
[1] https://www.eff.org/mention/making-civil-liberties-case-airb...
[2] https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Airbnb-HomeAway...
[3] To be clear this is a hyperbolic example, and I have no reason to think PaulG has anything illegal in his basement :)
Another problem is that the proliferation of this practice seems to be disturbing the already tense situation on the housing market. Meeting an odd couple from the other side of the world is fun. Realizing that you can't find affordable flat to buy in a city because a significant portion of it is scooped up for renting and short-term leases - that drives up societal discontent.
Fuck the locals, there's tourists that want to enjoy the sun in the summer and arabs that need to invest their petrol dollars.
You don't make a lot of money through AirBnB if you are keeping the place empty.
So this is local governments trying to railroad an online information/marketplace/intermediation firm into becoming a tax collector. The local governments can't practically collect the taxes, so they're extra-legally trying to bully AirBNB into doing it.
Business models are changing along with the societal changes in communications technology. Governments are pretending to themselves that this isn't a society-level change they should adapt to. (How would collecting such taxes be much different from collecting sales taxes?)
It's not "railroading", it's called "the regulated collection of reasonable usage fees." It's how cities are run, and have always been run.
If Airbnb doesn't like it -- they don't need to go into the hospitality business in these places.
That's a dangerous precedent there. Any company that acts as online information/marketplace/intermediation is automatically "in the business?" That's a dangerous precedent to set. Does that mean that reddit is the defacto author & publisher of everything on reddit? Amazon is culpable as the manufacturer of everything it sells? (Not just Amazon Basics.) Something about that strikes me as not quite right and very dangerous.
but they're a technology company!
No one is entitled to their particular business model; I don't see a reason why a company has to be automatically in the green because someone looked at what they're doing and gave it a name. The changing landscape of communications technologies enables things both good and bad, and it turns out that "burning through truckloads of VC money to get away with breaking laws and dumping externalities on people" is something that's both enabled by new technologies and a huge negative for society.
If they were Craigslist, where they were actually just a passthrough for transactions conducted entirely outside their platform, then asking them to collect sales taxes would be unreasonable.
Well, there is what airbnb say it is, and what it really is in reality.
In a lot of places airbnb is a way to make big bucks via short term touristic rentals (coupled with no tax) instead of renting to actual people living in the city. This itself has creates many problems for local communities.
I've seen houses with 4-5 airbnb room and professional cleaners etc ... it's an hotel, minus the security, minus the insurances.
> Business models are changing along with the societal changes in communications technology.
The other way to interpret it is: "disrupting tech startups are destroying communities and local businesses, by creating / enabling tentacular monopolies which operate above the law".
How do you explain that airbnb payed less than 100k euros in 2016 in France, its 2nd biggest market at the time. [0]
All these companies are going through seriously sketchy processes to make money [1] [2] [3], they just transfer their costs and responsabilities to foreign countries, local communities or their own employees. These things might fly in the US/UK (and even there people are fighting) but they sure won't fly in a lot of EU countries.
[0] http://www.leparisien.fr/economie/airbnb-n-a-paye-que-92-944...
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/16/we-company-ceo-in-hot-wate...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/19/gig-economy...