Just look at the havoc being reigned on some neighborhoods in Miami Beach during spring break. Specifically the low-scale, residential flamingo park neighborhood of south beach.
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.
Miami real estate was especially hit hard after the financial crisis of 2008. Rich investors, American, European, and South American, were snapping up South Beach properties for pennies on the dollar and reselling them for tidy profits. I lived in an apartment in Flamingo Park that was almost 50% absentee European owners. The trendy European neighbors you were referring to upthread are the same ones renting through AirBnB while they are back home. Even though it was against the condo bylaws (long before code enforcement cracked down) they did it anyway.
> It's quite another for same restaurant to close and be replaced by a kebab or pizza place.
Because when you are on a month to month lease, which speculators love to do before razing everything before building condos <cough>Wynwood</cough>, you tend to get cheap popup places that can move in and out quickly. A pizza place just needs cheap tables and an oven. Decor and kitchen workstation planning isn't a consideration.
> Today's SOBE bears little resemblance to SOBE of the pre-Airbnb past.
I agree but not for the reasons you think. 80s South Beach was geriatric, 90s South Beach was club grungie, giving way to 00s gay/artsy South Beach, to gentrification through the 10s, until here we are today. It's trendy but tourist trendy.
Locals have already moved on to Surfside and Hollywood. Cleaner lest crowded beaches.
> 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.
Also, look at sites such as Hotel Tonight. Personally seen < 50 a night rooms.
The hotel industry distortion field is probably stronger in Miami Beach than almost anywhere because so much money depends on it.
I also don't believe that most the Airbnb rentals on Miami Beach are particularly cheap. The one nearby that I know of charges many thousands per night as its a mansion.
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.