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Comment by a2tech | Hacker News Reader

Is this a surprise? I stayed at places in Vancouver and Seattle 2 years ago that had prominent signs in the lobby straight up stating the building did not allow Airbnb and the hosts had instructions about ‘community guidelines’ that were really designed to keep renters from being noticed by other residents.

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Well, if you want to Do The Right Thing, here is the webform to report those hosts to the City of Vancouver:

https://vancouver.ca/doing-business/short-term-rentals-repor...

Seattle doesn't seem to have an equivalent.

Is it really the right thing?

Think of it from the perspective of someone who owns a condo there: they didn't sign up to live in a hotel and deal with transient neighbours. There's a reason zoning laws exist.

Yes, the law is the law.

That's the kind of logic that kept Jim Crow going.

Point take about there being unjust laws, but it would benefit your argument to acknowledge the difference between civil disobedience and theft.

You just compared the fight against slavery to lining the pockets of a venture capitalist by annoying the neighbors.

You might want to think about that some more.

They did no such thing and its disingenuous to claim so. They provided a counterexample that illustrates a flaw in the ethical model "law = right".

Yes. Airbnb, “hosts”, and “guests” are all bad actors stealing from the commons.

If I wanted to live in a hotel, I’d move to a hotel. Instead in I rented in a residential building. If someone rents the apartment next door under false pretenses and turns it into a hotel room, violating his lease agreement and the law, he belongs in prison.

> Yes. Airbnb, “hosts”, and “guests” are all bad actors stealing from the commons.

While there might be some bad actors, the ability to sell/utilize unused space is very valuable. When I moved to Seattle a few years ago after college, I wanted to explore different neighborhoods to find out where I wanted to live. I found an Airbnb that let me rent out a persons mother-in-law house for $1000 for a month which is like 1/3rd of hotel rates and way more spacious because the alternative is that they would just let that space sit empty making it useless.

It's "the right thing" in the same way that reporting someone to police for smoking weed "is the right thing".

In other words: no.

It’s the right thing because airbnb distorts house prices (among other factors too). In some cases pricing locals out of the market in place of tourists. Which is why those rules are often in place.

I don't believe that. The last time I saw a study claiming it, which was a long time ago, it turned out to be funded by the hotel industry.

Not only that, but the price was something like 0.4% in NYC.

Sounds like there is just a shortage of high density housing.

Why not both?

"just" a shortage.

What I mean by that is its not a problem that people are paying for short term high price rentals. The real problem is more housing needs to be built.

What do you mean, distorts prices ? Is there a god-given “just” price which we should stick to?

> Is there a god-given “just” price

Incidentally, you can give up on God without giving up on justice. This is in fact the basis of the law in countries without state-sanctioned religions: coming up with shared axioms of just behavior and reasoning from there. So yes, there are means by which one can define just and unjust prices. If someone is hanging from a precipice by a thread he may agree that the price of his life is all his wealth and the value of his future labor. This does not mean that this is a just price for saving him. Maybe it is, but that depends on your axioms of justice.

How could prices increase? Effective supply of housing goes up so prices should go down.

Edit: Apparently sometimes whole apartments/houses become airbnbs, which I wasn't aware of. My experience has been spare rooms being rented out.

You know AB&B could easily add a “report illegal renter” to flag people renting out units that don’t qualify, but they ain’t because no ones gonna drag them over the coals for that.

And why would they do it voluntarily and lose revenue? Cities and locales should _demand_ they deploy a very visible “report illegal unit” form.

Seems like a good sized development place could just sue AirBNB and probably win if it wasn’t doing enough to keep people from subrenting where it’s not allowed.

Taking legal action against AirBNB would be an uphill climb, but you can construct leases (AirBNB subletting triggers eviction, making it incredibly difficult to rent in the future) and HOA covenants (hundreds of dollars per day in fines for AirBNB listing, with homeowner on the hook for legal fees, liquidating the property to recover them if left unpaid) in such a way to make it so incredibly painful to the renter/owner party that it mostly dissuades the listing attempt.

I always try to blend in when visiting an areea, wether staying in an airbnb, my camp trailer, or a hotel or any other accommodations. It seems like the right thing to do as a community guest, and is the best way for me to sample the local culture and learn from it.

I did stay in one airbnb that had a sign in the lobby about no airbnbs, but I did not know if that was a legal rule or if the unit I was staying in was grandfathered in or what the situation was, and I did not know the local language well enough to ask. I would probably not stay there again.

I had the same experience in Chicago. Downtown apartments are worth the risk.

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