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Comment by docdeek | Hacker News Reader

While more than 96,100 Jersey FTA: City residents use Airbnb when traveling, the defeat underscored the difficulty that sharing economy companies increasingly face in mobilizing users as a constituency.

Seems a bit NIMBYish doesn't it? As in residents happy to use AirBnB in someone else's neighborhood but damned if they'll extend the same to people visiting their own.

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Exactly those are the ones who could legitimately use it, without driving rents. That is the original idea for AirBnB anyhow.

Why not put a limit for 30 Days in the Regulation for when you are not home? It would be easy for AirBnB to limit and it would not be economical for commercial offerings.

This isn't actually an attack on their political stance though, it's just attacking their personal morals.

In my opinion, if you say that a company unfairly avoids costs of regulations then it makes perfect sense to use them and transfer that saving to your own pocket. You're just confirming that you really believe it's an unfair market.

I applaud this decision by Jersey City and yet I’m about to stay in an Airbnb for 4 months beginning in January. Why? Because there’s not much other choice. People who used to offer rooms for short to medium terms to students, interns, and other non-rich business travellers have switched over to Airbnb and found they can make way more money doing it. The only places I see that are not in Airbnb are clear scams (photos literally stolen from some developer showroom site, refusing to let you see the place without a deposit) or they’re slums that target only the most desperate renters.

So I wouldn’t describe them as “happy to use Airbnb.” Airbnb is pretty bad. It’s just less bad than everything else.

Of course, AirBnB doesn't reveal the period of time that 96,100 residents used it and what percentage are still active. AirBnB has been around for more than 10 years, so the 96,100 users are over that long span of time!

Indeed, though the population of Jersey City is about 270,000 so it’s about a third of that population - that’s a significant number even if some have used it only once and then never again 9 years ago.

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