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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

> Jersey City just had a public referendum on short-term rentals that AirBnB spent millions of dollars lobbying against.

Lobbied against and still lost by an enormous margin (70 percent of voters supported the new regulation).

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/05/nyregion/airbnb-jersey-ci...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21459486

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The official election results put it at 86% (46,062) in favor of the regulations (voted 'Yes' for public question #1).

Even more interesting is the number of 'No' votes (7,416) is less than the number of signatures on the petition that forced the ordinance into a public referendum (~20,000 with ~9,000 certified).

https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/NJ/Hudson/98893/Web...

https://www.nj.com/hudson/2019/08/referendum-on-airbnb-regul...

Yep, nearly 70% of voters voted against allowing short-term rentals. AirBnb spent over $4 million on that local election alone[1].

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/06/airbnb-suffers-setback-in-je...

Proof that voting works (IMHO). Local residents won against a distant corporate entity.

Proof that it can.

AirBnB aren't top competition.

well preying on ignorance is the game of politicians and they won. Yes I am saying it was a loss for the rest of us.

why? politicians and their allies successfully portrayed the home sharing industry as the reason for rising rents when in fact it has long been because politicians and those using their connections which have been the cause. oh they hide it well but the idea is to keep their investments up and keep "those" people out. Those people being any group which they don't want to see where they live.

If you got this far, good for you. Are there bad actors in the home sharing space. Yes, however you target them more directly but the restriction of requiring owners to be on site during the rental period severely limits the rights of the good ones.

so yes there is some regulation needed but if it does not protect the little guy, and they weren't in this as they got rolled in with the rest, then it harms us all as whole.

rents won't go down until more units are built and they won't be built for the same reasons they were not being built before home sharing industries showed up at the door.

home sharing industry

Is it “sharing” or is it “industry”? It can’t be both.

You can blame some conspiracy theory involving politicians colluding to trick their constituents, or you can listen to the lived experiences of residents in Jersey City that have to live next to nuisance short-term rentals.

Parties all night during the week, drunk people trying to enter the wrong apartments at 3AM, arguments between loud tourists in your once quiet building, and somehow sleeping 10 people in a two bedroom apartment.

I don't blame residents for not wanting to live and work around that everyday. Most people don't want to live in flop houses.

I think there already are laws against these kind of actions. Punish directly the ones that are wrong. The whole planet should not have to suffer because someone made a scandal at 3AM.

I think it's perfectly reasonable for people to not want their apartment building to become a hotel.

I agree more units need to be built and development should be encouraged. Given a referendum I'd vote against allowing short term rentals not because I'm nervous they raise rents but because I don't want my building to be a hotel.

Shouldn't that be up to the resident of the apartment building and the rules they have to abide by?

I'm not saying I disagree but I think a referendum vote is fine. Everyone has a chance to give their opinion then we count the votes and choose the will of the people. The property owner does have certain privileges as they should but renting is a 2-way relationship and tenants should have a voice in how their community operates.

So although I generally agree with your line of thought, I disagree in this instance.

NIMBYs always win.

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