Turns out claims Airbnb was taking houses out of the rental market were right | Hacker News Reader

Turns out claims Airbnb was taking houses out of the rental market were right

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241 pointsdoener185 comments

I live in a place with a lot of tourists and second homes. AirBnB was beginning to reduce the lack of supply in the local hotel market, which caused the hotels to petition the city council to put an end to non-owner occupied short-term housing. This was done under the guise of improving the (admittedly) tight rental market.

The problem is, the following things happened as a result:

-- Existing short-term rental properties were grandfathered, which artificially has made those properties more valuable.

-- A lot of properties that might have previously been purchased and renovated by investors sit idle because the investors can't turn them into short-term rentals.

-- We have a lot of cottages / really small properties here, that are good short-term rentals but not great regular rentals. so basically a lot of garbage rentals came available that did nothing to actually help our rental market.

-- The hotels knew they now had a more captive market than previously.

So while I appreciate the sentiments of those who wanted to end short-terms rentals in the name of affordable housing, at least in our local market it has not been a good thing.

Good for the owners to be precise.

* A lot of properties that might have previously been purchased and renovated by investors sit idle because the investors can't turn them into short-term rentals.*

This is a good thing. Because it means that the properties can be occupied by people actually living there.

We have a lot of cottages / really small properties here, that are good short-term rentals but not great regular rentals. so basically a lot of garbage rentals came available that did nothing to actually help our rental market.

Cottages are great rentals. They may not fit your needs, but in large cities, there will definitely be thousands or hundreds of people for who cottages are the perfect fit.

Most of what you describe is actually good for the rental market for the people actually living and working in the community.

The hotels knew they now had a more captive market than previously.

Hotels cannot "capture" the market. They are dependent on tourists coming in to the town, and that means that other parts of the town must provide a reason to visit. Right now, hotels are bleeding money.

You took my comments about my local market and twisted them to fit your argument about other markets. I assure you, the reduction in short-term rentals in my local market has not had the expected outcome. Source: I am both a landlord and a real estate agent in my local market. Likewise, look up the term “regulatory capture” if you want to understand what the hotels did here. Making a corona virus argument at this moment in time does not justify the actions taken by those hotels and city council 18 months ago.

What was the expected outcome, and what has ended up happening in your local market? Are people buying homes and just letting them sit vacant?

The expectation was that Airbnb type properties would become available as long term rentals, and fewer people would turn dwelling into short-term rentals. But, those houses that were already in use for Airbnb remained so, and many houses in need of renovation that might have otherwise become rentals (long or short) instead sit dilapidated. Those cottages I mentioned end up difficult to move on the real estate market because they are just too small for most people’s needs - again, great for a weekend stay, not so great as ongoing living places. Our local market is a more “traditional” market than say California or what’s happened to Seattle and Vancouver, so of course our experience is going to be different.

> those houses that were already in use for Airbnb remained so

the lesson there is not to grandfather privileges if you want to actually fix something.

> Hotels cannot "capture" the market.

This happens all of the time. They frequently lobby cities to push out other short term rental options that they have difficulty competing with, which leads to regulatory capture.

solution: a recently renoed house can be airbnb'ed, but after two years it has to be rented?

On the other hand, Barcelona has suffered from tourism for a long time. Barceloneta (neighborhood right next to the beach) is a famous example of this where families who lived there for a very long time been driven out of their neighborhood, solely because of AirBnb and their like. Hotels were already regulated but when AirBnb appeared, regular folks started kicking people by raising the rents, then converting it to short-term rentals.

So, while AirBnb is both good and bad, I prefer to value native peoples ability to live in their places, rather than helping the rental market, that was just already stretched when AirBnb arrived.

So what’s the criteria for getting to live by the beach then? Is “I was here for a long time but didn’t want to buy anything” a valid reason?

In line with rest of the human history, the criteria will be set by the ones holding the most power in that region. In this age, it would be the Barcelona government. And if it is like other western governments, it will be a tussle between moneyed interests and populist sentiments.

I get the sense that a better solution would be to make home ownership as simple as renting. A few ideas:

- One page contract

- Ban loans for private home ownership (or socialize them but you would have to do that in a a very particular manner)

- No property taxes for up to two homes

I think the first idea alone would be highly beneficial. If someone could read one page and actually understand what they are getting into.

Maybe an additional required indicator on that page of “is purchasing this home a good financial decision for the purchaser given their income” on a scale from 0-10.

Just a month ago I saw a coworker get screwed financially on a home purchase. And now with a recession knocking on the door, oof.

As I look at home purchase contracts every day, to me they are really simple - in most states, they are a standardized fill-in-the-blank form. So is it the contract or the mortgage docs that are concerning here?

I’m curious to better understand your co-workers situation as well - was it a case if overextending themselves or caveat emptor on some part of the transaction?

I am genuinely curious to understand what you mean by “make home ownership as simple as renting” as I can see both ways that it is, and I can see ways that it is far more complex with good reasons, so I’m curious to understand your perspective here. I’m also curious your reasoning for banning loans for private home ownership and how you would make up the difference in services in the absence of property tax revenue (as in my area, property taxes pretty much go directly to schools, police, and fire).

If we restricted the manufacturing of cars, soon there would be articles about how car rental services are taking cars out of the car market.

Yes? What's your point?

Instead of worrying about how people choose to rent their properties, they should instead look to the source of high rental prices, which is bad zoning laws and insufficient total units.

Meanwhile Airbnb creates a level of convenience and affordability that makes travel accessible to the masses. I'm sure the software engineers down-voting wouldn't be significantly affected if Airbnb was forced out of operation. Just another version of NIMBYism.

I've been summarizing the debate here, and so far yours is the comment that contributes most to the top level: https://en.howtruthful.com/o/airbnb_should_be_regulated_beca...

At least based on the prices I've seen when considering my options, the big potential for savings with airbnb is if you choose to take advantage of the kitchen, so that you're not paying to eat out for every meal.

But, if affordability really is your top goal, you'll do even better if you go with a hotel that offers kitchenette suites. In my experience, they typically offer a lower nightly fee than having an airbnb to yourself (especially if you are staying at least a week and don't require someone else to come make your bed for you ever day), and still let you save on meal costs.

(Airbnbing a room out of someone's house is even less expensive, but I don't think that style of airbnb rental is really the subject of much controversy.)

> Meanwhile Airbnb creates a level of convenience and affordability that makes travel accessible to the masses.

Clearly a greater good than, say, having a place to live, no?

You have a point with your first paragraph - it would have been a good place to stop. Until the bigger issue is addressed, optimizing for a hypothetical situation is premature.

> optimizing for a hypothetical situation is premature.

Hypothetical? We've seen travel numbers increase significantly over the last decade, and Airbnb now claims a large chunk of that. I think it's important point to remind people why Airbnb exists -- it's a great service with positive benefits. I have stayed in far more Airbnb's than hotels over the last few years, saving money and typically getting a better overall experience.

> Clearly a greater good than, say, having a place to live, no?

This goes back to the first point. Let people build more units. If that doesn't fix the problem, then start evaluating more extreme measures that limit the amount of people that are able to travel to an area at a given time (in the name of making sure people have a place to live.)

Well, there's an interesting technique - quoting me in reverse order, thereby breaking up the logical connection of my statements. Put them in the correct order, and your initial question is answered.

To be absolutely clear: you have identified a greater good if and only if your proposed solution for making housing more affordable is implemented successfully.

> Put them in the correct order, and your initial question is answered.

The post would read almost exactly the same if it addressed your points in the opposite order. Saying it would 'answer' the question as if you're the total arbiter of this is just not true. They're not confused about what you mean, they're disagreeing.

And it's really not a step one, step two situation anyway. Both parts are important at the same time, in different ways.

When I was homeless, I sometimes stayed in cheap hotels. I never stayed in an Airbnb. I've seen discussions online where other homeless people also concluded Airbnb was useless and cheap hotels were more accessible for the poorest of the poor Americans.

I've also seen articles about how tourism is destroying cities, destroying the environment, etc.

Meanwhile, an upside to the current pandemic is a massive drop in pollution so extreme it's visible on satellite imagery.

I am reluctant to agree that optimizing for the right of "ordinary people" to pursue jet set lifestyles is really in the best interest of humanity.

I'm happy to let people travel. But "Let's ruin the planet for touristy shit and claim it to be some egalitarian ideal to open that path to less rich people so they can join in on that" is not really a value that strikes me as belonging in the wise and idealistic column.

Mayhap we can find something better if we put a little effort into it.

Can you explain why motels/hotels were better? In NYC it seems like a roomshare on airbnb in one of the boroughs is way cheaper than any motel or hotel you could find but I could see it being different in cheaper / lower cost of living cities.

When I looked, they weren't actually cheaper. I never found something cheaper on Airbnb.

Also, I had no car. Hotels always had some eateries and the like in walking distance. If an Airbnb is basically in the middle of fuck nowhere with no amenities nearby, it does you no good if you have no car and very limited funds.

I stayed a lot in two hotels in Fresno. One had a Chipotle, McDonald's, two restaurants and a 7-11 right on top of it and the bus stop was also practically right on top of it. There was more shopping about a 15 or 20 minute walk away.

The other had a Taco Bell practically up against it and more stuff a few minutes walk away even though it was in the worst part of town with the fewest amenities. This also meant it cost less than the other one.

Everything doesn't have to be for some overarching good. It has to be fair. it's not fair for people to have to lose money on property they bought to help the poorest of poor americans. Giving access to middle class americans to travel more is a noble ideal. Not everything that we paint morally right like taking property people bought and forcing them to rent to poorest of poor american is fair to renter and we shouldn't create a unfair system for the renters cause they have rights too.

forcing them to rent to poorest of poor american

Absolutely not something I'm advocating. I talk a lot about housing issues. I think it can be solved without making landlords into the victims here.

That's a long conversation I don't really want to have at the moment. This comment might cast a little light on it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22589980

> it's not fair for people to have to lose money on property they bought to help the poorest of poor americans.

In a "fair" world, property would appreciate at the inflation rate. No more, no less. It's also not fair to help people make money on property at the expense of the poor and the younger generations. So where does that leave us?

You do realize that you can buy land and pay to have a house built right? You could even build it yourself.

When I was even more homeless, I stayed in cheap Airbnbs.

The cause of high housing prices are low supply and high demand. Housing supply is growing at a slower rate than demand. There are two ways to solve this:

1) build a ton of housing to catch up with demand

2) shrink your local economy to decrease demand

If a lawmaker isn’t working on one of these two options, they do not actually support a platform of low housing prices.

Airbnb is only a small slice of housing demand. It’s an ugly slice, which makes the company a convenient punching bag for politicians who want to act like they are trying to make housing affordable. But the economy in high-demand cities will keep growing regardless of whether you kill Airbnb.

Yes and no.

I used to be very active on a forum for urban planners. They made a very strong case that a few decades back and in living memory of some older members, small coastal towns in the US were affordable and pleasant and similar to other small towns. Then the practice of owning vacation homes drove up prices out of reach of locals and tourism brought other problems.

And this was before Airbnb was a thing and magnified such issues.

You need to build more housing and all that. But you also need to say "Housing is primarily for the people who actually live here and the wants and desires of wealthy tourists absolutely doesn't trump that." or basically the entire world lives in a shithole so a tiny fraction of the population can do whatever the fuck and indulge their every whim cuz money.

This is not a good thing. Not even for the rich people getting away with it while people say "Eat the rich." There is a long history of the lower classes violently and murderously removing the elites when they do that.

I'd like to not "live in interesting times" that include violent revolution. Covid19 is enough fun for me, thanks. I'm a boring fuddy duddy like that. Party pooper. Don't drink. Etc

Isn't it more fair that everyone gets a chance to spend some time on the coast than that a few people who hoarded all the property there before we were even born get to have it to themselves?

People can spend time at the coast without owning a second home that sits empty most of the time.

Historically, we used hotels to visit places we spent limited time in.

(Or you can camp, visit friends, etc.)

I was replying to the vacation home part but the airbnb part. And regarding hotels they also drive up the price for coastal properties. I guess that is not as obvious for people to comprehend as they see an airbnb'd apartment and think "I could live there" while that doesn't go for the hotel. When really it's the lots they should consider.

Hotels are designed for short-term stays, and are regulated and taxed on that basis. (This includes such things as zoning, building code compliance, etc.)

Units converted to AirBnBs were not designed for short-term stays or taxed on that basis, and generally AirBnB only exists because it leveraged regulatory arbitrage quickly enough to grow to the point it could lobby for changes to the law. But after multiple studies in multiple cities confirmed that only a handful of investors benefited from loose unregulated short-term rentals, the pendulum began swinging back towards regulating them like the hotels they are.

It can also void your homeowners insurance to rent your home out on Airbnb.

There have been articles about this. It sticks in my mind because I used to be in insurance.

Residential buildings were not intended to be used this way and all the policy and infrastructure points to "No, really, you weren't supposed to use this as a commercial vehicle. That's not what all of society agreed to for this piece of real property."

I've always suspected that being an Airbnb host appears to be much more profitable than it really is because hosts are not properly insured.

I wonder if it would even make a difference? I used to be a landlord in Scotland, and now am in Finland.

For landlord insurance I'd pay about £300/year in Scotland, and €60/year in Finland. I'd be surprised if there were short-term policies, as distinct from long-term-tenant policies, that we significantly more expensive than that.

The risk from taking on multiple short-term tenants with no real background checks is surely much greater. Especially given that the tenants have no real incentive to behave well or keep the property in good condition.

Some people do think the indigenous peoples that originally lived there should have exclusive rights.

A third solution would be to actively encourage economic development in other cities, rather than cramming more and more residents and businesses into a few geographically constrained areas.

I’d find local politicians who block housing projects more credible if they were also telling companies to go away and hire people somewhere else. But in fact they keep approving giant office building projects.

The problem has been the boomers that have valuable housing, and actively vote in politicians and laws that will ensure that their housing prices remain high.

Housing is a basic human right. But this is denied to millions of Americans, simply because those that came before them, were able to secure affordable housing for themselves, while locking out others from attaining affordable housing.

They were merely exercising their human right.

Yes, true. They were exercising their own right to vote.

However, at some point, their votes interfered with the human rights of others. At what point does the government and society step in, and say, enough is enough?

I'm very much sympathetic to those who can't afford housing in the prime areas, but housing in prime land is not a human right.

How are people being 'denied' affordable housing? Do you mean to say that your ideal location is more than you want to spend? Did you find a place to live that was affordable and someone denied you from buying it?

In many places it is literally illegal to build anything but the most expensive type of housing, due to single family zoning.

What is making you live there?

Those goalposts gave me whiplash.

The person I replied to said housing was being 'denied' to millions. Living somewhere with expensive housing, whatever the reason, is not being 'denied' a place to live. There is an enormous amount of entitlement that goes in to thinking not being able to live somewhere already extremely desirable is being 'denied' a place to live.

How about a job? Even if it takes over an hour for your commute.

How about close proximity to family and relatives?

Sure, you can move to middle-of-nowhere Texas, and buy land for cheap, but how are you going to pay for that cheaper mortgage, if there are no jobs around? Maybe you can get a telecommuting job?

The question here is what constitutes someone being 'denied' housing. Is needing to live with roommates being 'denied' housing?

Ok? Doesn't make it right.

And your example is incorrect. You can buy or lease a car just as you can with a house/apartment.

Cars are not supply-limited.

That's the point.

Yes I like that visualization.

One consequence of Uber is more cars on the road.

If only one consequence of Airbnb could be YIMBY...

> One consequence of Uber is more cars on the road.

How does this work out? I know so many people who just take cabs now and haven't purchased a car in a long time because of how easy Uber has made cabs and ride-sharing. Surely this means a lesser number of cars on the road?

zero experience in this, so this might not be true. I read that due to the way most cities control parking Uber drivers often end up driving around waiting for the next fare.

Increasing cars on the road + pollution. Although you could argue there are technically less cars, it feels like there are more.

I don't know if its enough to offset the scenario you're familiar with but there's 1. people moving from other forms of transport to cars thanks to the convenience of uber and 2. journeys happening that otherwise would not have happened.

Car rental companies purchase large numbers of cars each year (look up "fleet cars"). They are generally automakers' biggest, best, and most reliable customers.

If you restricted car rental services from buying cars, you might very well cause the collapse of the automobile industry.

In contrast, killing AirBnB does not negatively effect the housing market, because people still need places to live. AirBnB generally increases the cost of housing in every housing market in which it operates because it reduces the number of housing units available. (Example: once LA and Santa Monica cracked down on AirBnB and began regulating short-term pseudo-hotel stays, rents plateaued and began dropping, benefiting thousands of people in the LA area. The only people harmed were the investors who bought multiple residential properties and illegally converted them to unregistered hotels.)

Why kill Airbnb instead of simply building more housing?

Cities should allow enough housing to meet demand for both short term and long term rentals.

I my similarly affected local area it's many factors that are prevented new housing that is needed / being taken out by investors around the globe buying chunks of the market for short term rentals and others who are slated to move here it seems.

All the builders are busy. Getting construction help around here is a crazy process these days (referring to the year BCP / before covid pandemonium) -

builders that have the ability to build are generally focused on building more expensive houses to get more money (not average homes that were built long ago).

the ones that have the money (from whatever sources) to build the minimum code skinny homes that do well for maximizing cost for arbnbs seem to be gobbling up any and all possible property that fits in the zoning places that these can squeeze into - limiting the market for others who want to build their own (who already live here)

The part of town I currently live in, the neighbor groups are NIMBY NIMBY - a recent meeting I sat in where a local developer was exploring putting in a dozen townhomes / condos into a larger development with single family homes - everyone there just wanting to complain about the effects of other development in the area.

The price of land is going up, and the cost to develop the land. Building affordable is not as easy as it was some time ago.

Some of council is telling citizens to downzone property en mass in order to prevent more affordable options from popping up in their neighborhoods. I heard our last council meeting they attempted a county-wide zone change.

It's become clear to me that some of these council folks really are 'our neighborhood character, the children!' type people.. however it seems that many of them are spouting similar types of scare mongering things while really just propping up the value of all the Marriot properties in the city (by trying to limit the airbnb and similar).

It's been an interesting show to watch. I don't think supply and demand is going to turn all these, now mostly empty, hotel properties back into affordable housing for the locals. They will just sit there and maybe be traded as distressed properties and be rebranded as some other brand new basic like the self storage places.

At least that's how I see it around here in a nutshell - there are many other interesting dynamics going on. Quite the complex play to watch actually, with characters from all over vying to push norms wherever they can get away with it - while the average families try to figure out where they can afford to live.

The things the surrounding counties are doing to prevent the people from here moving there is also another interesting set of things to watch with wonder.

Can we change the submitted post? I didn't see any sources quoted on that Tweet, just an animation. Side note: please stop submitting or otherwise citing "Twitter threads". They're terrible.

But there does seem to be some basis for this eg [1] [2]. And I can believe it.

I've long since held the opinion that Airbnb is a cancer on society. While Uber allows you to get value from a vehicle you may already own (at the cost of wear and tear, mind you) and there are many, particularly those in the US, who seem to hold this view that "it's my home, I can do what I want with it", the reality is that neighbours of that Airbnb bear the externalities and the cost of your listing and it's not easy for most people to up and move.

Another way of putting this is that it is a tragedy of the commons as Airbnb "hosts" extract value from a community that bears the cost with little choice in the matter.

This lazy (and typically selfish) twisted version of "free market" thinking quickly erodes when, for example, I propose using my house that's next to yours as a tannery or a toxic waste storage site.

My only complaint about jurisdictions trying to crack down on this is that their efforts have been too slow and anaemic. NYC is plagued with what are essentially illegal hotels. There are a reason that hotels exist in the current form and place. It's for the safety of guests (eg compliance with fire codes) and the benefit of residents (ie zoning).

[1]: https://www.independent.ie/world-news/coronavirus/homes-for-...

[2]: https://www.balls.ie/the-rewind-news/something-interesting-h...

There are negative externalities to Uber too, such as Traffic and pollution.

That’s not so clear cut. The alternative to Uber is not just staying home or riding a bike, at times it’s driving your own car and circling for 30 minutes trying to find a parking spot.

Yeah, or taking a taxi or driving drunk.

I have literally never circled for 30 minutes looking for a parking spot. In every city I have been to people people use a parking garages of one type or another. Where exactly is circling like this common?

Where it's $4-6 for a few hours if you can find a spot, but a flat $20+ for a parking garage after the first half hour. So, Baltimore, DC, stuff like that.

Many NYC outer borough neighborhoods can be like that; there might not be any garages - or maybe there's only 1-2 which are always full. For example, in Queens, think of Jackson Heights, Flushing Main Street, or parts of Jamaica. I can definitely see spending 30 minutes looking for a parking spot in Jackson Heights on a busy evening if you aren't too familiar with driving in the area.

That’s quite localized in term of location and time of day.

Comparing the number of cars in NYC/DC/etc garages vs on street parking people are still mostly using company provided / reimbursed the garages down town. So, while some people in some areas may spend time circling, across all trips average circling time is minimal.

Note that I was very much not talking about downtown (Manhattan has garages). I was talking about mixed residential/commercial immigrant neighborhoods far from downtown. The places where ordinary people would go to shop for their country's authentic groceries.

Free markets are a good thing. We can see the prevention of a truly free market through onerous zoning policies that prevent new housing starts in high-demand areas. Preventing people from building, or hosting short-term housing, is all impedance on free markets and their distortionary effects are worse than a VRBO guest that forgets to move the trash can to the end of the driveway. To counter your point, it's equally possible can have a long-term terrible neighbor -- maybe they are loud, or don't maintain their property and it's lowering your property value, and there isn't much you can do about it.

> Free markets are a good thing.

Out of curiosity, what do you think of net neutrality?

> Free markets are a good thing.

And yet a free market has never existed.

And look what's happened to the housing market. Look at homeownership rates for 25-35's now vs. 40 years ago. There are some issues.

Yes, but a lot of that is delaying marriage and having children. Some part of that is economic, some part is choice/culture.

And likely the one (the economics of education and health costs, largely) driving the other.

A lot of it is the fed lowering rates which increases the returns to existing capital and drives prices upwards. It's almost like the older generation is taking out a mortgage on the future of the younger generation.... Oh wait. No, that's exactly what it is!

What's happening in the housing market right now is the result of the free market.

Market forces made housing expensive at a faster pace than regulatory changes. There are simply many more people now in their 25s-35s than there were 40 years ago, more dual-income households, and more costs (i.e., college) associated with landing the high-paying jobs than there were 40 years ago when you could get a 6-figure job with full health benefits and a pension at a factory without being able to read or write.

> What's happening in the housing market right now is the result of the free market.

Absolutely not. A fundamental requirement for a free market is to avoid barriers of entry to competition as much as possible. In the real estate market there are way too many barriers of entry to be considered even remotely free:

- Zoning laws

- Construction permits

- Licenses (realtor, construction, architects...)

- All kinds of taxes

So no, real estate has never been a free market. The blame for today's problems lies with governments' intervention and regulation.

Edit: formatting

No it absolutely isn’t. Developers are not being allowed to construct high density housing. One of the last bits of local politics I heard before moving away from my home town was some drama about a developer not being able to build an apartment building because it would “mess up the character that the local home owners bought their property for.” This happens consistently across the US and many people say that’s why about half the homeless people can’t afford a place to live.

> NYC is plagued with what are essentially illegal hotels.

There’s a reason my building is currently half full, and it isn’t because everyone is out of town. If there’s any silver lining to this whole terrible pandemic maybe all the crooked rent-to-airbnb people will go bankrupt.

> the reality is that neighbours of that Airbnb bear the externalities

What toxic waste, exactly, do Airbnb listing dump on their neighbours?

Professional Airbnb investors buy up whole properties, renovate them, run them as a hotel with regular cleaning and services provided. Their shot-term residents use the same amout of public transit, water and utilities services as long-term renters next door.

The only real inconvenience is that it's driving property prices up - but that's not an externality. That's just a reality of a market where some type of customers agree to pay a higher price for something, and it's price goes up for everybody. I don't see any reason why market should be artificially tilted towards long-term renters as opposed to short-term.

The issue is that of trust; if you have a full-time neighbor (renting or owning), you generally trust that they will respect the building/neighborhood, and over time will grow to trust them as people. They're more accountable. When you have random people flowing in and out every few days, that trust is not there. For example, Airbnb guests won't go out of their way to be sure to honor quiet hours... why bother if they're just there for a few days and don't have to deal with the neighbors on an ongoing basis?

I absolutely love using Airbnb and prefer it over hotels in nearly every place I visit, but I won't pretend it's somehow good for the neighborhood or neighbors.

It's hard for me to respond to this, because personally, in I don't think I've ever met a single neighbour and never had "trust" to any of them - and if there was a noise above a certain level, I just called the police to deal with it instead of going out of the apartment myself. "Trusting them as people" even sounds weird because I don't even know who those people are. I guess it's a cultural thing.

> Professional Airbnb investors buy up whole properties

Not in NYC. Here they violate both the law and leases/condo rules to Airbnb units they bought or rented under false pretenses. Airbnb knows this and doesn’t care. It’s not about the free market, it’s just another swindle.

>run them as a hotel

Unlicensed hotels, mind you.

>What toxic waste, exactly, do Airbnb listing dump on their neighbours?

There was a massive issue in my town where students would rent airbnbs and party, keeping neighbors up when they had to go to work the next day. Police were having to attend to more and more incidents.

Sorry but you are dead wrong. AirBnBs have a significant negative effect on the neighborhood, especially in highly touristic cities. People renting AirBnBs are much likely to be louder and less respecting than long-term neighbors because they don't have any incentive to care - they are just staying there short term and then leaving again. Making too much noise at night is illegal, but it is much harder to enforce that against tourists that spent a few nights somewhere than against a long-term resident of their own house.

In Amsterdam we saw this a lot, with "party tourists" staying in AirBnBs, getting home at 4 AM and then shouting and making noise constantly, effectively ruining the lives of the next-door neighbors. This is a huge problem, especially since Amsterdam has many old houses that do not block much noise. Imagine waking up three times per week at 4AM because your neighbors' AirBnB guests are shouting after coming home drunk/drugged from a party again. I bet you would not be very happy either.

Unlike in the US, though, thankfully the government has cracked down very hard on AirBnBs. It is now illegal to rent out your house/apartment on AirBnB for more than 30 days a year, and people renting our their apartments on AirBnB must pay high tourism taxes to pay for externalities. It is also only allowed to rent out your primary residence, you cannot rent out a second apartment or house. People trying to circumvent these laws are cracked down on hard and have to pay extremely high fines (more than €10K). Home owner's associations and rental contracts now also typically have clauses that explicitly forbid AirBnBs. Still, many people want to introduce more rules or even ban AirBnB entirely.

I am unsure what to think about your free market comment. I think you should be able to do what you want in your own home as long as it is within the bylaws and zoning laws of your area. My property was bought as agricultural zoning. It means I can have pigs, chickens, cows, all sorts of things residential properties can not do. My neighbor is residential. I bought my property agricultural so I could potentially do all those things. When my neighbor bought his property if he was informed he would look at the zoning in the neighborhood and factor that into his purchase just like anyone else would. If he doesn't want a pig farm in his neighborhood he should not move next to an agricultural property because that is always a possibility. If you are zoned for a tannery why shouldn't you be able to do it they have to go somewhere?

I think the issue comes up when someone proposes a zoning bylaw that prohibits AirBnB and other short term rentals. Objections to this might hinge on the "it's my property, I should be able to do what I want" thinking.

The issue is how pro-Airbnb people rationalize it with trivially debunked arguments about "free markets" and "it's my house, I can do what I want".

Your case is different. Zoning allows agricultural where you are. Really no one has any cause to complain about that.

As an aside, people do complain about this sort of thing. For example, people will move to where an airport is proposed to be (eg Badgerys Creek, Sydney) or where an existing airport is (eg LAX) and then complain about the potential or actual noise to get restrictions on flights (or on building it at all). I don't have any time for these shenanigans.

> "This lazy (and typically selfish) twisted version of "free market" thinking quickly erodes when, for example, I propose using my house that's next to yours as a tannery or a toxic waste storage site."

i'm down for a good "free market" critique, but this veers hyperbolically into nimbyism. everyone agrees that a tannery or toxic waste dump is inappropriate near residences. but having people stay, eat, shower, and sleep in a home is literally what houses are designed for. if you don't own the home, you don't get to choose who stays there (obviously if the renters are breaking the law, that's a problem, and you can report them to the police).

i'm also super-sympathetic to the need for (affordable) housing in most cities, but banning airbnb has a relatively negligible effect on that ginormous problem.

> everyone agrees that a tannery or toxic waste dump is inappropriate near residences

I think you'll find that's trivially untrue. It's fair to say the vast majority of people agree or even almost everyone. But to find one counterexample? I bet I could do that.

My point here is that the argument of "it's my home I can do what I want" is fundamentally flawed and all it takes is a trivial extreme case to debunk it. So when you move on to what's allowed and what isn't, what's good for the community, what isn't and so on, which is essentially what zoning is.

> but having people stay, eat, shower, and sleep in a home is literally what houses are designed for

So I'm supportive of people hosting other people in their homes, which, incidentally, NYC allows (as one example). Why? Because then the host is invested in that community and can police bad behaviour. When hosts aren't present, they have no such incentive.

In years passed, having long and short term boarders was commonplace. Many cities in the post-WWII era however essentially dismantled boarding houses and SROs (which were once where a significant number of people lived) and in some cases outlawed multi-family residences.

There are extreme examples of what can happen in an Airbnb [1] [2] [3]. There are countless stories of guests being stranded when hosts canceled at the last minute and scams such as bait-and-switch.

[1]: https://10daily.com.au/shows/10-news-first/a190520wykmx/poli...

[2]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-03/airbnb-bans-party-hou...

[3]: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7818881/Airbnb-host...

the extreme case tivially falls victim to reductio ad absurdum, as shown previously.

you've positioned your overall argument as championing the community against an invading force (airbnb), but the claims so far seem to serve a very narrow constituency (and who is the constituency as you see it?). i'm eager to hear substantive assertions that favor the wider community, rather than a narrow constituency, regarding airbnb.

i'm open to the notion that airbnb is bad for the community, but the arguments haven't been convincing so far (note that scams and scammers reach far and wide).

Good. Rentals charge 2 months rent and a deposit. The only reason I can afford housing is because of airbnb. It's the only place I can find housing that doesn't do that BS.

That's here in Merida, at least. I wish the rental market would crumble. It's absurdly difficult for a normal person to rent a decent dwelling. The hostel I rent at is full of people in a similar situation. The more conventional rentals get replaced with airbnb's that allow monthly stays, the better.

The supposed legal protections of conventional renting don't exist, and airbnb is actually a better enforcer of agreements than my government.

> Good. Rentals charge 2 months rent and a deposit. The only reason I can afford housing is because of airbnb. It's the only place I can find housing that doesn't do that BS.

Security deposits and upfront rent address the problem of deadbeat tenants who may destroy the property or simply not pay the rent. It’s skin in the game to show you’re responsible.

Upfront rent is totally fine, Airbnb itself charges upfront. But 3 upfront rents? Ive never gotten a deposit or the extra rent back at the end. Airbnb isnt a real solution but i dont think landlords ever were either

As a counterexample, I've lived in ten different rentals over the past 18 years, and I have always gotten my deposit (minus reasonable cleaning fees, and in rare instances the cost of damage that was legitimately my fault) and any extra rent back at the end. Sure, there are shitty landlords out there who screw over their tenants, but it's not universal.

I have always been under the impression that they can only take money out of your deposit for _unreasonable_ fees. There is an expectation that wear and tear occurs from living in one spot.

Interesting ive been in this situation multiple times with 2 rents as deposit and i always got it back. I mean there is usually written agreement and if you take pictures of the initial state of the place it is fine.

The owner may take certain costs out of your deposit, and what they can and can't bill you for depends on the jurisdiction, but it is certainly illegal to keep your deposit without giving you an invoice for the costs. If this is what happened in your case, you could take your landlord to small-claims court to get it back. As general advice, anyone who is leaving a rental property would be well advised to take pictures of the whole place on the day they vacate, in case they have to debunk damage claims by the landlord.

I'm sympathetic to your plight. That's a shitty situation to be in. But AirBnB is not the answer - short term rentals cost more, long term, than a traditional rental unit. You're paying a premium to not be locked into a contract.

I'm sorry to hear that your government is not protecting tenants rights. In other parts of the world, you do have more rights as a long term tenant than as an AirBnB user. And AirBnB's enforcement of their own policies is a joke, considering all the scams and fraud people get away with on the platform.

In other words, if AirBnB is somehow preferable to renting... you've got bigger problems to worry about.

I appreciate your balanced take on this - but i disagree. Airbnbs discounts for long stays make it pretty competitive here. I pay 3500 pesos a month for a room. That includes power, internet, Netflix, toilet paper, all kinds of other amenities.

It's not ideal, but the barrier to entry is way lower for a premium that is not really high imo.

Out of curiosity, where are you from?

I would assume this discussion is centered on coastal American cities, where Airbnbs routinely cost well over your monthly cost per night, plus cleaning fees etc. I don’t know where you are or what average rental price is in your area, but you won’t find any American units anywhere near that price.

My rental (traditional lease) cost is ~10x yours and I am considered to have a screaming good deal.

I'm in Yucatan, Mexico.

>I would assume this discussion is centered on coastal American cities

Did you click the link of this submission? It's about Dublin, Ireland. That said you're right I have never checked out airbnb prices in the coastal US and I'd assume they are much more expensive there

> Rentals charge 2 months rent and a deposit. The only reason I can afford housing is because of airbnb

There are some interesting models around the world for alleviating this specific burden that don't involve corporations being everyone's landlord.

My favorite is one I learned about relatively recently: rental deposit guarantees[1] in Switzerland. The renter pays a small premium to e.g. Swiss Post, which will issue a certificate guaranteeing the amount of the deposit. The landlord accepts that certificate in lieu of cash.

1. https://www.post.ch/en/locations/rental-deposit-guarantee

Good to see hard data supporting this, but this was always obviously the case. Only reason there was even a conversation was because Airbnb lobbied and placed ads in specific markets to mislead renters about their economic impact.

This doesn't prove it at all. There's an increase in available hotel rooms, too.

That doesn't mean there aren't Airbnbs that would otherwise be longer-term rentals. Of course there are, the logic is just bad. This also doesn't necessarily mean rentals used for Airbnbs are inherently "bad," either. It's complicated.

Yeah, lots of people have been forced to prematurely leave to go back to their home country.

Was this ever seriously debated? As far as I know the only question ever was the size of the effect, not whether there was any effect at all.

Go read any of the old HN threads on AirBNB. Saying this had these kind of effects was decried as “hotel industry propaganda.”

I've never seen "hotel industry propaganda" but the effects on market were debated and often very doubted.

Now it seems there is evidence.

I mean unless the houses were going to sit empty otherwise, then of course there would be an affect. Not really sure what the article is trying to say.

It's not an article. It's a tweet by some rando who just learned about demand and supply.

It's tweets about a report, not just some data-free rant.

https://www.daft.ie/blog/the-covid-19-crisis-is-already-affe...

To be fair, only Airbnb and Airbnb landlords were thinking that Airbnb didn’t hurt the local rental market. The rest of us knew.

To be fair, it started out more like paid couch surfing and then pivoted. The original idea was sharing your home part-time, not dedicating a private residence to short term rental use, which is what it has mostly become.

This is probably not where the founders really meant for it to go.

I honestly don't understand why European cities don't go nuclear against AirBnB. There's so much money to be made in fines and instant political approval from virtually every tenant.

I mean, just stay one day at the airbnb and then negotiate with the landlord for a month or two. I've done this multiple times and gotten very good prices. So It's not like airbnb properties are deadweight, they can (and do) get converted to medium or long-term rentals all the time.

If you're a resident looking for a proper long-term lease, this is just not how things work.

I think you would be surprised. Millions of undocumented immigrants (and a lot of citizens as well) in the US do this all the time, for years and years.

Undocumented immigrants don’t exactly get the best of places though.

Neither do tech workers in SF paying 5k for a shit studio.

And?

Do you think an undocumented immigrant would get a better deal in SF?

What kind of comparison is that

I think tech workers making 200k+ a year in SF are coming out further in bargains against the $8/hr workers who pick your veggies.

Most European cities are heavily dependent on tourism and tourism directly and indirectly contributes >5% of GDP of many countries[1]

A large part of the growth in tourism over the last 15 years can be attributed to cheap flights and cheap housing, via Airbnb and the likes (I.e hotels have not added the number of rooms needed to support this tourism boom).

Given the tepid economic growth in the Euro-zone over that period, I doubt they want to kill the golden goose.

[1] https://tcdata360.worldbank.org/indicators/tnt.tot.contrib.g...

When I lived in Berlin, there were 5 apartments in my building on AirBnB, owned by a single landlord. Within 2 minutes of my place there were 3 hotels and 2 serviced apartments complexes. Maybe some cities lack hotel rooms, but in most cases it's just taking advantage of tourists trying to save a couple bucks.

But that's what you want -- if the tourists save a couple bucks on lodging then you get more tourists, who buy more food and merchandise etc. If they have to stay in an expensive hotel where you are but can get a cheap room in a competing country, many will go there instead.

And if you're worried about losing housing to rentals, now you've got some disused hotels you can turn into apartments or condos.

That's just not true, most importantly it's not sustainable. Hotels are regulated for a reason and are in taxation, need insurances and permits for whatever makes sense to the host city, although they constantly lobby against it. In thebest case the city can plan their infrustructure accordingly, with unregulated and unregistered hotels that's near impossible. Too much tourism is not what most people who live in those cities want to begin with, they want to live there. People who save bucks on usually one one thing are usually not just frugal in that dimension.

How is it not sustainable? Tourism is profitable.

It's regulated because of suffrage arbitrage -- most of the local population doesn't care what the government does to tourists and the tourists can't vote in local elections. But that's just taxation without representation. It tends to be inefficient, because it suppresses the natural amount of tourism by over-taxing it to the detriment of the local economy. It also hurts everyone when everyone does it because then you're the victim of it on the day when you're the tourist and it's you who has no vote in unreasonable lodging restrictions or taxes.

And cities don't need to regulate the amount of housing in order to build infrastructure for it, all they have to do is observe it. If you build more buildings they need more sewers, but you shouldn't need their permission to build more buildings, they should just build more sewers with the property tax you'll be paying on the new buildings.

> People who save bucks on usually one one thing are usually not just frugal in that dimension.

That sounds dangerously close to an argument that poor people are undesirable and should be excluded.

And it isn't even accurate -- poor people have to eat too, and better that you get their business than somebody else. Plus, rich people will take a good deal on a room (see also: how they got rich), doesn't mean they don't have money to spend when they get there.

Have you ever talked to any citizens from Tourist Metros (Berlin, Paris, Porto, Milan) in Europe, Tourism is not what defined any of those cities nor is it of hyper-essential economic importance. Tourism for itself only works for purpose built resorts and specialized, not so urban destinations (Coastal Towns, Ski Resorts).

If uncontrolled, tourism takes over those places, eventually, there is little left for tourists to come to, what made the place interesting to begin with.

Unregulated conversion from housing capacity to other uses destroys the social core of neighborhoods, if there are no hard enforced laws against it.

Tourism for a few bucks cheaper in not human right, right to housing is, disproportionally more relevant to the economically most vulnerable people of each neighborhood.

My family travelled France on a budget in the early 90s just coming out of GDR. Doing Housesitting, Camping or Hotels in the outskirts, it was perfectly fine travelling into Paris for 45 Minutes to do sightseeings and Museums.

Doing this on a daily basis, because you were pushed out of your old neighborhood, because of indirectly rising rents or direct airbnb-repurposing, where your job and friends are still, is a whole nother story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_housing

> Have you ever talked to any citizens from Tourist Metros (Berlin, Paris, Porto, Milan) in Europe, Tourism is not what defined any of those cities nor is it of hyper-essential economic importance.

Then why would you expect it to have any major effect on housing availability there?

> Tourism for itself only works for purpose built resorts and specialized, not so urban destinations

Disagree. Look at New York City. It's full of tourists who come there for the city itself. And it has hardly destroyed the city.

> Unregulated conversion from housing capacity to other uses destroys the social core of neighborhoods, if there are no hard enforced laws against it.

This is only true if building new housing is prohibited, because otherwise conversion isn't necessary. If tourists want to come, converting existing housing only makes sense if it's unoccupied, otherwise it's more profitable to carry on collecting rents from existing housing and build new housing for tourists so you can get their money too. (There may be cases where it makes more sense to build new housing for long-term residents while converting existing stock for tourists depending on the nature of the existing stock, but that still isn't a reduction of housing stock for existing residents.)

What deprives people of housing and makes it cost more is refusing to build more in respond to higher demand.

Yeh but you assumption is those taxes which the government get is the best use of the money. Most places with airbnb with be great arguments against that. Cause yes you may get more frugal people but the pie is bigger in general. Tourism world wide is up and while those people probably on average have less money as a total more tourist dollars are made.

As if it were that easy for a Marriott or Hyatt to just turn random rooms into standalone apartments.

Seems like an obvious flaw in the zoning rules. A hotel room is basically a studio apartment, why shouldn't it be easy to rent it out as one?

Most hotel rooms I've stayed in don't even have a kitchenette. I wouldn't choose to rent a hotel room for longer than a week if I couldn't feasibly cook food. I'm sure there are people that would compromise on this, but I doubt it would be as easy to rent as a studio.

Hotel rooms commonly have a fridge and a microwave. It's not the lifestyle for everybody, but why does it have to be? Different people can have different priorities. Some people choose a small apartment specifically because they're never home, which means they're never home to eat. Some people don't have time to cook. Some people work in a restaurant and eat there. Other people can live across the street.

Yes, that's what I said. That's why I disagree with the claim that it would be as easy to rent while I'm not claiming it would be completely unrentable.

Thats not taking advantage of those people because they probably would not have come if not for those deals. That mutually beneficial relation

>A large part of the growth in tourism over the last 15 years can be attributed to cheap flights and cheap housing, via Airbnb and the likes (I.e hotels have not added the number of rooms needed to support this tourism boom).

Quite a bold claim, care to back that up?

Because renters vote, and create an unfair environment for those people would make them go nuclear not even including cleaving into the tourist dollars of European cities which thrive on luxury goods by a lot. Making people in the tourist industry unhappy.

And for what so poor renters who might not go out and vote for said issues when push comes to shove.

Did anybody even doubt this? In cities like Amsterdam, Barcelona and Berlin this was blatantly obvious.

There are plenty of people who have financial incentives to doubt it since it’s more profitable. Any time some city tries to restrict it you’ll reliably see people dismissing it as a minor non-issue.

"And nobody was really poor. At least, nobody worth speaking of".

I’m rather torn about the Airbnb model.

One, hotels charge way too much money. When a hotel room costs $300 to $500 per night, then this will quickly burn your travel budget.

Two, Airbnb hosts are often, rather dishonest with their listings.

But, Airbnb is the only way to rent someone’s house in a distant location, where your family and extended family can stay together to get away. It’s impossible to do this with a hotel, and very expensive too.

Initially, some people got enterprising, and rented out their homes to help pay their mortgages. And they charged a modest fee for it. For a while, this seemed ok, as you were helping out someone to pay off their expensive mortgage. Like, Yeah! Stick it to the rich bankers, and all the jackasses that contribute to expensive housing.

But then, soon others, turned it into a hotel operation, where investors would team up to buy houses and apartments, only to rent it out on Airbnb. And when this happened, everyone else started doing it, and so the initial Airbnb business model was no longer socially or morally acceptable.

You and I, as an individual, cannot compete against a team of 5 investors that buys the property outright. Our individual goal, is to put down roots, build a family, and contribute to the community so our children can have a stable place to live.

Their goal, is to make a profit, and later flip the house for an even larger profit.

For better or worse, maybe this coronavirus will destroy the Airbnb business model. Its initial thesis, is no longer socially acceptable.

Before AirBnB, you just had BnBs. In England at least they were often farmhouses, and the owner literally makes you breakfast if you were staying in their main house (this was a large part of it). I’m not sure what if any regulation applies if you are a BnB like that. In fact, it’s such a part of British culture, there is a game show where 5 BnB owners stay at each other’s places and see who is ranked best. The show airs every week. AirBNB are parasites.

It's not AirBnB. It's again society kicking down. Many more people now travel and use AirBnB, because it made travel cheaper. The downside is that housing got even more complicated.

However, building new supply is very much demand driven. And AirBnB pushed up demand, which lead to more units built. (Probably some hotels were not built, etc.)

This "parasite" thinking is just impotent rage. The real problem is the lack of housing supply. City dwellers are rather resistant to change. Development is noisy, draws more traffic, casts a shadow, etc. Yet most of them are also renters.

It's the classic participation asymmetry. The vocal minority trumps the silent majority.

> The real problem is the lack of housing supply

I guess one group of people are suggesting that we adjust the demand to the local people who live and work in the city rather than allowing the demand of tourists to take the supply. In some areas it's also simply not possible to change the supply as all the land who could be built on, is already built.

I for one would love to see a re-prioritization for the local people in favor of tourists, and we're slowly seeing that shift happening now.

I have absolutely no problem with communities, cities deciding how they allow basic usage of property that affects others. (The typical complaint is that short-term rentals cause a lot of disturbance, new people every week, parties every week, and so on.)

But directly prohibiting short-term rentals just because they take up units is the same short sighted "solution" as prohibiting high-density mixed-use development.

Cities that are growing/booming/trending are attracting people all over the world nowadays. For work, for leisure, for simply living there. I'm not saying just start building high-rises like there's no tomorrow. (Actually I think simple quotas with lottery systems would work best.) Control the influx, not just one symptom.

> land who could be built on, is already built.

Could you describe such an actual example? I can't really think of any place on Earth where we can't easily increase population density by building up.

As someone observed in the Twitter thread, +64% only means a handful (about 150) new flats on the market, since there's so few at the moment. They are now on offer for long term rental, so once they'll be taken they'll be out of the market possibly for years.

This is why comparing long term rentals and airbnb makes little sense: yes, half of the flats for rent at any given moment are for short term. But they're always the same ones, over and over again. They could increase the long term offer only for a few days before disappearing for good.

Anyone think Airbnb will take a hit after people become more concerned with covid? Creating a less travel friendly society and if they have to travel for business they will demand a properly cleaned hotel room?

Take a hit after? Heck, let's talk about right this second. It's already happening: https://www.wsj.com/articles/airbnb-racks-up-hundreds-of-mil...

Paywall, but even just the headline and first paragraph tell you what you need to know.

And yeah, I don't see how this doesn't completely decimate their business model. The likely coming worldwide recession will see far less spending on travel, not even counting residual behavioral changes re: covid as you mention.

UPDATE: Non-paywalled article: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/airbnb-mulls-cash-infusion-in...

Market in Prague has been flooded with new cheap offers. The catch - It is always just for maximum 6 months.

I doubt this will change anything longterm unless it becomes proof for policy makers to ban airbnb.

Firsthand experience: My family was evicted from a two unit home in SF. We lived in one unit, the owner in the other unit. One unit is now listed on Airbnb.

IANAL.

What grounds did the landlord use to evict you? How long between you guys leaving and the Airbnb business starting.

Did you receive any and all relocation payments required by law, and has the landlord continued to file the required annual paperwork with SFRB?

If the eviction reason was either 'owner move-in' or 'relative move-in' then, if the landlord subsequently decided to rent out the unit again with the next few years, they are required by law to first offer the unit to you at the original rent. If you decline, they can rent to someone else, but again only at the original rent (plus the city-mandated max annual increase %). (And, no, the landlord can't get around this by airbnb'ing the other unit, and moving in to your unit.)

I'm less familiar with Ellis Act evictions, but my understanding is that these also prevent the landlord from re-renting the property for a significant period of time.

It always bothered me how Airbnb never addressed its impact on the residential housing market. Between the safety issues, Covid, stories on scams, and the greater awareness around its impact on housing I hope local governments really start regulating them more.

An important caveat here is that it’s from a low base; Dublin has a massive property crisis and there are typically very few rentals on the market.

On a side note : airbnb must be really happy to have all the profit, but no risk right now.

Note that 64% of new listings is very different than 64% of all properties. e.g, last I looked 1.5% of SF properties were on AirBnB (down from 3% before the recent regulations), though unclear what fraction were available for rent full-time. So at least in SF I don't think removing AirBnB would really change supply in a meaningful way.

It would make a big difference to me. :) But it would not change supply.

I have an airbnb off my garage. It's a granny flat, a bed, a small bathroom and a kitchenette. A sink, but just a hot plate a fridge and no oven. It's not somewhere you'd want to live for a long time, in my opinion. But it's a great place to crash for a few days, have a cold breakfast, some oatmeal, reheat left overs, etc.

There's people like me who it helps live in SF and offset property taxes, price of the house, etc. Bad actors/bad markets/etc certainly do exist, but like all things it's complicated.

It’s not really though. SF has a housing crisis. We would all be better off if an unhoused person was living there or someone with lower paid but necessary job (e.g. caretaker at a nursing home).

Making money off people on vacations is worse than providing stable housing for people in the city.

The city prohibits from being rented long term since it lacks a full kitchen. The SF rules are, I could not airbnb if I could rent it long term.

Is this still true under the all statewide ADU legislation that came into effect this year?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesfinancecouncil/2020/03/12...

If anything good comes of this crisis I hope it is the dismissal of the 'gig' economy's nefarious cancerous business-models that rely on regulation dodging, negative externality dumping and worker exploitation.

If we have to reboot the economy, let's get rid of the vilest anarcho-capitalist and environmental destructive cruft we have allowed to fester over the years.

I’ve always stayed at Airbnb’s for my short term stays, simply because they were cheaper than hotels.

Hotels cost so much for a place that doesn’t even have a hot plate.

If Airbnb operators bid higher than long-term renters, why shouldn't they get the apartments? This animus against Airbnb seems irrational to me. Property should go to its most productive use, and the most productive use is the one for which someone is willing to pay the most money.

I don't think that how much someone is willing to pay is a good way to measure what something's most productive use is. For one thing, it fails to account for the degree to which people have differences in what they are able to pay.

We use prices to ration access to scarce resources. What's the alternative? A command economy. Tons of historical experiments show that it doesn't work. And why shouldn't ability to pay affect the ability to access resources? What would be the point of money otherwise?

How do you know that the most productive user a resource is something other than the highest bidder? On what basis can you make that determination? Prices are universal.

I don't think that we can perfectly know what the best use of a resource is. However, I think that we can often perform better than price does. For example, it would generally be better to allocate a unit of food to people who are starving than to people who already have excess food.

Note that in some cases that won't be the optimal way to distribute the food. For example perhaps the starving person is actively hurting society while the person with excess food wanted to use the food to perform research that promotes greater food production in the future.

However, taken as a whole, allocating at least some food based on need is going to perform better than allocating all food based on price.

Because people being born in some place need somewhere to live without being displaced by hordes of locusts looking to see the sights.

You can purchase or inherit property. Nobody forces you to turn that property into an Airbnb. You have no particular right to some other property, one to which you have no ownership claim, in the city in which you happen to be born. That's not how property works.

If you think property is too expensive in your city, consider building more of it instead of imposing arbitrary restrictions on demand.

Bollocks. Cities like Amsterdam and Barcelona are historically constricted by nature. Not everybody is born with wealthy parents, a home to inherit or a job that will pay for one. Those cities won't grow much bigger than they are, nor should they. And those that are born there have more right to live there than tourists have to monopolize the space. The only thing AirBnB does is to line their own pockets at the expense of the locals. Hotels were a thing long before AirBnB turned social housing and regular apartments into a source of income for those wealthy enough to buy up the property. It's un-ethical.

Libertarian bullshit and 'the market' have done enough damage. See also: commercial healthcare.

Building more housing increases population, which increases opportunity. Opportunity is the reason people flock to cities. More opportunity means greater income, means higher real estate prices.

We have lots of policies with adverse incentives and terrible outcomes. We routinely spend more money in the US on homeless services than it would cost to provide homes for free because homeless individuals wind up a lot sicker, etc.

It's not sufficient to show that this makes more money for the owner. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. If it costs the rest of the world too much, no, it isn't the highest and best use by any stretch of the imagination.

Edit:

See for example this hospital decided to just house a few people to lower its expenses:

https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/homeless-patients-get-n...

Please note that I am not actually for "housing first models" or free housing. I'm for market-based housing that makes sense. It's just a nutshell description of the problem space to note that just giving people housing can be cheaper than leaving them to fend for themselves.

So just to counteract the dead account arguing with you:

"The original study that generated so much headlines in the press said this was true for _temporarily_ homeless -- it would, in fact, be exorbitantly expensive to house _all_ homeless people."

Nonsense. Over 80% of homeless people on a given night are temporarily homeless. There's less than a hundred thousand chronic homeless in the entire country. $100 a week would be enough funding for a hotel, but let's drill in the point by doing the math for $200 a week. 90 thousand homeless * $200 * 52 / 320 million people. Final cost: $3 per capita per year to house every single chronically homeless person.

And that's not even getting into the strawman they made about forcing landlords to do anything.

I agree with you, with the massive caveat that we should also stop with the zoning and permitting shenanigans and let supply rise to meet the demand. Artificially scarce supply + bid-based pricing makes for horrible times for the average tenant.

There are reasons other than zoning affecting supply. Regulations exist for a reason. While some of those reasons are of debatable merit, some are good.

You probably don't want to place housing in an industrial area. There are environmental implications that can affect public health. Likewise, you probably don't want to place a ten story apartment block in a neighborhood filled with single family housing since it is going to interfere with other property owners enjoyment of their own land.

Yet there is more than zoning to consider. Building codes raise the cost of construction, and ultimately cost of housing. Historically, parts of cities have been lost to flames because of how building were constructed (among other reasons).

Now I am not saying that all of the regulations are good. On the contrary, I believe that they are too restrictive to meet housing needs. On the other hand, you will always have someone calling shenanigans based upon the philosophy behind those regulations and how the community views that philosophy.

Fourty percent of the homes Manhattan would be illegal to build today. I would claim that not all of Manhattan is industrial or otherwise miserable.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-...

Why should property go to the most (fiscally) productive use? Is this simply an axiom? I assert that it has bad consequences. In my city (Toronto) the tax rate is set on the assumption that land is put the "most productive use". This forces out non-profits, artists, theatres, dancers and in general everything that makes a city worth living in in favour of chain restaurants and condos.

How do you know those artists and theaters are better than the restaurants and condos? Dollars reveal true preferences, and it appears that people don't actually prefer artists, theaters, and dancers like you'd prefer. Who are you to override the preferences of the public?

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