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Comment by djannzjkzxn | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

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