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Before the pandemic, Manhattan was filled with apartments that had every room turned into bedrooms that were rented out on AirBnB and that violated fire code. Now cities are filled with literal flophouses.

Perhaps this shows that the fire code was not the best example of assessing upsides versus downsides.

What do you mean? How has the pandemic created literal flophouses, "a cheap hotel or rooming house"?

That was poor wording on my part. I put the "before the pandemic" in as a disclaimer, because I haven't looked at the Manhattan housing market since the pandemic began.

Thanks, I get it now.

Ive used AirBnB in multiple countries. The disconnect between guest and host exists in many places, but it's especially true in the US. However, several of my trips to Japan have produced meaningful long term relationships with hosts. It really is dependent on the country and what you're looking for.

I have multiple vacation rentals and use several sites including AirBNB to list them. I've also spent a month in Japan traveling and gotten to know hosts who were on AirBNB. One host we talked deeply with after she lost all of her other bookings from a massive typhoon.

The problems she has with guests and the problems Japanese people face as a country are very different. She has had to stop taking specific types of guests because of rude behavior like flushing food down the toilet and damaging tatami mats. When in Japan, a person described their culture as, "having a very specific way of doing things and becoming very upset when people get in the way of that." With so many people having that mentality, hosting is a more friendly sort of thing.

We have different issues. We've become friendly with several of our guests, and even see some past guests once or twice a month to spend time together. When the guests come from AirBNB, we have to maintain a lot of vigilance. We've had multiple drug dealers, a large number of people smoking weed in our rentals, child endangerment, and a few parties. AirBNB has a hands-off policy and there are a lot of pieces of shit who have learned they can abuse AirBNB's system to do what they want, and we don't quite have the same culture of empathy anymore.

I am an AirBnB host myself since about 5 years and with 3 units today and there is a rating of your guest at the end, which basically prevents all of this. You can also just allow guest with (good) ratings to book your apartment (at all). So you have quite a good control over this. People are not dumb and will try to get value out of their investment (also guests - their investment is the booking of the accommodation), but I think your anecdote is not representational. Your home might be cheap and in a "bad" neighborhood, where you are forced to rent out to "problematic" people, since only those are interested to stay there. Though initially you probably bought the house cheaply and now -maybe- conveniently ignore this and complain about the problems in the neighborhood.

I am not saying that there are no problems. But it's kind of possible to get them under control and also have a good value proposition as a host. If you don't have this, then switch back to classical long-term renting. If you keep renting (rather short term) via AirBnB, then the value proposition for you (the host) must also be good enough considering all factors. It kind of does not make sense to be an AirBnB host and be unsatisfied - only temporarily.

"jUsT dOn'T hOsT tHeM." Great advice.

You assumed what our properties neighborhoods are like incorrectly. You used your faulty assumption to create a story inside of your head so it would be easier to be patronizing. Your unsolicited advice was a waste of my time and yours, but I do hope it gave you that dopamine hit you seem to desperately need.

> We've had multiple drug dealers

Wow, how did you find out? Got calls from FBI or something? (Just curious.)

When "one person and her kids" turns into 6 grown adults who are constantly coming and going and I can smell the weed from outside, it's obvious. When they are dumb enough to leave an unlocked iphone after their stay with their signal account open and the details of their dealings, it's also obvious. Drug dealers aren't a bright bunch.

That's the retconned origin story. From the start they were talking about replacing Marriott; that was their pitch to investors.

Well, that would be even worse, as far as why Paul Graham chooses to tell the story this way, even make it the center of the story. I guess that's how he remembers it.

Either way, it's not what it is now, and he's choosing not to mention that, while leaving it at the center of the story...

It doesn't matter if the "majority of Airbnb use now" is business-like.

That still enables the personal-experience ones to exist -- and there are tons of them.

One doesn't negate the other. A supermarket can sell conventional and organic produce at the same time.

Travelers and hosts have different tastes. Why wouldn't you cater to a broad range?

To truly cater to the broad range, they should make it easier to filter out slumlords with a toggle to find listings that retain the classic feeling, so that the people who prefer a hotel feeling but with less regulations can also filter out personalized experiences.

There was couch surfing for the "personal experience". AirBnB really just added money to the mix. It didn't enable it.

If you say you started a grocery store because you wanted to sell organic food and help people buy organic food, so you are very pleased with how it's went since now 3% of the food you sell is organic, I'm going to wonder about your story, or your evaluation of success. If you are making lots and lots of money selling 3% organic food, but everyone keeps talking about the organic food, I'm going to wonder if you switched to prioritizing making lots and lots of money instead of selling organic food (which you are allowed to do, nobody's going to stop you), and if the organic food is just a story, and if maybe we should stop telling that story like that, and at any rate when telling the history of your endeavor it seems worth mentioning.

But that's actually super common.

Look at Dr. Bronners soap -- it was for spreading religion. Turned out the soap was more popular than the religious message. But every bar and bottle is still chock-full of the religious stuff.

Or how people start movie theaters to show movies they love, but that's not profitable, which is why they have overpriced concession stands that actually make the entirety of the money.

If someone wants to bring organic food to a town, but the only way that's a sustainable business is to make it a small area of a large conventional supermarket... that's entirely normal.

I don't know why anyone would wonder about it at all?

> not a delightful experience of being hosted in someone else's home, but whole-apartment/house rentals or other circumstances with not much interaction between host and guest, feeling very business-like

That's what I actually like about Airbnb. I get a whole house to myself and no one is there. I can go to a new country but still cook food and travel with a family, something that can be annoying in a hotel.

AirBnB was always a regulatory arbitrage play.

Or in layman's terms: find a legal grey area and become a billionaire before it becomes illegal.

Was it Ford that said: don't ask me how I made my first million?

What AirBnb did was not find a grey area; unregistered bnb's were already illegal at the time. They simply relied on their hosts facing the primary brunt of the legal and fiscal penalties.

What did Ford do?

Don't ask me, ask Ford! :-p

Well said. Reminds me of Joel Spolsky's Big Mac vs The Naked Chef article.

>It seems odd to me to highlight that aspect of the founders initial motivation without even mentioning whether that's what the company actually does now.

If you feel like being cynical, you can see ycombinator as analogous to a ram pump[0] that raises a small amount of water to a large elevation by dumping a large amount of water from a lower elevation. The way they get that flow is from what inspired people to keep going. So why not promote that? It's only logical.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i31hGJ93OTg