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Comment by kblev | Hacker News Reader

In many cities the choice for long term rentals is very narrow therefore expensive because most flats are AirBnBs for tourists. This has a detrimental effect on the locals. Pre-COVID that is.

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It's that just blaming Airbnb for the failures of the local government?

Why not both? Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Airbnb being a company, and a company seeking profits over everything else, one could argue that it's not their job to care about how they affect people. Doesn't mean we can't criticize it for it.

We could go even further and say it's by criticizing Airbnb that we will push governments to regulate this new market.

Most cities have laws against individuals running unlicensed hotels out of their apartments. AirBnb chose to ignore those laws and encourage others to do so as well.

Same with uber, and others..

Yes, of course. That's part of the cycle. Democratically elected officials are not proactive, they respond to pressure. Calling out corporations that are acting irresponsibility creates enough pressure to have democratic governments act upon those corporations.

Airbnb ran huge marketing campaigns against local governments (including in SF) and lobbies, as well. Very aggressive stuff.

No, it's blaming AirBnB for making a bad situation much worse. Local governments worldwide may be inept at securing enough housing for people (perhaps because it turns out to be a hard problem), but it's not helpful to sabotage the allocation of whatever housing that was made available.

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