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Comment by jabbany | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, housing and rental markets in some places are kind of pre-ruined. There have been plenty of (and doubtless will be plenty more) scammy landlords for short-term rentals.

AirBnB really just provided a modern online interface with some customer service stuff that papered over the bad stuff for a while. But like with actual bad construction, you can't hide the stuff forever so sooner or later the magic disappears.

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A lot of the macrolevel complaints about Airbnb are trotted out because customers had shitty experiences. I still bring up their douchey bus ads in sf bragging about finally paying their taxes after years of dodging then not because that campaign directly effected me but because I have been personally burned by the company a few times and this anecdote helps communicate the global nature of the problem with the company culture that a few bad stays doesn’t always convey.

Well, they're ruined because of zoning (and tax law but that's a whole other story)

In theory zoning is supposed be in residents interest to stop things like fracking from happening next to playgrounds (it doesn't but again that's another story). Cities follow zoning law to the letter when it comes to new apartments.

Airbnb repurposes residential zoned property as commerical hotels. If we're going to take zoning seriously this shouldn't be allowed.

Comparing it to a commercial hotel isn’t really accurate. It’s more like a bed and breakfast. Size of the property matters a lot.

In every city there are multiple hosts who buy/rent out entire apartment complexes and turn them into AirBnBs. That's a hotel, not a bed and breakfast.

Yeah but at that point it’s just plain old tax fraud.

AirBnB sux but zoning has arguably been a net negative on most societies in many ways

https://youtu.be/bnKIVX968PQ

https://youtu.be/CCOdQsZa15o

for me what I noticed lately is that in California it's impossible to have a quiet modern apartment because nearly 100% of modern apartment buildings are only allowed to be built on busy noisy high traffic streets. If you want a quiet street you're forced to buy/rent a house

why is california not allowing apartment buildings being built in low traffic streets?

Because then they won't be low traffic streets anymore

temporarily, sure. doesn't mean you can't build there?

100% agree.

But if we take zoning seriously when it comes to new apartments then we should take it seriously when it comes to Airbnb.

Is it possible to build proper noise insulation, which makes the house as quiet as the a house in a quiet neignorhood, to a newly built, modern apartment house?

I think it is, but construction companies are trying to savd a few cents, and they don't add proper noise insulation.

Where I live the zoning laws require better noise isolation for new builds on major roads, because this is such an easy way for investors to save money and screw tenants.

Not true in SF. Plenty of apartments are on streets that are not main thoroughfares. In fact busy streets are often primarily zoned commercial

Name any apartment complex on a quiet street in SF that's not in Mission Bay that's been built in the last 15 years

I don’t know any that were built in the last 15 years.

Where exactly in CA? I live in an apartment on a quiet street and the worst noise problem I have is the upstairs neighbors have a heavy dog that likes to jump around.

Population density too

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