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Comment by diogenescynic | Hacker News Reader

I don't think AirBNB is blameless, but so much of this could be avoided by simply building more homes to allow supply to meet demand. US cities have not been building enough homes for decades--this is the main driver of home values going up because scarcity drives prices up. The fact that the President, Congress, and most governors never really address this means it's not going to be solved any time soon. Even in California we do half-measures like upzoning that will take years/decades to have any impact.

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Its not just the shortage, its the change in usage. I live in fear that one of my neighbors will become an Air BnB house. Instead of friendly people next door you can grow with, there will be a continual turnover of short term people, parties and clueless behavior.

“People next door you can grow with” how quaint. I feel like I’m listening to a Hobbit from inside the Shire who doesn’t know Mordor has taken over outside. A little boost of positivity.

Don't you know your next door neighbours?

Building more homes requires infrastructure to support those homes.

The real solution is to tax each additional dwelling ~30,000$ (depending on area) to pay for the infrastructure to support it and then actually build that infrastructure.

I’d go with a percentage instead of flat fee. Or some tiered structure to the flat fee. Some of these mega hosts own 40+ properties.

Either can work, but a 500k house and a 5 million dollar house are likely to need roughly the same supporting services in terms of schools and transportation etc.

The goal of such fees is to avoid subsidizing any specific type of development but as long as it averages out then it’s presumably fine.

These are Airbnb units we’re talking about, they’re unlikely to need many of those services (like schools). My goal is to reduce the amount of properties one can own without paying more than they’re worth. It should be prohibitively expensive to buy your 3rd property, as in 1.5x market price or more with the extra 50% going to cover local service expenses.

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