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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

Even before we had the big companies doing it an HOA I lived in put in a lot of work to ban short term rentals and establish some rules for subletting.

We had two condos that were constantly some kind of party house folks would rent, a few others that were more occasional. Visitors would leave trash out, park in other people's spots, loud at all hours. They didn't care, none of their mess had any impact on the visitors so they did whatever they wanted. The handful of folks renting out what were all of 6 or so units were very vocal trying to lower HOA fees and so on ... they didn't care about long term sustainability of the road in our neighborhood or maintaining the lawn or even insurance coverage.

Had to go through a lot of work establishing new rules and getting everyone to vote on it but it was worth it.

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HN users love to complain about HOAs being overly restrictive but they can play a valuable role in keeping AirBnB trash out of residential communities. I'm glad that my HOA has banned short-term rentals from the start.

> keeping AirBnB trash out of residential communities

Why not ban the activities you would classify as “trash” (presumably obnoxious behaviour) which can come from owners or short or long term renters, rather than focus on short term renters only?

It seems akin to banning driving from bars, rather than banning drunk driving.

The mere existence of short term rentals is a societal and neighborhood-level problems.

Banning the behaviors requires enforcement every time. It means someone has to sit around, suffer the problem, document it, go through processes to create a violation, maybe fine the owner (who will likely contest it and waste more time and money), and then still probably be unable to collect.

Then the short term renter leaves, a new one comes in, and all the neighbors get the same problem over and over. Endless suffering and endless work.

In Washington state, our HOA has talked to multiple management firms familiar with the case law who say that unless an owner is behind on dues, and unless unpaid fines are in the high thousands of dollars, there is no consequence for the homeowners not paying the fines and we have no way to collect.

Obnoxious behavior is already banned but it's a huge hassle to have to call the police about littering or excessive noise, and often the police don't even respond. Much easier to just keep the trashy people out in the first place by banning short-term rentals. They can go stay in a hotel instead.

Because the activities are often being done by people who aren't there long and don't care if it is not allowed or not. Speeding, noise, trash left out or just littering, illegal parking is all already against the rules, but enforcement for nuisance stuff is never strong enough to really even impact someone who does it ... and knows they'll be gone soon.

Because it's far more enforceable.

As someone who has been running a short term rental in an apartment building for over 6 years, I would ask: were there any genuine attempts to reconcile from either parties?

I myself had some troubles as well, but it didn't look impossible to run a short stay and keep the peace at the same time.

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