Comment by geuis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geuis | Hacker News Reader

As a SF resident, I'm opposed to any regulation at all. I'm a long term renter (same house, 7 years) and my lease prevents subletting. That's exactly where the responsibility and regulation should lie, at the feet of the home owner. If I own a piece of property or have a lease that allows it, then I should have the free choice to do with that property what I want in regards to something like Airbnb. In my case, the owner of my house doesn't want that. Other owners do. A friend just purchased a condo for a lot of money. He should be free to do with his condo what he wants.

How far does this line of thinking extend? What about small startups that work out of someone's house or apartment? They're doing commercial activity in an unzoned area, so that should be banned too.

How about coffee shops? Coffee shops are generally licensed to sell coffee and non-cooked (on premises) goods. Want to sell sandwiches made on site? That's a different (expensive) license. Beer and wine? Same thing. So coffee shops aren't licensed to be places of business for customers to perform commercial activity. We should ban engineers working from cafes too.

I've always liked the petition (http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html) Bastiat sent to the French Parliament proposing that they block out the sun to benefit French candle makers. Its in the same vein as a Modest Proposal from Swift about the Irish poor.

We're seeing government protectionism of new competing services against established and entrenched businesses, i.e. taxi medallions vs Uber/Lyft, hotels vs Airbnb, city-built fiber vs Comcast/Time Warner.

This is dangerous. It limits competition and competition is almost always good for customers.

We need to stop this from happening in SF.

I have some issues with this ballot proposition, but you take it too far.

The "property owners should be free to do as they please" thing is a good slogan, but it ignores negative externalities. E.g., I shouldn't be able to open up a paper mill or a hog farm in my condo, because the effects of that extend beyond the bounds of my property.

That's why we have zoning, for example. We zone an area residential because many people don't want to live in a commercial zone. Saying, "You can't run a hotel in this neighborhood" is something we already do, so it's not crazy to say, "You also can't use AirBnB to run a hotel-like-thing in this neighborhood."

Segregation by use into residential/commercial/industrial zones is a characteristic of suburban rather than urban planning.

An alternative to zoning by use is to zone by intensity or pattern of activity. You can consider externalities such as traffic generation or noise or chemical pollution explicitly rather than assuming that e.g., every manufacturing process generates noxious fumes.

The more urban neighborhoods of SF including Pac Heights, Russian Hill, Nob Hill, SOMA, the Mission, the Castro, and Civic Center all include hotels right next to or above or below residential and other, complementary, uses [https://www.google.com/maps/search/san+francisco+hotel/@37.7...].

I agree what I said was more simple than the full reality, but even San Francisco has a lot of space that is zoned purely one or the other:

http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=1569

I also agree that some people like living next to hotels, but some don't. And in the case of apartment buildings, it's not so much "next to a hotel" as "in a partial hotel".

So I think my broad point, that zoning regulations aren't some sort of pointlessly Orwellian government regulation, and are in fact rooted in reasonable preferences of residents, still stands.

Coffee shops need a different license to make food to ensure that they have a safe, hygienic food prep area. Hotels are subject to health regulations as well. Hotels are also supposed to collect guest taxes that I'm guessing many (most? all?) AirBnB hosts weren't collecting. ie, they were not playing by the same rules as everyone else, which is anti-competitive.

The neighbors should get a say in whether you're running a hotel out of your house/condo, because there are externalities involved. For example, if the condo next door to you hosts hundreds of people per year they're more likely to get bedbugs, which can require fumigating the entire building. I'm sure we can come up with some more if you try.

Bottom line, certainly some regulations exist for protectionist reasons, but you're wrong in assuming that protectionism is the only reason for regulation. AirBnB and others should be subject to a reasonable level of regulation. It's unfortunate, but that's the cost of living in close quarters with lots of other people.

While I generally favor a less-regulation approach, you're missing the core issue here: short-term rentals have a negative effect on neighborhoods because they change the incentives of the people living the house from those of a neighbor to those of a visitor. This is precisely what zoning regulations are designed to protect.

> How far does this line of thinking extend? What about small startups that work out of someone's house or apartment? They're doing commercial activity in an unzoned area, so that should be banned too.

The difference is that no one around the startup is going to complain because they aren't impacting their neighborhood negatively.

Short term rentals are decisions you make for your neighborhood without their consent. The feedback mechanism that would replace regulation on Airbnb is unfortunately limited to only the guests who stay, which are not all of the stakeholders affected by any means.

I appreciate your point of view, but this is just supposition. As far as I know, there have been no actual studies done related to the effect of independent rentals using the Airbnb model on neighborhoods.

My own opinion is that property owners have the ability to do what they will with that property up to the limits of established laws. This means that with no existing laws to prevent action, those actions are allowable.

Based on that opinion, and unless some studies are done that factually demonstrate negative impacts on neighborhoods, no pre-emptive laws should be passed restricting this activity.

Edit: not sure why you're being downvoted, I upvoted fwiw.

Yeah I agree, I'd like to see this studied more in depth, because I also don't find the hotel industry to be unbiased in the discussion.

It is not supposition because it happened to me: someone in my building was Airbnb-ing their apartment and the building had significant damage to public walk ways, parties thrown on roof til 4am on week nights etc.

If you look through my comment history you'll see I'm, admittedly, completely biased because of that.

Again, as you said, I'd love to see a study.

I think it would be totally reasonable to also have a public place where I could see all units in my building that are currently being short-term leased, as well as a place to complain.

I don't think all out illegality is the only response here, but Airbnb (and VBRO etc.) are not handling this properly yet.

> short-term rentals have a negative effect on neighborhoods because they change the incentives of the people living the house from those of a neighbor to those of a visitor.

So what? People aren't friendly enough to their neighbors? Is this really worth regulating? If there's a specific concern, like tenants not maintaining the property or being too noisy, why not just require tenants to take care of the property and have a noise policy?

As I said below, I had an extremely negative experience having someone in my building renting out their apartment on Airbnb. Of course, sample size of 1.

I don't doubt it. But would it have been any better if the apartment owner had done the same specific things as the Airbnb renters? I'm assuming your problems involved noise or property damage.

Both noise and property damage. The key is the tenant is much less likely to do that as they have a long term interest in maintaining a healthy (or in NYC more likely neutral) relationship with their neighbors. I never met the people who trashed my building and threw parties on the roof, but I was disturbed by them and my landlord incurred damages.

So why not have it in the lease, or regulations if you must, that property damage or certain noise violations will result in eviction?

Well, both of those are already in the regulations. In fact, also in the lease is the concept that you cannot sublease. 99% of NYC apartments have this clause, 99% of Airbnbs in NYC are, inarguably, illegal. Unfortunately, here I am with a damaged lobby and some nights of shitty sleep because my neighbor wanted to pimp our building out.

Whether or not that should change is another question. I don't necessarily think they need to be made illegal - that seems too drastic a response. But Airbnb is not self-policing itself enough and operate with a shoot first ask questions later legal policy. It is trivial for them to look at hosts they have and know if they are breaking the law or not. They ignore this in the hope that it will all go away eventually. They are begging for regulation.

If these rules are already in leases, then why don't violators get evicted? I suspect the problem comes from laws which make evictions extremely difficult.

Yes I think that's probably right, although I think eviction is a bit harsh. I will say that if there is no property damage the landlord has little incentive to fix it if the Airbnber is paying rent on time, even though quality of life for neighbors can go down.

Yes. \o/

Anything less is control-freak, incumbent cronyism with a mafia protection fee.

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