Santa Monica council votes 7-0 to crack down on Airbnb
latimes.com
latimes.com
People like to invoke the evil "hotel lobby", which I'm sure does exist!, but it is not even a little bit hard to find loud, angry citizens complaining. Those complaints are entirely predictable: people buy or rent residences in buildings expecting those buildings to be inhabited by long-term residents, then some part of the building gets converted to a hotel. People aren't OK with that.
There are also places where vibrant short-term rental markets may exacerbate tight housing markets.
I've had nothing but good Airbnb experiences, in SFBA, NYC, and London. I hope Airbnb works this out. But they don't really hold all the cards here.
Some buildings won't take care of it (especially in situations where people are buying whole buildings to rent out), leaving their neighbors without much recourse without regulation.
I understand the argument for apartment buildings. If someone in your building buys/rents a unit, then puts it on airbnb, they decrease your security because strangers are going in and out of the building.
I do not understand the argument for an entire building. If I own a building, it should be my right to decide who stays there. As long as the airbnb guests are not throwing wild ragers, I don't see what argument the neighbors could have.
Most cities require hotels go through a permitting and approval process, usually in part to ensure things like security, parking, etc. are accounted for, and only allow them in certain areas zoned for such commercial usage.
Then you're running a hotel. And there are rules for that. Including zoning restrictions.
A whole rented building has the same problems (loud guests, people abusing shared spaces, etc) as a single apartment rented to short-term guests, but on a larger scale.
Yes, this will require some restrictions on how people can use their properties in some places. Keep in mind, though, that this arrangement is only possible with some sort of law or community regulation. Without this, any single individual can come in and deny this choice to everyone else living there.
I'd say that if it is very important to you to be able to short term rent your apartment or house, you should buy one in a community where it is legal. You should not impose this choice on neighbors who chose to live where it is not legal.
The interesting question is, where do you draw the line at what should and shouldn't be regulated?
Community consensus, which as luck would have it, is fairly easy to come to on a local geographic level.
Unfortunately that's not really sustainable. For instance let's say the community agreed that you can turn your home into a noisy 24/7 tool and die shop. Now 5 years past and half of the neighborhood has different home owners in it (quick turnaround for moving half a community but I've seen crazier things). Now the entire community wants them GONE.
Do we say it's okay one year then a few years later go "oh sorry but you can't do your business here anymore"? Moving or even closing up could cost the business owner a substantial amount of money not to mention the loss of customers now not necessarily knowing they moved, etc.
Point being while I don't know where the line is for regulating and not regulating something I also don't think community consensus is a silver bullet.
Really not sure about a solution here.
The community originally says it's okay for 24/7 noise. Some of them move out and other people move in. They know when they move in that there is a 24/7 noise shop there, and they don't have much right to demand because they are the thing that's changed.
I've said it before: cities that care about their current residents should enact 2 limits: tourist zones where year-round full-unit, full-building rentals are allowed, taxed and regulated like hotels (yes, you run a business, you pay commercial property tax, in addition to sales and nightly tax). And then in the remaining residential zones, limit homestays to 40 or 60 days, regardless of whether they are owner occupied or not, with AirBnB collecting taxes and fees for the city and reporting all nightly counts to the city. There could also be complete homestay exclusion zones, but that can also be handled by condo/neighborhood association rules.
The regulation can be tailored to local desires and needs: number of days, requiring permits or just allowing anyone to operate, and requiring owner-occupancy during visitor stays or not.
Note that nothing prevents regular residences at resident-occupied tax rates in the "commercial" zone, just that buyers in that zone know they can convert if they want, but so can their neighbors.
As I said in an earlier post, I would like to trade my right to run a hotel out of my house in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that my neighbors won't do this either.
However, I certainly don't see why the preferences of people who live in largely SFH zones in the outer mission or outer sunset should govern north beach or the inner mission. That's up to them.
If there needs to be a noisy shop there, people will want it to be there. If there doesn't need to be one there, people will want it to move to an industrial zoned area. That's good for society.
They should care whether your tenants behave responsibly, but then they also care whether you behave responsibly, so there's little difference there.
You enter into an implicit (or explicit) contracts with your HOA or local government when it comes to zoning, and this introduces restrictions -- it's not NIMBY (necessarily), since you knowingly agreed to the restrictions when you purchased. This is why {Walmart, Airports, etc} cannot just be built willy-nilly in residential neighborhoods.
Not disputing that; however, it makes far more sense to regulate things that actually affect neighbors (noise, dumping, etc) rather than proxies for those (long-term versus short-term residency). It shouldn't matter whether the residents are short-term or long-term, as long as they're held to the same standard.
> You enter into an implicit (or explicit) contracts with your HOA or local government when it comes to zoning, and this introduces restrictions -- it's not NIMBY (necessarily), since you knowingly agreed to the restrictions when you purchased.
It's NIMBY when those restrictions are arbitrary (in particular when they restrict things that don't actually affect neighbors, other than their sense of moral outrage) and changeable in ways that affect existing residents who haven't agreed and only bought into the old restrictions.
What happens when the next nightly renter is noisy? That person gets fined/told not to come back.
The punishment for one tenant acting poorly does not affect any other tenant, and so there is no global motivation to reduce bad behavior.
Whereas with a long-term tenant, it gets expensive/prohibitive really quickly to behave badly. Isn't that genuinely what we want?
I'll give a simple example. my aunt owns a house here in AZ, and one out in NY. Lives in each for 6 months out of the year (ish). When she's not there, she rents them out.
About a year ago, Verizon sent her DMCA takedown notices, and started their "warning" system (i.e. the step program or whatever it's called). I told her about the safe harbor protections, and she spoke to the tenant several times.
Literally, the only thing that stopped the tenant from torrenting was installing OpenWRT on the router and setting up the nftables/iptables to block udp traffic (only after talking to the tenant 8 times).
The only thing that can prevent some people from behaving badly is the absence of a chance to do so.
Zoning is already a solution to this problem, why do we need to solve it again? Only places zoned for business/tenancy should be acceptable places to rent.
Here's the thing, even this is an area where people will reasonably disagree.
For instance, suppose you have a couple of kids, and they build friendships with the other kids around your neighborhood. Let's say that a family with a couple of kids gets outbid on the house next to you, because the new buyer can price in the profits of putting 3 bedrooms full time on airbnb, whereas the family would be filling them with two extremely expensive young children. In this case, airbnb could end up turning a substantial amount of the SFH housing stock into hotels.
Kids are just one example of the ways people may wish to live in a neighborhood. Obviously, kids are not the only reason people might wish to get to know their neighbors and form longer relationships with them.
So these people would like to trade their right to put their house or apartment on airbnb in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that their neighbors won't do this either. Other people won't, which is why I support zoning laws that regulate tenancy length, but would prefer to see them kept as local as is practically possible.
What I firmly believe is that these zoning laws are reasonable[1] in some areas, and that people should not break the law and impose a hotel on a neighborhood that has democratically chosen to live under this kind of zoning regulation.
[1] There are clearly unreasonable neighborhood regulations that are not up to majority vote, and history is full of them.
Hotels are prepared to deal with problems that tenants may cause. Locks are re-programmable between stays. Security, housekeeping and maintenance people on staff. Etc.
In a condo building, any problems caused in the common areas are going to end up being the responsibility of the association. Which is generally going to be ill equipped and probably unwilling to deal with any issues since they are getting no benefit from it.
Not necessarily.
In some cases the ability to have tenants able to rent out their units will allow the landlord to charge more rent for that unit, because the tenant is able to offset the rent. That is good for the landlord, but not good for the other residents who are bothered by the short term rental activity. As others point out it can also add to an increase in rental costs by creating artificial price pressure since tenants can afford to pay more.
I think the discussion comes around to controlling people's activities within their homes and on their land. If you own a home no one should be allowed to tell you who you can and cannot have over to your house and what type of home business you operate.
If they want to regulate something, which may be necessary, simply enforce already existing regulations and policies regarding noise and disruption. Who is the local government to tell you for how long you can or cannot rent out your home to to someone. Are they going to crack down on renting out a loft to a student too?
So your issue is with zoning laws. So, if you buy a building in a zone that allows you to run an AirBnB-type business, would you be okay with the zone changing after you've made your purchase? Because your asking the residents of these spaces to accept the opposite.
The congress can.
[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
So ... if it is from other state and money exchange hands - you are under its authority.
> already existing regulations and policies regarding noise and disruption.
Many people believe that they have the right to do whatever they want, but only up to the point where it begins to interfere with other people's rights.
The rest depends on your definition of "interfering with other people's rights."
Someone could reasonably believe that subletting is well within the limits of his/her principle whereas noise is not. Others, meanwhile, could argue that both are violations of the principle.
AirBnB has hit that (several times, in several ways). Uber has hit that. The general tech industry and tech culture in the bay area has hit that. Drones and to a lesser extent, 3D printing, are getting pretty close. On demand services (Instacart, etc...) are close as well.
Look, I get the point - excessive regulation is silly. But the idea of a 3D printed gun is without comparison in today's society.
Anyway, that said, I think you're wrong factually too -- 5-axis milling machines have existed for a long time and they can create practically anything a 3d printer can (with much, much higher resolution if you've got the money).
Now, either everyone should be allowed a gun without background checks etc., or lathes/3D printers/whatever that can manufacture a gun are a problem.
With computers, prices dropped and the learning curve wasn't much of an issue anymore. CNC Mills and lathes still require a much greater skill and up-front cost than a 3D printer needs. With CNC machines, there's usually still an additional necessary step required to turn a model into a tool path, based on your machines. So you still have a learning curve no matter which way you cut it (pun intended).
I don't think 3D printing will be a viable way to distributively mass-produce weapons, it's the fact that somebody already has been able to produce functional weapons with 3D printing, and it's comparatively much easier buying a $10K mill and generating tool paths.
I think you're not up to date with recent developments in this space. What you say is no longer true with things like Carbide3d and Carvey. With this new line of "Desktop CNC milling" machines, it's as easy as 3dprinting (if not easier). And the price is comparable (if not cheaper). E.g., compare the Carvey with a Makerbot... or an Ultimaker. It's cheaper than both. If you're willing to be brave and buy a kit, it's even cheaper. Heck, even before this wave you could get a CNC router for very cheap. You could be under the 4 figure range -- with 3d printing it's hard to go below 4 figures and get a decent and reliable machine (though admittedly it very much is possible).
When it's accessible to everybody it's accessible to the people we forgot were also included in "everybody", those with bad intentions -- or simply different ones, such as maximising their personal profit from an apartment rather than living there and being part of the neighbourhood. If we start seeing mainstream magazines talk about desktop CNC milling machines and classes pop up to teach kids how to use them -- and you know, with the Maker movement that's certainly possible and is probably already happening somewhere -- then these technologies become just as "dangerous" as 3D printers.
Systems can be abused through many mediums. If hobby CNC machining had gotten big like 3d printing earlier, certainly we would have seen exactly the same kind of rebuke as some in the 3d printing circles are receiving now. I think now it's particularly hard to come up with good answers. Regulating 3d printers seems difficult. After all, building one yourself from scratch isn't that hard (indeed, many do do this). So you don't know if and when the bad actors with intent to harm are making weapons. I'm an anti-gun person, so I think the answer is having no regulations of 3d printers, but coming down hard on people who misuse 3d printers in making very dangerous things.
You can't make a handgun with a lathe, though.
different tools for different jobs.
They're to mass-produced firearms what cheap bathtub hooch is to Jim Beam.
Wikipedia mentions them along with much more sophisticated designs:
... if you invest a lot in the proper materials, tooling, and skill set.
Not to mention, the results you'd see from a mill are much safer, reliable, effective, etc.
Well, you'd need a ball end mill, but you can definitely convert an 80% handgun to a 100% handgun in your garage, and it is 100% legal to do so.
I can personally 3D print one, turn one on a mill (CNC or not), drill-out an 80% AR lower with a drill press, purchase one, be gifted one.
A 3D printer is a poor, poor device among most of those options (and mostlikely more expensive).
You'll also notice that none of the above manufacturing devices are outlawed or regulated in any form.Why do 3D printers need to be called out?
The firearm itself serves no commercial purpose.
That is what I meant by "personal use."
Both activities are protected by the Constitution of the United States of America.
Instead of looking at it as a licensing opportunity, they are doing the same as music industry did with every new recording medium that came about.
But by then it will be too late, and the true disruption will happen and change everything about manufacturing small goods at home.
New sensors coming down the pipeline will allow your smartphone camera to image objects down to micron resolutions from ~1 meter away.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2906232/camera-chip-could-tur...
Consider everyday things around you: smartphones, laptops, etc. None of these can be 3dprinted. Things you can 3d print are... smartphone cover, smartphone stand... things you can afford to be plastic in its entirety. I think you guys are overestimating what 3dprinters are capable of. There's a lot of tinkering required to create anything of even moderate complication. And it's almost always cheaper to just buy it if it's available at the store, because the printer costs and the consumables (pla, abs or whatever filament) costs, and time costs.
I don't know about the RIAA and mixtapes, but the MPAA tried to get VCRs banned. As Jack Valenti (MPAA) explained to a congressional panel, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
Just wait until Disney finds out that you can make Mickey Mouse shaped pieces of plastic on an Ultimaker.
I expect part of the reason is that the genie was already so far out of the bottle with cassette tape (and even reel-to-reel) that even they probably felt that it was pointless at that point to fight. However, a number of countries did impose a fee on blank media: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
Au contraire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music
Whereas with 3d printing, we're currently stuck with a kind of plastic that's optimized for compatibility with a 3d printer. It's unclear whether we'll ever be able to print from other, better plastics. And that's saying nothing of other materials like steel, glass, and ceramic, which are often necessary in useful consumer products.
I'm not sure I'd want an amateur's DIY 3d printer in a 40 story apartment building. These things are usually left running unattended overnight.
This isn't an example of tragedy of the commons at all.
"Tragedy of the commons" is a common name for a multiparty game that bears some relation to the two party Prisoner's Dilemma, wherein each party has a dominant strategy of defection, despite the fact that the resulting universal defection has a lower utility for all parties than universal cooperation would.
(In more economic than game-theory terms, this is a situation where cooperation has an internalized cost and an externalized benefit, and the reverse is true for defection.)
The situation where nobody owns exclusive rights to common grazing land and thus everyone overgrazes their sheep on it and wrecks it, resulting in harm for everyone, is the typical illustrative example from which the name is drawn, but the "Tragedy of the Commons" doesn't refer exclusively to the situation where waste results from the absence of exclusive rights.
People in proximity share resources even if they don't want to. Anonymous temporary interaction affects what people think they can get away with. If we're neighbors for a year, we can sort out our differences and come up with some rules. I promise not to have a loud party without telling you in advance, for example. If we're having a shorter term interaction, say over a weekend, I don't know your expectations, and frankly i don't care. so i'll just go ahead and be loud till you call the police.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/03/r...
Sorry about going off-topic.
Pulling up AirBNB listings for a random week a few months from now in SM also makes it look like most of the stuff being listed is small apartments/houses, not the swanky giant houses that would be well outside the market of the typical renter who's currently being squeezed. However, it's unclear from a cursory look how many units were permanent rentals versus "I travel on business a lot so I can have guests stay when I'm not here" type stuff which is much more reasonable.[1]
There's a fair bit of new residential construction going on, but it doesn't seem like enough yet, and I think a city—especially one that already has an easily-healthy number of tourists/visitors—has more responsibility to residents regarding rent than to visitors who are experiencing a likewise-overheated hotel market.
[1] although it's not a pleasant thought to think that for many people, things are tight enough that the money made from renting out their place (and the risks that go with it) when not home is a significant boon to their life.
A good friend lives in a nice building in SM, the owner wont fix one of the elevators because he is trying to push the seniors out that pay less then 50% of the current market value, so he can raise rent.
Of course, this always depends on your definition of "abusive" and your beliefs about the role of government (or other) regulation.
> people buy or rent residences in buildings expecting those buildings to be inhabited by long-term residents, then some part of the building gets converted to a hotel.
I'm just not sure why the duration of a resident's stay has relevance to neighbors' preferences or government regulations. What are the neighbors' actual concerns, and why can't those be handled directly? If it's excessive noise, then isn't that just as bad whether it's a long-term resident or a string of short-term residents? Same goes for any other concern I can think of, like maintaining the outward appearance of the property.
Long-term residents tend to have more of a need/interest in keeping the peace with their neighbors.
And speaking as a long-term resident who has no interest in local politics, like who leaves their trash bin by the edge of the road for a day after trash pickup, or whether grass is two inches too long, personally I actively avoid places with a homeowner's association.
Say this is happening to you: you're trying to sleep but the short-term renters next door are having a loud party, and although you already asked them to stop they ignored you. You lie awake fuming about it, but planning for how you would like to get the property owner fined isn't doing anything to stop the noise right now. Furthermore, even if the property owner is fined, then it's still possible that in 6 months time he'll rent the place out to some jerks who'll do the same thing. So, the property owner may get fined again, but the jerks don't care, because they're jerks - it's oin a stolen credit card, they're leaving the country, they're high on drugs and are incapable of realizing that this will result in bad credit, whatever. Do you want to go through the same process of filing a complain and eventually having the property owner fined every time this happens, or do you just want to get with your neighbors and say 'fuck it, no more short-term rentals in our building/street' at the next HOA or neighborhood meeting?
There are real objective difference between living in a building with short term vs long term tenants, and there is no easy way to force short term tenants to behave like long term tenants.
It's not complicated.
These aren't people patrolling every apartment in the building (some of these buildings are huge). They're tenants who are noticing the actual externalities of Airbnb tenants.
> It's not complicated.
Everything is complicated when the government gets involved and starts inventing regulations.
Also, you can reasonably assume that boilerplate leases for apartment buildings forbid directly these kinds of short-term rentals. Most boilerplate leases require individual approval by the landlord for any sublessors.
Why aren't they binding on the property owner, thus disincentivizing owners from renting out the property?
How do you punish someone who breaks the rules for a one night stay?
People with long term leases can be threatened with eviction for breaking the rules, which usually carries with it pretty big expenditures of time and money for moving, finding another apartment, etc. People who show up with all of their possessions in a suit case and stay for 1-2 nights don't have much to worry about.
The fines can go the same place they currently go. I don't know where that is, or if neighbors receive any of it, but that is a separate issue that also applies to long-term occupants puking on your door.
Short term occupants don't have the same incentive to be neighborly because they'll be gone soon. And the threat of eviction is basically useless against somebody who's planning to leave anyhow.
The related theoretical construct is Prisoner's Dilemma as compared with Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Or in IPD-land, it's where ω is low (short-term rentals) versus high (long-term rentals):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation#Fo...
The incentives of short term tenants are irrelevant, because all penalties would be applied to the property owner. The working out of polite understanding still works fine. If short term rentals are causing problem, neighbors should urge the property owner to either stop doing it, or figure out a way to get better tenants.
But not all humans have practice giving detailed instructions to temporary renters on how exactly to behave so as to be indistinguishable from the actual resident. The property owner's absence breaks the key feedback loop driving the polite understanding. And further, as I already explained, the temporary residents have much less incentive to follow whatever micromanagement has been ordered. I understand that you think it's the same in theory, but people are living not in your head but in actual apartments.
Of course, we are treating short-term rentals just like we are treating other home-based businesses: we are regulating them. Zoning laws are the general-case solution to this, and some cities are applying them here.
If you are talking about AirBnB tenants breaking rules set by the AirBnB host -- which is implicit in the rejected option of bad AirBnB reviews -- you file legal action for breach of contract.
If you are talking about other neighbors or the property owner who didn't consent to the AirBnB host, then, either they file nuisance complaints against the host and/or property owner or, if they are the property owner and the host is their tenant, they evict the host for violating their lease.
Close quarters living like we have in major cities is a very delicate dance that involves building a relationship with your neighbours. Introducing someone not committed to that can absolutely cause huge problems.
Because they could be fined or otherwise penalized for violating noise ordinances, which apply just as well to short-term and long-term residents.
Come on.
To choose a more permanent example - property damage. If the tourist damages the property, you make the property owner pay for repairs. OK. Maybe AirBnB can help the property owner track down the tourist to get the money for repairs, maybe not. But the point is that the damage still happened in the first place - a longer term tenant that faces their neighbours every day would be far less likely to have done the damage in the first place.
Well, that's a physical limitation. Arrow of time and whatnot. It also applies to all penalties. Of course, the point of the penalty is not simply to raise money or get revenge after a rule is broken. The purpose is to disincentivize breaking the rule in the first place.
When I moved into my current SF apartment, I verified with the management that short-term rentals were forbidden in the lease terms, and that they'd be willing to take action against tenants who violated that clause. I have no desire to live in a building occupied by people who have no incentive to live in harmony.
Then that applies equally to short-term and long-term occupants. Of course, the point of the rules and penalties is to disincentivize the behavior, not just to have recourse after the behavior occurs. Assuming there is a reliable process of enforcing the penalties, and the penalties are set appropriately, they should function to sufficiently disincentivize the behavior.
There are long-term residents who hold similar views about not particularly caring to know or interact with their neighbors, and that's not against the law either.
(Also, does "quiet-enjoyment-type laws" sound like dystopian doublespeak to anyone else, or is it just me?)
For the record, though, there's nothing wrong with the owner of an apartment building prohibiting the renters or owners of the apartments from subletting them via AirBnB or any other means. It's perfectly fine for them to say "don't rent out your place or we'll kick you out". So if they want to construct an apartment building that caters to long-term residents who object to living near short-term residents, they can. And if they want to rent out their apartments on a short-term basis, or let their tenants do so, to the possible detriment of their ability to attract long-term residents, they can do that too.
Yes, the nature of living in a society with humans is that you sometimes have to take situations on a case-by-case basis, and cannot have a single set of rules that will guide you to correct action in all circumstances.
(Also, does "quiet-enjoyment-type laws" sound like dystopian doublespeak to anyone else, or is it just me?)
"Quiet enjoyment" is the technical term. Between the intellectually dishonest rhetorical device of calling something I said "dystopian" and your absurd assertion that one could use a noise ordinance against short-term tenants, it's pretty clear that you're not arguing in good faith here.
That's a very old and ongoing argument, between having a concrete set of potentially inflexible laws (which are particularly dangerous when they restrict the human capacity for understanding and forgiveness), and having the arbitrary and changing moral sensibilities of humans ("I'll know it when I see it"). Both have their own set of bugs. I don't think it's reasonable to universally say you cannot have a single set of rules that works everywhere, nor is it reasonable to always defer to collective moral sensibility (which often gets the wrong answer as well).
I do, however, think it's reasonable with either approach to limit outrage and sensibilities to what actually affects people, rather than proxies for that, or worse yet things that neighbors have no business controlling.
> "Quiet enjoyment" is the technical term.
I never said it wasn't, and I didn't intend it as a rhetorical device; sorry if it came across as such. I meant it as a genuine question; it seems like an odd term, compared to for instance "noise ordinance" or similar.
Gotcha, I interpreted that as you saying I was using doublespeak, rather than that the term itself was doublespeak-ish. Apologies for the misinterpretation.
Which sounds like a great reason to not have a rule prohibiting short-term occupants in residential zones.
I consider it to be a lubricant in the engine of law. You can't run law to the letter, because defining the law is an AI-complete problem. The law tends to have more corner cases the more detailed you make it, and by executing it unconditionally, with maximum efficiency, you're going to harm a lot of innocent people. On the other hand, too much grease, and the engine won't run at all.
That's why I often remark about the importance of trust on a societal level, and my dislike towards the current trend of replacing trust with trustless systems. Trust is what keeps society together, and what allows it to work without humans having godlike introspection and cognitive powers.
The organic nature of case-by-case resolution of issues pretty much requires a long-term tenant that has some for of long-term relationship to the property and neighbors. Social pressure and personal responsibility come into play.
It's the difference (roughly) between a teacher-student and a parent-child relationship. In the former case, the (usual) lack of personal ties requires explicit rules. In the latter case, a lot of rules and conflict-resolution is more organic and case-by-case.
Faced with lack of efficient mechanisms, HOAs or city councils after hearing a few horror stories just throw the baby with the bathwater by outlawing all short-term stays, even if 99% of short-term stays are quiet decent non-confrontational tenants.
Sure there is: make the property owner ultimately responsible, if they're not already. Then watch how fast they actively seek out solutions that pass on more liability to the tenant.
> Faced with lack of efficient mechanisms, HOAs or city councils after hearing a few horror stories just throw the baby with the bathwater by outlawing all short-term stays, even if 99% of short-term stays are quiet decent non-confrontational tenants.
Yeah, most regulation seems to be reactionary in response to a small fraction of high-profile incidents. "How do we not make the news? How do we not get blamed?"
See also airport security.
Speaking from experience here, having been a member in an HOA with a smoking tenant nearby (nothing related to AirBnB, this was a long-term lease).
Air BnB could allow you to enter your address on the site if you wish to report noise or disturbance. Without informing you who the occupant is or forcing you to submit personal ID beyond your unit or house number; based on your proximity to any booked Air BnB properties the nearest user would get a ping via SMS and if they continue to make noise the lessor gets a ping via SMS.
The ping would be done without letting the reporter know any information other than a nearby user has been notified. The lessor SMS could include the phone number of the lessee so that they don't have to go hunting for the details and can act on the information quickly.
You'd need to set it up in such a way as to prevent someone spamming the system with random addresses or ceaselessly pinging the lessee/lessor.
Oooh, I'm so scared of fines from a local authority in a town I'm visiting for two days and never coming back to again after I return to my own country on the other side of the world.
Hard to swallow an outright ban though. Then again zoning regulations have a purpose.
What, next we're going to require Sally's lemonade stand comply with Sarbanes Oxley??? I can't stand it when people want to bend the rules just because things are not turning out how they had hoped or in their favor.
and frankly, all airbnb renters should be treated as a class(or a franchisee), in which case they are more like a corporation then a sole proprietor.
AirBnb is a pretty big corporation at this point, they should start playing by the rules.
Generally rules are designed for general case, yet in some (legally or not) specific cases we just close our eyes. Sally's lemonade stand is an exception - even though agencies could fine her to oblivion we just don't do that, because it is more beneficial for society. If she starts doing that on any scale larger than several hours per month, then it could very well be entirely different story.
In some parts of the world it is illegal to be drunk in public. Bars are public, buses are public. Even though you are braking the law just by going home on a bus/taxi after a night out, noone will arrest you if you are doing that quietly.
Hotel is by definition place that provides lodging on short term basis. And general rule is that hotels pay taxes. Again noone is going to extract taxes for allowing some friend of friend even if it involves direct or indirect (we call it barter) reimbursement.
AirBnB is not letting friend of friend stay for a night. It is a business. So, please, stop bending the rules yourself and try to claim that lodging regulations should not apply to AirBnB.
> What is it whit this damn country that people want to just start bending definitions and terms to fit their despotic little minds will.
I actually mostly agree with this. Laws are generally designed in a manner "mostly people will not do foo or neighbourhoods will sort it out themselves, therefore enforcing regulation on foo will be more expensive than revenue generated". And then come people like you, who try to bend definitions in a way that implicit social contract works in their favour.
Hotels may be corporations, but they can also be other business forms, including sole proprietorships or partnerships. Sole proprietorship hotels aren't particularly uncommon. You are the one bending definitions.
> What, next we're going to require Sally's lemonade stand comply with Sarbanes Oxley???
Most SOX provisions apply -- by their text -- to public companies; except things like rules prohibiting willful destruction of evidence related to a federal investigation. Obviously, by the text of the law, the former wouldn't apply to a typical lemonade stand, and, the latter wouldn't apply to anything a typical lemonade stand would do even to the extent that the rule would in principal apply to them.
From personal anecdotal experience, when traveling alone for short term, chain hotels are frequently cheaper than AirBnB - the host has to hit you up with cleaning fee per stay, while a large hotel has economies of scale working in its favor as far as cleaning, parking, utility bills and other stuff.
But isn't that what Home Owners' Associations and condo bylaws are for? If you don't want to risk this happening in your apartment, don't buy one that permits other residents to do this. Thank you Market.
In a situation where HOAs/bylaws do not allow renting on airBnb, there already exist proper legal channels for enforcing contracts, and these extra regulations are not needed.
Your comment made it seem like these extra regulations somehow ease these complaints (which you are implying are legitimate). Is my understanding correct?
I think this is always the main motivation of replacing one-size-fits all government policy with the ability of smaller components governments to decide on their own, for any political issue.
The mini-governments could enact policy that meets the demand of constituent groups within a small corner of the larger entity, vs being forced to follow a "majority" position mandated city-wide that does not match minority preferences.
Why is the answer not "get over it"? What's their legitimate complaint about having short-term residents nearby? If people are complaining about bad behavior by those residents, punish that.
You own the property; rent it as you wish.
Is one form of demand morally/ethically superior to another?
EDIT: Downvotes? I thought we were all being nice?
Hawaii, for example, is pretty poor. If we halted the renting of property, then presumably available long term housing availability would increase... yada yada yada, housing prices become more affordable.
At the same time, tourism would crater and the locals would have less income.... yada yada yada, housing is relatively expensive again (until some unknown economy evolves).
If you think the idea of letting some unknown economy evolve to make up the deficit from tourism is morally/ethically acceptable, then is it not morally/ethically acceptable for me to say "people should move to where they can afford housing?"
Besides, shouldn't outsiders be allowed to enjoy the natural beauty of a place? They need to sleep somewhere when they visit.
My only concerns are 1) the diminishment of property rights and 2) the idea that we can artificially force equilibrium without negative feedback. I'm not in favor of gentrification, but I do believe property values should reflect demand.
I don't think the idea is black & white, nor is this some libertarian position.
By the way, I completely agree with you. I actually live in Los Angeles county, and there NEEDS to be regulations regarding housing. This city is so crowded and congested.
For the record, I'm not against Airbnb, but city are zoned and regulated for a good reason. Airbnb needs to work it out with cities on how to allow their business to operate.
It's a strong hint to the community to cut back on negativity.
Emphasis on this: "Avoid gratuitous negativity" - the gratuitous part.
"expecting" is little slippery - do they have actual contracts spelling that out?
While not a literal contract, certainly a layer of legally encoded social contracts with a long history.
Airbnb shows 667 out of 918 rentals in Santa Monica are for the entire place, i.e. no host present. The vast majority of rentals there won't have an owner present.
Besides, couch surfers typically stay in the same house as the current resident, and he/she has to maintain good relations with the neighbours.
The apartment adjacent to mine recently got turned into a short-term rental place. Most of the time there's no problem, but every couple of weeks an extremely loud group of tourists comes over and treats it like a party house, making tons of noise, blasting soccer games on the TV with associated loud cheering, etc.
Chesterton's fence comes to mind:
This is people who think they are smart assuming that anything they don't understand is dumb. So I suppose the common thread is ego and false pride leading one to underestimate others.
In New York, taxis are part of the public transportation network. Taxi drivers go through extensive training to know where pretty much any address in the five boroughs is, and the fastest routes to get there. In order to incentivize taxi drivers to go through this training, and to incentivize owners to buy and maintain vehicles, the city limits the number of vehicles on the road at a given time to incentivize drivers and owners to go into the taxi business. According to the 2014 NYC Taxicab Fact Book, there are 13,437 medallions in circulation -- assuming that 70% of them are on the road at any one time, and taking the figure that 94% of pick-ups occur in Manhattan or at JFK or LaGuardia, that implies that there are over 200 taxis operating per square mile in Manhattan ... that's A LOT !!! It's not uncommon to grant a limited monopoly to a public utility to ensure consistent service.
Why lease medallions? Utilization. It would be really hard (and unsafe, and unpleasant) for an owner-operator to be in the car for more than 80-90 hours per week, whereas a leased car can be in operation for almost the entire 168 hours.
All that said, driver knowledge is much less important than it once was, with GPS (though taking routing advice from a mapping service in Manhattan could be a bad idea). Safety is probably less of a concern now too, since Uber tracks its drivers' every move. And, it's clear that medallion owners are reaping a lot of profit at the expense of drivers willing to work for sub-minimum wages. So, it's probably time to renegotiate the contract.
Yes, maybe we could use little less regulation. My personal issue with Uber is not the concept of less-regulated taxis. It's that it's managed by a bunch of sociopathic assholes, who openly try to exploit drivers and the community for profit, painting themselves as white knights while using every underhand tactic they can get away with to sabotage competition.
But, to be honest, a crappy driver is a crappy driver. Taxi drivers just seem to be worse in my personal experience.
In a usual "city-approved" taxis you get crazy behaviour, parking in dangerous places, speeding, etc. Try complaining and you'll learn that drivers only rent the communication equipment - the company is not responsible for what they do.
In Uber, I got a dangerous driver only once (where "dangerous" meant tailgating, but nothing really bad). He got 3 stars and a comment. I got 2 emails following up on the situation and Uber's assurance that the driver has been talked to.
So yes, I'd much rather share the road with an Uber/Lyft driver, because I know the feedback actually works in that case. There's another case of what insurance they have of course... but that's another topic about actually using the service.
Yeah, the feedback system seems to be a cool idea. In case of Uber though, keep in mind that the driver will get fired if their average rating drops to ~4.6 stars. That 3 you left there? Probably had a really big impact on him.
The debate often sounds like it must be 100% of either.
The owner of my apartment building has set up an illegal air bnb in an empty apartment(I'm going to guess this is a rent controlled or stabilized apartment "under renovations"). Usually it isn't an issue, besides for frequently seeing groups of strangers come in and out of the building. Last week though, a lovely fellow decided that, after drinking what must be approximately 2 liters of wine, he was going to pick my door to puke outside of(5 floors below his air bnb) at 2AM. He then started crashing into the wall separating my bedroom and the hallway a number of times. Then he went down into the lobby, puked some more right in front of the door, then peed in the stairwell. I think it's pretty straight forward to see why tenants don't want air bnb rentals in their residences.
The externalitati.
https://www.iWouldDo.it lets you do just that, in an efficient way.
But they do know what negative externalities are, at least.
Taxes are only bad if a government extracts them at gunpoint. If a non-governmental force extracts them at... well, the gun is still there, I suppose, but hidden behind a layer of "If you don't pay, we sue, and if you don't pay after the lawsuit, the guns come out"... they're morally A-OK.
It's one of those things that might sometimes work okay on paper, but the trouble is that you can't actually try it out in practice due to the difficulty of assembling into a coherent community, a critical mass of people with the correct sort of deranged insanity to want to try it in the first place.
...and? If this amounts to dirty looks in the shared hallway or similar, it's pointless.
In fact, it's worse than pointless: The caring, socially-responsible people who don't want to have assholes will be hurt worst, and will be motivated to leave the business after a few bad apples, whereas the people who honestly don't give two shits until the police show up will carry on regardless, and take on more assholes as long as their checks don't bounce.
Social approbation only works well in tight-knit societies where someone not liking you can have ripple effects through everything you do. "The Scarlet Letter" is an example, both of how it works and how it is honestly a bad way to run a society.
You need laws to put teeth in the "don't do that" parts of the social contract, and you need to enforce those laws. Lawsuits can work, but they're messy and expensive and generally so draining for both sides that winning one is something of an academic point. That's one reason we as a society attempt to use lawsuits as a method of last resort, and create regulations and regulatory bodies which can enforce punishments without sending an injured party through the massive financial and personal ruin of bringing suit against someone.
Solution? Instead of allowing building managers/owners to allow/disallow short term leases by their lessees as determined by the externality-including market value of such a policy, let's just ban it altogether. The principle of the least-elegant solution.
NYC might be an exception as it seems like subletting is a big thing there.
This "thing", is exactly why so many municipalities have explicit laws on the books regulating and taxing hotels.
So just write in a contract "This residence can not be used as a hotel". Done, problem solved. Why on earth do we need government's involved again?
> There are also places where vibrant short-term rental markets may exacerbate tight housing markets.
AirBNB in a small influencer in the housing market, i would be pretty disgusted if my elected officials were pursuing airbnb in an effort to normalize the housing market. To me it would be like the capitan on the titanic telling everyone to start hauling water to save the ship.
> I've had nothing but good Airbnb experiences, in SFBA, NYC, and London.
I have never used it personally but to me it seems everyone who has a complaint isn't using it and is being affected by externalities which they can only fight using the government.
Any other actions disgruntled people would otherwise take would be illegal by nature due to property rights.
This is already part of any rental contract. People just choose to ignore it.
My parents rented an AirBnb (in Santa Monica incidentally) and they where instructed to tell the neighbors that they are friends of the owner.
That's a very standard clause in most leases, and in some agreements that mutually agree on restrictions of use of owner-occupied housing. City zoning regulations also apply to many of these situations. Right now there are many, many, many (but not all) Airbnb rooms that violate multiple legal agreements or applicable laws that apply to the person offering the rooms on Airbnb. It remains to be seen what form of enforcement will work best to make sure those lease agreements or other contracts are honored, and the zoning regulations obeyed.
EDIT: Several comments here mention the legal history of how regulations developed in the first place. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote, "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience."
Actually, I've never seen a lease that allows subletting as an AirBnB. It's always against the rental agreement. AirBnB are basically just facilitating people violating their signed contracts, and we mostly look the other way because everyone hates landlords anyway.
That is absolutely false in 2015 compared to the past, and since your premise is completely false its very sad that this is top rated comment....a sad commentary on the present bad state of HN.
I have used Uber -- and I love the concept of free people making side deals with property/time they have to earn a little extra cash. Been going on forever. Likely will continue. With or without some kind of community oversight.
Which brings me to my point: must we always be swinging one way or another on a pendulum? For the vast majority of transactions, it seems like we've solved this for both sides of the transaction, buyer and seller. The remaining piece is negative externalities.
Part of the problem here is that most anything you do in life is going to have some sort of negative externalities, the only thing that changes is the magnitude -- much the same concept as anything you consume is a poison, the only thing that changes is the dosage.
It just seems that the scales will always be tipped against guys like Airbnb or Uber. If a million people rent an Airbnb apartment and one person gets killed or raped? Headlines will say "Airbnb leads to killing and rape on the east side!" If the same numbers happen in a hotel? No headlines.
So even as a libertarian I'm in favor of some reasonable kind of accommodation between banning and complete laizzez faire. The problem is that I've yet to see anyone define "reasonable" in a way that doesn't sound like a knee-jerk reaction.
And let's face it, these kinds of transactions will continue no matter how many city councils vote them down. The problem needs a public airing and 100 possible solutions tried. I'm sure one will work. Perhaps some sort of insurance with all risk factors made public? Neighbor rents out his apartment as an Airbnb and partygoers destroy your yard? File a claim. You get your yard back, Airbnb has somebody who handles these problems, and the neighbor's insurance rates go up. We see this a lot with driving: the ticket isn't much of a concern for folks, but the rising insurance rates hurt for a long time afterwards.
Is the solution to have governments ban AirBnB all over the world, or do you think people might be able to just agree on house rules that forbid disturbing other residents at night?
It's amazing how blind people are to common sense.
Santa Monica has, by some indices, the most expensive hotel rooms in the state. This has driven a huge demand for short rentals near the beach. I have no access to numbers but my personal anecdata is interesting for the number of people I know involved in grey-market short term rentals and the number of people unable to find available apartments, let alone available apartments anywhere near the rents 2-3 years ago pre-AirBnB.
I did protracted apartment searches in the same area of Santa Monica in November 2012 and 2014 and the difference in price and availability was immense. At the same time I had one friend who was making a full time job out of "hosting" for AirBnB-ed condos and apartments either bought or rented in the past year by deep-pocketed "investors" in Malibu and Santa Monica with the sole purpose of short term rentals. I know another young lady who rents three apartments and lives in whichever one is earning the least on AirBnb. She nets about $1000 a month doing this and manages to take 3 single residential units off the market in the process.
There's a lot of people doing variations on this business model and it is absolutely pushing out the longer term residents. I've seen many of my beach friends (mostly involved in entertainment, good living wages but not anything like tech wages) progressively pushed further and further afield as random housing events (unit selling, massive renovation, roommate disputes) mean they cannot afford to relocate anywhere near the place that they are leaving. That is also despite their earnings increasing through normal career progression.
My parents came to visit last Christmas and they used AirBnB to rent a back house for a week a few blocks from my apartment. It was great. Do I think that shouldn't be allowed? No, but considering their host was running a year-round business out of their home I don't think it is unreasonable to treat them like a business.
However, I do think that this is very limited to areas of already high demand and shouldn't be a blanket policy across a whole region.
Not saying I agree with this but it's something that should be considered.
That doesn't make any sense. $333 from an apartment per month in Santa Monica.
You've been lied to.
That said, I agree that AirBnB guests should pay hotel tax. Otherwise they have an unfair advantage.
I have a lot of family out of state, and when they visit, it's great that they can rent an entire house on AirBNB/VRBO. We did this for my wedding (in Santa Monica) and it worked out fantastic.
When I travel, my house is basically empty. I don't see why I can't rent it out to another family.
I agree AirBNB should charge the hotel tax & all that, but the approach of outright banning whole unit rentals seems wrong.
On the other hand, I just got back from traveling to Europe, where all of the bookings we made were AirBnB. My wife and I were traveling with our 4 month old baby, and there weren't any hotels that could really meet our needs as well as the apartments that we rented. The trip would have been much harder without AirBnB.
I think Santa Monica went too far here -- they should have left some wiggle room for folks who want to rent out their place on weekends and such, like the folks we rented from in Vienna.
Also, when I stay in a real hotel, there have been many times when folks were noisy and disrespectful.
What happens when your neighbor decides to rent their place via Air BNB, And folks are noisy and disrespectful.. Who do you complain to?? The home owner?? Do you think he's going to kick the people out? They are a revenue stream, and you are not.
Well.. you may say. I'll call the cops. Ok. Your neighbor gets a warning.. then eventually a 300 dollar fine.. Your neighbor can afford a few fines a month from a few random loud nights as long as the air bnb money keeps coming in. In fact your neighbor will need to make sure their place is full more nights if you start calling the cops.
That's an ugly workaround. I want a solution.
Party Hotels and Shut the Fuck Up Hotels, where walls are not paper thin.
AirBnB can throw a few checkboxes there to manage this, and figure out if a place is in a residental condominum with a lot of non bnb neighbors, or it's in the middle of downtown next to all the bars.
The problems that almost everyone seems to talk about are the (rare) bad actors -- the loud, disrespectful, messy, troublesome guests who ruin the residential experience for others.
So I wonder if the solution is in the platform itself -- it's not AirBNB that people don't like, it's bad AirBNB'ers. And maybe if AirBNB puts some real effort into cracking down / banning / preventing bad AirBNB'ers, a lot of the bigger issues & externalities go away...?
I think this will need to be settled in court, but it is absolutely disgusting to try an apply a hotel tax to someone who is renting out a single place. Sure, classify a company that owns and rents out several places as a hotel, because they are at that point, but don't fucking tell me what I can do with my house on my land. It's disgusting.
You can move to the backwoods of Idaho and rent anything you want. If you want to live amongst people, then act like it.
(I have a theory that a large part of why the Valley wants to put so much of civil society to the torch is because there isn't much of one there, now that very large corporate interests have a stranglehold, but I cannot prove it.)
Also, it seems reasonable that hotels and Airbnb comppete on a level playing field in terms of tax and regulation.
All that said, I think they need to find solutions that accomodate all parties: Hotels, short-term rentals, and the housing market for renters.
It really is that simple. Don't deprive other people of choice because you don't want to choose.
The whole hotel-thing is 100's of years of working that out in law. Now we start over? Just because AirBnB is cool, and we want it to succeed? I don't think this is going to end well.
That doesn't address safety and taxation issues.
The 'free market' doesn't address safety well; that's why we have regulations. For example, it's not sufficient to say, 'if you are concerned about the safety of this restaurant's food, don't eat there'. No consumer has enough information to make that judgment reliably, and many consumers have additional challenges (consider the elderly, travelers from other countries who lack English or culture literacy, etc.). Also, the remedy (the Airbnb host gets bad reviews) is too late if someone is injured or loses their property; the system has failed at that point.
We also have bonding, insurance and civil liability, which serve the same purpose in a more flexible way.
Those solutions are useful, but only sometimes work and when they do they only provide money after the fact. In many cases, such as injury, death, or crippling fraud (e.g., an elderly retiree loses their home and savings), that's not sufficient.
Hosts that don't treat neighbors respectfully or guests safely will quickly see bonds confiscated and premiums raised until they are out of the business.
Likewise, insurers often provide discounts for good behavior like taking safety courses, a history without incidents, installing anti theft devices, etc.
And requiring insurance also gives neighbors a recourse (payouts from the policy) if the block is set on for or something (though there are already laws and regulations about that sort of thing).
No, legal liability rules give the neighbors recourse. What insurance and/accountability bond requirements do is reduce the risk that insolvency will prevent a liability judgment from being satisfied (though one which exceeds the required coverage may still not be fully satisfied if the liable party is insolvent.)
No solution is perfect. Planes still crash; should we do away with the FAA?
I see that you care about this but I don't understand why, since it is clear that you are neither host nor guest in this scenario, and the people who are hosts and guests are not, by and large, particularly worried about the problems you are hyping up.
Insurance isn't responsible in the first instance. Insurance becomes responsible if either (1) the person who is responsible has an insurance contract that provides insurance for that liability, or (2) the person injured by the damage has insurance for the loss independent of liability (obviously, this insurer will then go after the person responsible for the harms to recover its costs, if possible.)
It's called foresight. The problems aren't merely "hypothetical"; they're inevitibilities.
I agree. The regulations were written for a different market; new regulations are needed that provide a level playing field for competition, which means hotels aren't at a 14% price disadvantage and short-term rentals can cost-effectively comply.
It's going to take some innovation.
(I'm assuming the hotel regulations are too onerous for short-term rentals, but I don't know much about them.)
Yes, I see that too, but they and the public do have valid concerns.
> The safety concerns are maybes and could-bes.
All safety issues are maybes and could-bes, if you are doing it right. 'Why do we pay for this anti-malware system? We haven't had a virus in years!'
Sure. So why does that automatically need to be resolved in favor of increasing regulations on AirBnB rather than decreasing them on hotels?
? Did someone say that it did?
One issue is how to fund government services if revenue from hotels/short-term rentals are decreased.
That doesn't necessarily make them sensible, just less controversial because non-residents don't get to vote.
Come to think of it, why shouldn't Airbnb renters pay the same tax as hotel customers? It doesn't seem hard to implement and shouldn't cause a shortage of tourists (there were plenty staying at hotels/motels before Airbnb became an option).
I just hope we can come to a point where perhaps there is a way to allow airbnb to exist, while making it illegal to rent out property purely to rent it. This could allow it to be more like the bed and breakfast logging that it tends to feel like. I'm thinking restrictions to aid this are artificial limits to how many people/how many days per year you can rent out rooms in your home, which airbnb would be required to record.
I still have no idea how things like sanitation will be handled. Right now an airbnb host has very little obligation be sanitary like a hotel, except that it might make their reviews worse.
Without Airbnb, the only difference is that you'd have more shared disgusting hotel rooms.
And cheaper real estate, as fewer properties are bought up to rent out on a short term basis.
All these problems revolve around rich folks investing in real estate to make a buck - that that is even a thing, is insane.
Housing is for people to live in, not for you to buy, renovate, sell. Or buy, rent. Or buy, tear down, build new, sell/rent.
It's all part of a greater problem - when folks can become multi-millionaires by gaming the system instead of contributing to it and do so with impunity, we have what we have.
Housing prices are inflated by people who buy/sell for profit, coupled with retarded regulations that favor that over people trying to live their lives.
Capitalism yay in other words :)
It is not even remotely an easy fix.
The primary housing problem here is an influx of people from more-expensive cities (LA, SF, Seattle, NYC) moving in and snapping up homes to actually live in. Meanwhile the city is making it difficult for developers to add any real housing density within the Urban Growth Boundary (and instead are thinking about expanding the UGB. Ugh.).
So there's no real "problem" aside from Portland is a desirable city to live in and people are flocking to here.
Why is this bad?
Why? You're making the notion of landlords illegal? What purpose does this solve, what benefit is there? Why should I not be allowed to purchase a house and then place a tenant in it?
In many places the rental community is larger than the homeowner community, these houses would simply sit on the market, rather than have someone buy it and put a renter in it. How on earth can you justify making home rentals illegal?
Not taking any side in this debate, but that makes some economic sense to me.
1. Pricing in major markets is no longer competitive with hotels. Since most Airbnb properties lack anything close to the amenities offered by hotels, it's just not economically compelling anymore.
2. The last several times I've stayed, I've felt the effects of the new scrutiny. I've been to clandestine meetings with hosts, purportedly on premises, only later to find out that the listed address is false. "Enter through the alley door," and, "Say you're my cousin, if anyone asks" are typically elements of the conversations. That's not what I pay for.
Now, my first choice is hotels, and it's only the rare case that I opt for Airbnb.
It makes houses within walking distance 2-4x as expensive, houses in the target area about 1.5-3x as expensive.
While I agree that some rules need to be adjusted for Airbnb type of rentals, I really can't think of a reason why anyone would want to straight up ban it.
> The rules legalize “home-sharing” – in which the occupant rents a couch, spare bedroom or backyard unit – but require hosts to obtain a business license and pay Santa Monica’s 14% hotel tax.
Is this going to be the new loophole?
What this might enable is "sharing" a huge property, say an apartment complex, essentially opening up a new class of low- or no-amenity hotels.
It's hard to blame cities when this (and other) kind of abuse is going on.
Just shows what I know.
He is probably not untitled to housing assistance if he has another apartment. He should make as much money as possible and stop that scheme because if he get caught doing that he may go to prison for fraud.
it's very common in santa monica.
My uninformed gut instinct without doing any research is that the hotel market is probably over regulated and the prices are artificially high or there are simply not enough available rooms (lobby mini-monopolies or whatever you want to call it) and that's the reason why people flock to lower priced/other available options.
I guess a study on residential to short term rent demand would be helpful.
I traveled in Europe a bit last year and was amazed at the affordable options for travelers. Between nicer hostels and hotels that offered small single rooms with a communal bathroom, I was able to get a clean place to sleep for $25-70/night. I haven't seen that in the US outside of AirBnB.
Most US hotels give you a huge room with a huge bed for a high price, and they're either located right in the middle of downtown or all the way on the edge of the city so you'd need to rent a car.
When I'm traveling, I much prefer to ditch the bullshit standard amenities like room service, a pool, continental breakfast, etc. and get a simple room in a part of town where people actually live. Even more so if I'm visiting friends.
Not sure what in our regulations makes this unpopular, but it's the real problem.
Airbnb is doing good and evil in the world. They deserve to be forced to reduce the evil to reasonable levels. Maybe apartment buildings shouldn't be generally permitted, for example.
Build more homes. Build a lot of them. It's the only way to keep our cities affordable.
Airbnb is a p2p market. When regulation attacks p2p markets, they don't die, they adapt.
Airbnb itself might die like Napster, but someone else will find a way to take their place. Maybe the company that replaces it will be based outside US borders, safe from any subpoena for rental records.
That only works when activity is online-only and difficult to trace. If you're renting your apartment out it's pretty easy to detect.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Airbnb-to-collect-hotel-t...
http://nypost.com/2014/04/14/airbnb-aims-to-start-taxing-ren...
> When regulation attacks p2p markets, they don't die, they adapt.
I think we've seen that iteration with craigslist -> apts/housing -> short-term/sub-lease, and in many popular destinations the space was prone to scams and shady dealers.
However, government has a right to close loopholes in existing regulations (e.g. hotel tax) that are opened by the changes in the environment (e.g. availability of new technology such as airbnb). It's unfortunate that they chose to do this by an outright ban. It's especially unfortunate for homeowners who can't as easily leave the community if they disagree with the councils decision.
As I read through the comments in this and previous posts about airbnb, I noticed that a majority of issues cited by angry neighbors are related to renting of units in apartment buildings, as opposed to single family homes. I'm not suggesting that there are more abuses of the service in apartment buildings (though here may well be for a number of reasons), merely that the abuses are more troublesome in these cases because of the resources shared by neighbors (staircases, walls, etc.). It seems to me that the owners or managers of apartment buildings, and the homeowners associations of condos, should be able to enact reasonable limits to short-term rentals of their own properties in their rental agreements. To me this is a much more desirable way to attack the problem, rather than a hasty ban, as it may give people more choice in the matter. I say may because it's probably equally likely that apartment buildings would blindly start banning it as well. Nonetheless if I am someone who cares about using the service, I would try to find apartment that allows it.
Sure, Airbnb has grown way past that, but in my mind there is a very big difference between running a business on Airbnb and subletting while you are away to help pay for a trip. A provision with a cap of how many nights a year one could sublet without being considered a hotel would be a lot more sensible.
While I'm sure it would be difficult to enforce, services like Airbnb and HomeAway would probably cooperate in disclosing booked stays per address. It wouldn't be that hard to link the data together and spot violators. I'm sure residents would help as well.
Taxing is sensible though.
I can say with first hand knowledge, that HomeAway at least engages with cities politically to build cases for short-term rental advocacy from economic development to enabling and increasing the attractiveness of tourism in cities where they operate. They setup sessions with city and community leaders and work on actionable regulation and legislation with cities to introduce fair laws for rentals.
I'm no shill for HomeAway, but I do have a close personal friend who works on the Government Affairs team and have witnessed their efforts with my own eyes. At least in their case, HomeAway works with cities, instead of against them.
As I am searching for a good apartment in LA, this makes me bit upset.
The owners of these properties have clearly determined that the actual value they can realize on the properties they own is maximized by Airbnb as opposed to a more traditional rental. They're certainly happy, as are -presumably- their short-term renters.
Perhaps you could take a different approach and explain to me why you feel the interests of a single renter should supersede those of a property owner and 10's or even hundreds of shorter-term renters.
This graph (p. 3) shows that zoning changes in LA since 1960 are many orders of magnitude more important than 7,000 short-term rentals: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HnkwzmO56vU/VQHurofJUUI/AAAAAAAABE...
As an aside, if anyone is looking to locate a startup in Los Angeles, do your future employees a favor and avoid Santa Monica. Downtown LA and Culver City are far more sensible options and allow for a reasonable commute and/or nearby housing at lower prices than Santa Monica.
You lost on that bet. Rather than than trying to decide if you are willing to take that risk next time or to pay a little extra for certainty with a traditional hotel, you want all the option removed to everyone.
This dilemma isn't at unique to hotels, the "cheap with risk versus expensive, reliable name brand" applies to nearly everything. Do you get leaves cleared by some guy off of Craigslist, or spend more for "real" landscape contractor? Do you get your car brakes redone by Joe the Mechanic, or do you pay extra to go to Midas?
That IS regulation.
The more I hear about uber and airbnb and those websites who try to replace existing services that doesn't use internet, the more it looks like some libertarian business model.
I'm not against it, but once insurances and the law adapt to it, I wonder if it will really be attractive anymore.
I understand that services like Airbnb and Uber are unregulated, but instead of working with these companies to draft legislation that addresses the concerns, you're seeing draconian bills just outright banning them. It doesn't matter what the people want, when there is money involved, you can bet the side who doesn't necessarily make the most noise, but has the most money will win.
Whether or not politicians, corporations and residents afraid of change like it or not, the sharing economy is here to stay and will always find a way around any opposition. Look at Uber, opposed not only in multiple states in the USA, but also in other states in other countries.
The other side is safety and security. I lived in a building next to a hostel for a year and a half. It was well maintained and the guests were regulated. Never had any complaints about the guests. On the other hand, my next door neighbor rented out his condo AirBnB style for a few months. It was obnoxious, the owner was remote and the guests were never regulated. The common areas were trashed, the guests were loud, and none of it mattered because they only had to deal with the consequences for a short term.
The fact of the matter is: there needs to be a distinction in regulation between short term and long term housing. As much as I am a fan of startups that make life convenient, the unregulated nature of AirBnB makes life difficult for anyone else not in the exchange. That's what hotels are for, to abstract that difficulty so that it only involves those within the boundaries of the exchange: the guests, the owners, and the service.
Why is that? On previous stories the issue has been bedroom rentals, or listing rented apartments (i.e. short-term subleasing). But this seems to target whole-unit short-term rentals, even if they're owned. That seems to be right in the VRBO wheelhouse. For example: 158 listings:
http://www.vrbo.com/vacation-rentals/usa/california/los-ange...
(Disclaimer, such as it is: former TripAdvisor employee, incidentally touched their Vacation Rentals stuff a few years ago, don't really care about it and I use HomeAway.)
We have a lot more issues with those two students and their friends than with all of the Airbnb short term renters. It's anecdotical but I don't believe that short term renters are more likely to cause issues.
Airbnb's concept is also not new. Before Airbnb people rented apartments on Homelidays. It's interesting that thanks to the critical mass of Airbnb and their marketing people become more aware of it.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/...
It's not fair these companies skirt well known and age old laws to create an unfair advantage(and wealth) for themselves, by simply ignoring those laws. Play by the same rules as your competitors do and see how well you fair. Disruption by evading legalities isn't really all that impressive... the cartels and mobsters have done it for decades.
I should say, I've used AirBnB many times and always had a great experience, but this isn't a clear cut "good" vs "evil" issue.
Banning AirBnB is at best going to lower demand a little bit, it' not going to fix the much larger underlying problem.
There are legitimate arguments for limiting someone's ability to rent out their living space to short term tenants that have nothing to do with the hotel lobby. As someone who lives in an apartment building with fairly thin walls, I can sympathize with some one not wanting a parade of short term tenants as their neighbor.
AirBNB should seriously hire a full time team of economists to publish studies defending their company. The efficiency gains are tremendous.