What Airbnb Did To New York City (citylab.com) 340
An anonymous reader shares a report: There are two kinds of horror stories about Airbnb. When the home-sharing platform first appeared, the initial cautionary tales tended to emphasize extreme guest (and occasionally host) misbehavior. But as the now decade-old service matured and the number of rental properties proliferated dramatically, a second genre emerged, one that focused on what the service was doing to the larger community: Airbnb was raising rents and taking housing off the rental market. It was supercharging gentrification while discriminating against guests and hosts of color. And as commercial operators took over, it was transforming from a way to help homeowners occasionally rent out an extra room into a purveyor of creepy, makeshift hotels.
Several studies have looked into these claims; some focused on just one issue at a time, or measured Airbnb-linked trends across wide swaths of the country. But a recent report by David Wachsmuth, a professor of Urban Planning at McGill University, zeroes in on New York City in an effort to answer the question of exactly what home sharing is doing to the city. [...] Their conclusion: Most of those rumors are true. Wachsmuth found reason to believe that Airbnb has indeed raised rents, removed housing from the rental market, and fueled gentrification -- at least in New York City. "
Several studies have looked into these claims; some focused on just one issue at a time, or measured Airbnb-linked trends across wide swaths of the country. But a recent report by David Wachsmuth, a professor of Urban Planning at McGill University, zeroes in on New York City in an effort to answer the question of exactly what home sharing is doing to the city. [...] Their conclusion: Most of those rumors are true. Wachsmuth found reason to believe that Airbnb has indeed raised rents, removed housing from the rental market, and fueled gentrification -- at least in New York City. "
Fix it with some careful regulation (Score:4, Interesting)
transforming from a way to help homeowners occasionally rent out an extra room into a purveyor of creepy, makeshift hotels.
How about this: create a law that Limits the number of housing units AND number of days rented out per year which any 1 person or business is allowed to make available for short-term rent without a Hotel permit for each property --- including through any number of business partners or related entities.
So if you're a homeowner and have 1 or 2 properties which you rent out less than 80% of the year total across your properties, then FINE, allow that ---- You're allowed to have up to a total of ONE rental unit for short/temp housing accommodation (Count that includes Any and all sub-rentals across all properties that occur for a time less than 20 days) rented out 80% of the days each year, OR two housing accommodations rented out average 40% of the days per 1 year per unit, OR three housing accommodations rented out no more than average 26.67% of the days per 1 year per unit.
(In other words: the more units that are rented out to different tenants, the fewer days you may be renting them out per year.)
Thus if you have 3 properties in the same city Or have it rented out your properties for a combined total among your properties of more than 290 rental-days, then you're in a "Short-term accommodation business" and must have planning approval and permit your properties as Hotel space --- which if approved by Zoning includes regular inspections, and an additional Tax on each rental.
Reasonable regulation should allow reasonable rental revenue by an ordinary homeowner BUT prevent wealthy real-estate investors or corporations from exploiting Uber to make large-scale transformations of apartments to hotel rooms, etc.
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People love to invent rules for other people. The more complicated the better. If it's not working, make it more complicated, until it starts working.
Re:Fix it with some careful regulation (Score:4, Funny)
Simple rules for simple people.
Re:Fix it with some careful regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
People love to invent rules for other people. The more complicated the better.
Fine. Ban all short-term leasing or sub-leasing of Apartments, Homes, or portions of an Apartment or Home on all Real-Estate, except for Commercial Units licensed as hotels.
Do you feel that is superior?
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Re: Fix it with some careful regulation (Score:4)
This is what San franciscodid. It's removing even more units from the rental market.
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Yes, lets give all the power of renting property to corporations. I can't tell if you are a fascist or a communist. I suppose at the extreme end there isn't much difference.
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Re:Fix it with some careful regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want rents to be lower, allow people to build more housing. Rent control doesn't fix anything.
Re:Fix it with some careful regulation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fix it with some careful regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
Milton Friedman on price controls
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Nobel prize winner Milton Friedman said "We economists don't know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can't sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly you'll have a tomato shortage. It's the same with oil or gas."
Re:Fix it with some careful regulation (Score:5, Informative)
You also get plenty of cases where people who don't need rent control housing occupy it (and hold on to it) because it's cheaper. You also see even worse examples like the Congressman who was renting four separate rent-controlled apartments at the same time [nytimes.com].
There are various schools of economics and they often squabble over policies and correct courses of action for many things, but rent control is not one of them. [nytimes.com]
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>Rent control doesn't solve the problem because it actively discourages new development
I agree. I did state that I don't think it's a good idea. That's because it's not a good idea.
Re:Fix it with some careful regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what you do when you see a problem. You curb it. Hell, people "invented rules" about privatizing the commons, and we got an agricultural revolution. People also "invented rules" about having to serve black people the same as white people in a restaurant. Rules can be forces for good.
Re:Fix it with some careful regulation (Score:4, Interesting)
That's what you do when you see a problem. You curb it. Hell, people "invented rules" about privatizing the commons, and we got an agricultural revolution. People also "invented rules" about having to serve black people the same as white people in a restaurant. Rules can be forces for good.
I've spent a significant part of my career making rules. Good, clear, unambiguous, effective and enforceable rules are usually not trivial to create and deserve at lot of thought and review. This is slashdot, People fantasize about new rules for breakfast.
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This is true
First, talking about rules is how you do a lot of thought and review. Secondly, most of what happens on Slashdot is describing the new rules at a very high level. Clarify, disambiguation, and enforceablity details (e.g. closing loopholes) comes later.
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Here, here.
I also enjoy use of vague terms that are generally understood by everyone, but whose exact meaning in the context is left undefined. Then, if you disagree with the argument, you can immediately be deemed an outcast.
Like, "reasonable" or "common-sense legislation."
To the GP, what is "reasonable legislation" or "reasonable rent revenue?"
What constitutes a "wealthy real-estate investors or corporations?"
Who gets to determine it?
Re: Fix it with some careful regulation (Score:4, Insightful)
True. And that is because "affordable housing" isn't affordable to the poor.
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Wouldn't it be much simpler (and closer to the original spirit of AirBnB) to just say you need a hotel permit for short-term rentals at any non-owner-occupied property?
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Neat. I'm gonna go start five numbered corporations, of which I'm the sole shareholder, and buy five properties to put on the short-term rental market. Thanks for your legislation.
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How about this: create a law that Limits the number of housing units AND number of days rented out per year which any 1 person or business is allowed to make available for short-term rent without a Hotel permit for each property --- including through any number of business partners or related entities.
You clearly underestimate how easy it is to obscure the ownership of a company. I would welcome the changes necessary to make your proposed law effective though.
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Why is this a bad thing? It is called capitalism. Should we build a moat around NYC and keep out all of the people willing to pay more for housing in order to protect cheap rents for people already inside the moat?
The ironic thing is that people who want keep rich people out of NYC to keep rents low also tend to be in favour of open borders migration.
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Why is this a bad thing? It is called capitalism.
Wow! You asked a question and answered it in the very next sentence!
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Let supply and demand function without interference in order to establish a market level price.
In order to let supply and demand function, supply has to function. And that's really a problem in big cities like New York with lots of "quality of life" regulations that make it difficult to create new housing. San Francisco faces this problem, Washington, DC faces this problem. So perhaps it's no surprise that these three cities are the most expensive cities in the United States to live in?
You could, of course,
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So using
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No, this is a new and quite skewed form of capitalism ... because it's one or two companies pooling vast numbers of private renters, for which there is no analog.
It's not like one entity bough a large amount of properties and then rented them, this is basically collecting a bunch of people and saying "hey, if you all rent your properties and give us a cut, we'll all be rich". The owners effectively provide the capital to what is effectively some tech people
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The argument that's used in my city is that people have a right to continue to live in the neighborhood they've been living in, even if they can no longer afford it.
Some of our Alderman will even intervene [streetsblog.org] and try to prevent a property owner from selling his property to a developer if his current tenants complain they are being priced out of the neighborhood.
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One needs not look beyond third world countries that implement capitalism without state structures capable of regulating it to find why unregulated capitalism is more economically destructive than even marxist-leninist amalgam of socialism and communism.
Re:Fix it with some careful regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
Great, then the owners of those restaurants will have to pay their workers more!
No area is going to lose all of their restaurants, etc. There is always demand for services like that. Prices will adjust and employee pay will increase. Restaurant workers in NYC already get paid triple what a restaurant worker in Alabama gets.
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Great, then the owners of those restaurants will have to pay their workers more!
. . . or switch to robots. Robots, unlike a New York or Paris waiter, can be programmed to act polite.
Restaurant workers in NYC already get paid triple what a restaurant worker in Alabama gets.
. . . your average New Yorker will snarkily respond with, "The food in the City tastes three times better than food in Alabama!"
Chitterlings with grits, indeed.
This just in! Trump to announce 25% tariffs on imported H1-Bs! Film at eleven . . .
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Build more housing. Housing is fungible. Developers are happy to build housing for the filthy rich and the rich and the non-poor, if cities chose to be helpful about it. That makes the so-so housing the poor need more affordable, as recent college grads earning 6 figures are not forced to bid for the nicest of those same units.
I am not sure about NYC, but SF could easily build a lot more housing than it has. It is doing vastly more than in the past, but it is still much much less than what could be done
Re:Fix it with some careful regulation (Score:4, Interesting)
The root of SF's problems is decades of government interference in the housing market. Adam Smith's invisible hand would sort everything out if the government would stop holding it back. Market forces work at all levels, if there are not enough restaurants to satisfy demand prices will rise and workers will get paid more. Everything falls apart when people in the government think they are smarter than the invisible hand and enact laws supporting their social agendas. There is an obvious correlation in America with city governments that interfere with the housing market and problems in those same cities with housing the poor. In general the more the government interferes to worse it gets for the majority of the poor, select segments of the poor benefit from government interference, but those not selected get hurt a lot more.
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Well, I guess if a normal, non-overregulated system worked...those living with high rents would get tired of not having place to go to, since there wouldn't be any low pay workers..and start moving out.
Then, rents wo
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Wow, someone who stayed awake during economics class!
Gee, live in a city. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
. . . that restricts the supply of new housing, and has strong rent-control in place, and people are SURPRISED that property owners will find a way to to generate revenue, and then optimize that revenue ??
Phoenix has all these problems (Score:3)
It's got nothing to do with Rent Control or supply. The cities where this is a problem (San Francisco, Phoenix, Dallas, Seattle etc) are already out of land. They're being forced to build out further and further from where jobs are, resulting in 90+ minute commutes one way if you want affordable housing. The
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Don't piss off the mailman living there as when you control the mail you control information
Landlords can't increase rent (Score:3)
Likewise, buyers can't decrease prices. They can wait for a lower price, but they won't be able to buy the item they want unless sellers begin to panic at lack of sales and lower their asking price.
This is the greatest check and balance in economics. The person wanting higher prices can't raise them. The person wanting lower prices can't lower the
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housing is for living in, not for investment returns
When you are living in someone elses housing, they expect a return on their investment. Why else would they provide housing for you to live in?
It can be both. You're creating an artificial dichotomy.
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Been there many times, lived in Jersey for years. But there's only so much land available, and the stock of housing is not increasing meaningfully. To build new requires astronomical real estate costs. Economics and regulation combine to restrict supply. . .
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Rent control is not necessarily the problem, I agree with you there, but a symptom of a much larger problem. Cities restrict housing development for local political reasons -- mostly anxious middle class families who go NIMBY to protect their house value. Then rent control becomes "necessary". Most cities could easily build much more housing. Maybe that is not true about Manhattan but it is certainly true about Greater NYC as a whole.
It doesn't sound right... (Score:2)
You cannot gentrify globally. Not enough gentry, I'd say.
Re:It doesn't sound right... (Score:5, Insightful)
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If the gentry has enough cash to justify owning a place in every major city they may want to spend time in (or have for bragging rights), then you certainly can gentrify globally. And that seems to be the case.
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Yes you can. In fact that's the whole point of a market economy - to make money (increase productivity per capita) by improving the efficiency by which resources (including housing and labor) are assigned and used. We used to live in stone caves with dirt floors. Now most of us live in constructed homes where we feel compelled to buy vacuum cleaners to keep the floors clean. That's gentrification.
Economics is not a zero sum game. You can find
Regulations were made for a reason (Score:5, Insightful)
This crap should just be shut down. Just like this crap was shut down when I was a kid and we called it sub-letting.
Studies (Score:4, Interesting)
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Airbnb does inject a bit of riffraff, if only temporarily. This should slow the gentrification.
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"This report was commissioned by the Hotel Trades Council, AFL-CIO, and is cosponsored by a number of New York City community, housing and tenant advocacy organizations, including:
New York Communities For Change,
Housing Conservation Coordinators,
Goddard Riverside Law Project,
St. Nick’s Alliance,
Cooper Square
But, but, but... (Score:2)
Disruption!
Sharing economy!
Have your cake and eat it too!
But clearly, HAD they only used an agile blockchain app...
I remember when (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I remember when (Score:5, Insightful)
... it was "white flight" when middle-class people abandoned crime-infested, poor, dirty urban areas, and it was deemed bad.
Leaving by choice. Still bad because it deprived those neighborhoods of critically needed taxes and other benefits.
the crime and dirt and poverty are leaving, it's "gentrification" and it's deemed bad.
Being forced out. Not by choice. See the difference? Gentrification also usually means those pushed out have to move even further away from their jobs, sometimes making those jobs no longer tenable but mainly just increasing transportation cost (time and money) to those jobs. Costs the poor already have a hard time bearing as is.
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It's racist when whites want to live in clean, safe neighborhoods.
Re:I remember when (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that the whole thing is described by what white people are doing only goes to *highlight* that nobody gives a fuck unless it's affecting white people.
The fact that the terms are only used when white people do it only goes to highlight that it is being blamed on white people. It's not affecting just white people, it affects everyone, and everyone does it.
So we need different hotel regulation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me see if I understand this:
ABnB works because ad-hoc rooms are cheaper than standard hotel rooms.
So people rush into the ABnB market, removing conventional apartments from the pool of long-term housing, driving up rents as the pool of apartments shrinks.
So if hotels are losing customers, why aren't they cutting hotel rates to be more competitive with ABnB? Hell, why aren't they slashing staff completely and converting some properties to ABnB only -- or becoming apartments?
Do we need to reduce regulation on hotels so they can better compete with ABnB?
Or is it some other thing, like hotels had successfully restricted competition and there was a practical shortage of hotels which drove prices too high?
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So if hotels are losing customers, why aren't they cutting hotel rates to be more competitive with ABnB?
If hotels could get away with ignoring the same laws, fees, and regulations that AirBnB abusers are ignoring, they would.
Hell, why aren't they slashing staff completely and converting some properties to ABnB only -- or becoming apartments?
Zoning. In most major cities, hotels cannot legally repurpose their buildings to anything other than short-term rental because that would put them in violation of the local zoning ordinances.
Re:So we need different hotel regulation? (Score:5, Informative)
Let me see if I understand this:
ABnB works because ad-hoc rooms are cheaper than standard hotel rooms.
So people rush into the ABnB market, removing conventional apartments from the pool of long-term housing, driving up rents as the pool of apartments shrinks.
So if hotels are losing customers, why aren't they cutting hotel rates to be more competitive with ABnB? Hell, why aren't they slashing staff completely and converting some properties to ABnB only -- or becoming apartments?
Do we need to reduce regulation on hotels so they can better compete with ABnB?
Or is it some other thing, like hotels had successfully restricted competition and there was a practical shortage of hotels which drove prices too high?
It's the Uber model. Hotels have to live up to all sorts of codes (fire codes, health codes, building codes, etc) and are inspected regularly. Airbnb homes, as private dwellings, are held to less stringent standards. Besides the cost reduction from this, the private homes don't have to pay for housekeeping, maintenance, front desk, and other staff, further reducing their costs. Hotels also have to collect and pay taxes that private dwellings may or may not collect and pay (there may or may not be local laws stating that they have to collect taxes, and they may or may not adhere to those laws if they do exist).
Re:So we need different hotel regulation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hotels have regulations to follow which Airbnb washes it's hands. Airbnb doesn't care about negative reviews because you can't post them. When things go wrong Airbnb doesn't care, doesn't allow you to post about it on the site, and doesn't refund the payments. It has to hit the media in order for Airbnb to react. When it does hit the media the wash their hands of it by claiming to delist the owner only to find them back again a few months later.
Regulations should apply to all or to none. If Airbnb is a listing service then travelers shouldn't have to pay commission. If travelers pay commission then Airbnb is the travelers agent and should be responsible for the state of the destination as a travel agent is in some jurisdictions.
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Hotels have regulations to follow which Airbnb washes it's hands. Airbnb doesn't care about negative reviews because you can't post them. When things go wrong Airbnb doesn't care, doesn't allow you to post about it on the site, and doesn't refund the payments. It has to hit the media in order for Airbnb to react. When it does hit the media the wash their hands of it by claiming to delist the owner only to find them back
That's BS. Clearly you never hosted with Airbnb. Hosts get severely punished for bad reviews over time and many hosts have to go overboard in order to avoid bad reviews. 95% of people are reasonable but that last 5% will bitch no matter what. They seem to expect a hotel room for half the cost of a hotel room and if its not up to high-end hotel standards, they bitch endlessly. To counteract those folks Airbnb weights many reviews before taking action and usually the hosts have to cut their rates after j
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"Airbnb was raising rents and taking housing off the rental market."
But yeah keep thinking it's about hotels. Ass-hole.
That is not the main reason (Score:5, Informative)
ABnB works because ad-hoc rooms are cheaper than standard hotel rooms.
The reason it works is for lots of reasons, that is the last of them. I have often paid more for an AirBnB unit than I would have for the nearest hotel.
Often you can find AirBnB units closer to where you want to be than most hotels, or in a more desirable location.
AirBNB units will generally have kitchens and washing machines, both of which may be very hard to find at any price just looking at hotels.
AirBNB units being housing, are often more secure than hotels and I don't have to worry about an entire staff with keycards being able to access my room, or being targeted by thieves because they know tourists stay at hotels.
Do we need to reduce regulation on hotels so they can better compete with ABnB?
That would help but I would still prefer an AirBnB unit if I could get one, over a hotel. Unfortunately because of restrictive regulation, most AirBnB units I've tried getting in large cities (mainly SF and NYC) have always been canceled so I can't take that risk anymore. In smaller markets they have been great though and really been much nicer than hotels.
and there was a practical shortage of hotels which drove prices too high?
One last note on this, it does not have to be a shortage of rooms or hotels - the last year or two the Apple Developer conference (WWDC) was in San Fransisco, the hotels decided to collude on higher prices - by that I mean 2-4x above normal rates for that time of year, because they knew they had a captive market for people who wanted to be around Moscone. I'm not 100% sure but it could be a reason Apple finally moved the conference to San Jose.
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the hotels decided to collude on higher prices - by that I mean 2-4x above normal rates for that time of year,
It doesn't take collusion for all the hotels in an area to individually recognize periods of high demand and respond with higher rates. And it isn't just for the WWDC.
wrong target (Score:5, Interesting)
Get mad at your fellow city residents who only vote in and approve of city ordinances that let housing stagnate, reward people who've just been here a long time and nothing else, foster complacency and lack of quality in taxi regulation, or believe that voters should have a say in everything and vote out people who happen to implement one rule they don't like.
Get mad at policymakers who are too distracted with getting re-elected and resisting PAC money to actually focus on governing and making reasonable policies, leaving our basic infrastructure to crumble while they go after higher profile symbolic issues.
Be mad at yourself, and this system we thought was the best in the world, but actually needs maintenance and dedication to make it work properly.
Companies are just the messengers.
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The problem with Uber and Airbnb is that it's not clear how our politicians can collect payoffs. Is it like through an app, or an envelope full of cash? These modern times are confusing to our old befuddled ruling class.
Fake News (Score:2)
I've tried to use AirBnB twice in NYC - in both cases the reservation was canceled, in one case the day before I was supposed to leave (!), because the landlords found out the apartment owners were listing units on AirBnB... I don't see how it can really be changing anything if it's already fairly illegal to list your place.
Do people seriously not think that the prices of housing there would not have gone up ANYWAY? To blame AirBnB for this is madness. Air BnB if anything is helping people in places like
Avoid regulation, build more hotels (Score:2)
Thinking like economists here, this suggests that NYC's problem here is not AirBNB but a lack of affordable hotel options.
Solution: incentivize the building of more hotels that are affordable.
We do not need another few hundred lines of law to join the millions already in force, usually misinterpreted, which cause higher costs for everyone.
Meanwhil AirBnB pretends Social Justice Champion (Score:2, Interesting)
I used AirBnB a few times about 4 years ago. But I got turned off by them when they pushed their updated EULA that required me to promise that I would not be a dick to people. The word salad they used was a great deal more hipster and included phrases meant to make them look like they were the perfect little SJW's. Bottom line is that I don't need some company preaching to me that I have to behave a certain way or I can't use their product. Fine, I'll do both. I'll continue to be a nice person and I won't u
Airbnb is a scam (Score:5, Interesting)
Airbnb takes commission on both sides and when there is a major problem to deal with they disappear.
If you are lucky enough to book with a decent host you may get what you pay for. Unfortunately when you book with a scammer you are on your own. There is absolutely no help provided from Airbnb. This is based on my personal experience traveling for 30 years so your mileage may vary.
No business is perfect. This is not about perfection. This is bout what happens when things go wrong. You are thousands of miles away and may have limited funds available or in a completely different culture where communication is not easy.
Normally with a regular permitted establishment you can verify various independent reviews. On Airbnb only positive reviews are posted. You only find this out when things go wrong. Airbnb does not post negative reviews even though you paid for the full stay.
Permitted establishments normally are inspected by local authorities which try to ensure a minimum standards. This does not mean that something won't go wrong but there is a bare minimum such as fire regulations. Information posting. Emergency exits. With Airbnb you are no even guaranteed that there will be a place to stay. Again Airbnb takes very little responsibility as to the accessibility or even to the legality of the rental. They haven't even visited the location to ensure that it is fit for the purpose advertised.
So Airbnb takes commission on both sides of the deal and provides none of the advantages afforded from the regulated and established lodging hosts and when things go wrong you are left abandoned and screwed. The horror stories haven't disappeared they are just pushed under the rug. If it's so bad that the local authorities are left to deal with it, you may hear about it. You can't post negative reviews on Airbnb.
Airbnb is not a sharing service since you are not required to live with current occupants and takes advantage of the increased costs of regulations which it does not abide with and wipes it's hands from all and any responsibility when things go terribly wrong. Airbnb pretends to be a listing service but implicates itself in every aspect of the business which milks every possible penny and extracts itself from any form of responsibility. I don't know why anyone needed a report to point this out if an individual acted this way people would say that they were running a scam.
Just enforce zoning laws (Score:2)
In my town short term rental housing is prohibited. AirBnB hosts try to get past that by telling their guests to lie. The town has been aggressive about enforcing the laws.
To some it may sound draconian but no one wants a steady stream of strangers in the house next door.
What about empty housing? (Score:2)
One factor that the study did not look at was the number of vacant housing units. These are units which are purchased as second homes or as refuge houses by rich foreigners who want a place they can use occasionally when needed.
Most major cities have a lot of housing which sits vacant most of the year. London and Vancouver have recently been in the news for this problem. Rich people buy housing in case they might want to use it someday and it sits vacant most of the time. This removes housing from the city.
Study funded by Hotel Council (Score:2)
"Wachsmuth’s research was funded in part by some avowed foes of home sharing—the New York City Hotel Trades Council—and was cosponsored by housing and tenant advocacy organizations."
happening in San Francisco (Score:2)
There is a constant war under the surface between AirBnB and the City of San Francisco. It is absolutely taking rentals off the market and increasing marginal rent. It is also being taken over by commercial operators.
The City is trying to regulate but AirBnB spends more than 10X on advertising (at least on the two ordinances we voted on).
I'm really of two minds here. I've used AirBnB on vacation and enjoyed it, but I do understand the damage it is doing to the City. It is kind of like Uber in that way. It i
Piece Work (Score:2)
We've seen this struggle a century or so back.
People will, eventually, unionize to establish livable wages
Airbnb dick riding (Score:2)
'Gig' Economy vs Full-Time business (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing I've always 'disliked' about 'room-sharing' and 'ride-sharing' (and I guess to some extent E-bay and Youtube) is that people make it a full-time job instead of a 'community' thing.
I don't remember the taxi company complaining about the 'ride-sharing' board at the University. If you were going home for the weekend, why not take along a passenger that was going the same way. In general that's the basic idea of Uber and Lyft. I have a car, you're going my way, hop in.
There was also the 'couch-surfing' phenomenon of a while back. The differences between that and what AirBnB is now are what I see as the problem. It's one thing to allow someone to spend the night in your empty guest room because nobody else is using it. It's a completely different thing to buy a room/ apartment/ house dedicated to having people pay to stay there.
The 'problem' with Uber and AirBnB is that people have transformed the 'occasionality' of it into a permanent full-time job. It's not a sporadic and almost random thing they offer, it's 'the only thing.'
But why is that a problem? (Score:3)
The 'problem' with Uber and AirBnB is that people have transformed the 'occasionality' of it into a permanent full-time job.>
But only if you want to - I have stayed at a number of AirBnB places where it was not a full time job, they just rented out a room for a bit more money...
Meanwhile, what is so bad about people who bought places just to rent out? It takes a huge amount of capital to build a hotel, or even run a "real" BnB. But now someone who wants to just dip their toe into running a place to st
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If you were going home for the weekend, why not take along a passenger that was going the same way. In general that's the basic idea of Uber and Lyft. I have a car, you're going my way, hop in.
Uber and Lyft are not "you're going my way" services, they are on-demand taxis. There has been noise about Uber becoming the ride providers for medical organizations -- a lift to the doctor's office. The system is being designed so the rider doesn't even need the Uber app, the ride is arranged by the office. If you think Uber is a "you're going my way" service, then you have to realize that you're riding with someone who has to visit the doctor multiple times a day. If they're that sick, should they be driv
WHy shoot the messenger? (Score:2)
Rent is the AirBnB of ownership (Score:3)
I say this every time, but it's worth repeating: all this bad stuff AirBnB does to the rental market, the existence of a rental market at all does to the housing market overall. Owners prefer AirBnB over long term rental which makes long term rental unaffordable. Owners also prefer rental of any kind over sale which makes homeownership unaffordable. Imagine a world where all you can find is ridiculously overpriced temporary housing at AirBnB rates? We live in a world like that already, where all you can find is ridiculously overpriced housing at rental rates.
Ban rent, and watch housing become more affordable.
(NB that interest is merely rent on money, so that's got to go too or else it's just the banks instead of the landlords who end up owning the world. Rent and interest, collectively "usury", the fee for a use, are the central failing of capitalism, the mechanism by which wealth concentrates exponentially, undermining the promise of a free market with parasitism by the capital-owners).
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The major difference is that the rental market has significantly less vacancy (wasted capacity) and the people who live in rentals are members of the community instead of visitors.
1) Banks already own the world. 2) Being able to borrow money is
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Ban rent, and watch housing become more affordable.
There are reasons to rent other than being unable to afford to purchase. Short term commitment, less exposure to fluctuations in home prices, and a much lower barrier to entry. All of these things are ideal if you're feeling out an area before settling down, or if you're at a point in your life where you're chasing new jobs every few years looking for a raise.
And if you want to ban interest, how do you propose you find a lender to supply the mortgage on your new home? Do you live with your parents until you
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sell to an institution who will do so for them.
I think that's what almost every buyer would have to do, since they couldn't afford the risk that the buyer defaults and stops making the payments on which they're now relying to pay for their housing.
That 'institution' couldn't be expected to provide this service for free, though. They would have to charge some sort of fee to be cover the administrative overhead, and to cover the losses they might incur on the small percentage of properties where the owner defaults and the value of the property has decrea
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Whoops - meant to reply to your second point as well
Buying and selling a property isn't a frictionless transaction. I'm a big fan of the NYT Rent vs Buy calculator [nytimes.com]. If you're going to stay in a place for 5 years or fewer, you can pay quite a lot in rent before it starts making sense to buy, even with optimistic estimates of home value growth.
Incompatible with reality (Score:2)
There are just some things that shouldn't be done. This sort of "service", while I'm sure it sounded like a great idea in the beginning, just as the articles says, it's turned out to be a horror. The internet isn't compatible with reality in all circumstances.
Don't fight it, embrace it - remove entry barriers (Score:2)
There is so much wrong with this issue. People complain that thier property values are soaring - and it's true higher taxes force poorer people out, but it's also true if they own even a part of thier home it will bring them a significant to huge profit. People complain that thier neighborhood is ailing and dilapidated bu
Hotel Taxes (Score:2)
I've seen the city and county use hotels as a wallet for taxes, every few years they keep raising taxes on hotels, 10 bux here, 5 bux there, repeat on and on.
And you wonder why a hotel is costing 150 a night for a dive. The sticker shock of renting a room and finding a city tax on top is disgusting.
AirBNB is the result of the overtaxing tourists as easy money.
Other examples: all history (Score:2)
Rowdy Roddy Piper took off the glasses and said, "That's strange. I take these off and I see sweet, caring politicians talking about protecting the people from dishonesty and danger. Put ’em back on... formaldehyde-face taking kickbacks from hotels and rich owners to knock Air BnB out."
What's the problem? (Score:2)
on the other hand... (Score:5, Interesting)
Valid for the entire sharing economy (Score:3)
Get a popular service, find a way to go around regulations, taxation and obstables put in place to stop overgrowth and abuses, find a way to skip welfare and minimum wage/conditions for workers to make a living with it, and sell it as a new paradigm.
There is no easy route or shortcut for this people. If you are paying less to stay somewhere, paying less for transportation, paying less for services in general, someone is paying more. And there will be consequences for that.
It's no coincidence that some workers on those sectors are living in conditions reminiscent to the Industrial Revolution era. Crazy hours not enough to even make a living.
And yes, I fully agree that regulations are far from perfect, that they often don't do what they are supposed to, and that they frequently compose of abuse themselves for business owners... but skipping them away or going around them will eventually have predicted consequences.
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We have rent control in the bay area too. San Jose still operates rent control on buildings built and occupied before 1979. And it takes some pretty elaborate measure for the rent control to be removed from the property, so I was one of the lucky people to move to the area in the 90's and benefit from that program.
Rent control, as implemented in San Jose, doesn't make the rent lower than every place else. It is more like a dampener to price fluctuations. You aren't out of your apartment in a year because th
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if I own a house I should be able to rent it out to anyone I choose.
You can in accordance with the local zoning laws. Typically that means no short-term rentals in a residential area. If you want to run a hotel, open a hotel where it is permitted, and run it in accordance with the local regulations governing the operation of a hotel.