The more I look at AirBnb, it reality it seems like a conspiracy to enable illegal activity (illegal listings, not collecting taxes). I wonder if in the future, a US Attorney or State Attorney General will attempt to bring criminal charges against the principals of the company. The threat of real jail time would do wonders to get their attention.
It's the same kind of regulations arbitrage that powered Uber (& Lyft, though to a lesser extent because at first they tried to make it look like riders/drivers knew each other). The difference here is that the only people who really complained about Uber/Lyft was the taxi industry, which mostly was viewed in a neutral light at best. AirBnb seems to have managed to cause disruption both to the hotel industry as well as people who live near listed properties, both of whom are seen in a more sympathetic light than taxis.
We have a lot of laws built up over the years because of safety concerns with hotels. Hotels have had scary things go on and legislatures have had to deal with the public safety problems quite often. The main problem with taxis is they are often an artificially scarce resource because of government rationing (e.g. medallions).
Also, messing around near people's homes tends to illicit a primal response.
It seems they want to enjoy travelling to other cities while blocking other travellers from coming to their city. Same with Waze traffic being routed on previously less known streets.
No, they just want travelers to sleep in places designated for travelers. This wouldn't even be an issue if it wasn't a real problem - a well-behaved group of transients is near-unnoticeable in a neighbourhood and by definition doesn't disturb anybody.
Another problem is that the proliferation of this practice seems to be disturbing the already tense situation on the housing market. Meeting an odd couple from the other side of the world is fun. Realizing that you can't find affordable flat to buy in a city because a significant portion of it is scooped up for renting and short-term leases - that drives up societal discontent.
Being for AirBnB not driving illegal behaviour != being in favour of zoning. Those two concerns are orthogonal. Empathizing with other people's legitimate issues doesn't imply being pro-zoning either.
It seemed like you were in favor of corralling travelers into designated zones and took an issue with residential areas being used for short term leases.
It sounds like they're pushing back because if there's a list of taxes paid (with specific addresses), then municipalities may harass owners, even if they're complying with local laws[1].
There's also the meta level issue that holding site operators responsible for the actions of their users is a very slippery slope. Anything that chips away at the communications decency act could have terrible effects for the internet as we know it[2]. For example, as it currently stands if I were to libelously claim that Paul Graham has a meth lab in his basement[3], I could be charged with a crime, but not HN. If the CDA were weakened, blog operators could be liable for comments posted on them. I don't think anyone reasonable wants that.
I think SF's law did a good job balancing things - hosts need to be licensed by the city (the app lists their license #) and can IIRC only lease 90 days out of the year. I looked at a recent receipt for a stay, and they even collected taxes.
Yeah, let's force citizens to bow to their government masters and pay their "fair" share, while Big Hotel lobbies away, competes unfairly and gets huge tax benefits.
Yeah, let's force community residents to deal with noise and parties and the increased cost of housing brought by AirBnb while allowing AirBnb and their billionaire investors to make a lot of money while pushing off all the externalities on the communities.
I mean let’s be real: you described dozens of industries.
From sports teams to manufacturing, our industries are fueled by externalizing the costs (cleanup, infrastructure, social services, etc).
Locals need to collectively take back their agency in order for things to change. Stop manning their front desks, occupying their cubicles, leaving neighbors and families behind for long commutes on crumbling roads in tin cans.
What? How in the hell did we get to the point where building a service that lets people rent their living space to short term guests is "a conspiracy to enable illegal activity"?
If airbnb hosts aren't paying taxes properly, then the hosts are committing a crime, not airbnb. Cities may want airbnb to collect taxes on behalf of hosts, because it makes enforcement much easier. That's a reasonable thing to want. However I don't see what conceivable jurisdiction Palm Beach county has over Airbnb that would enable it to coerce airbnb to collect said taxes. Accordingly, I can't imagine why anyone in airbnb's position wouldn't sue, in order to avoid the formation of precedent that allows every municipality in the country to impose whatever requirements they want on airbnb.
You may think airbnb is a net negative for many communities, and you're entitled to your opinion, but that's not evidence that crimes have been committed.
As for why US Attorneys and State AGs aren't bringing criminal charges, probably because they are actual lawyers who understand that you would have to provide evidence that a law has been broken.
Edit, it was shut down because my local area has a rule against bed and breakfasts that aren't located on a main road.
Our Airbnb got shut down after a year by the local government. It wasn't a safety thing, it was a competition thing. Our Red Roof Inn charges 60 a night, but we charged 80 a night.
Our reviews could make me tear up. People saying they had the best stay of their life.
Asking them what they wanted for breakfast, hot tub temp, Nerf guns, and chatting. People loved it.
There are a lot of cities where apartments have become AirBnBs, caused great disruption to their neighbours, and driven up rents. This has resulted in people demanding that Something Be Done.
Are people using airbnbs as apartments? I don't see how it drives rent up. There's a finite amount of tourism/visitors so they should only be competing with hotels. What am I missing here?
Edit: downvoted for asking a question you disagree with? What is this reddit?
AirBnB hosts in many cities are buying up apartments (or landlords who used to rent long-term are switching units to short-term rentals), reducing the supply and thus driving up prices for the remaining units.
And if Hotels close down due to AirBNBs there's more space for appartments where there once were hotels. If the AirBNBs take less space than the hotel they replace it's a win for appartments. If they cause more tourism it's a loss. What the overall effect is is far from clear, I haven't seen any thorough analysis on that.
It's naive to only look at one factor and ignore the others, yet that's often how far this debate goes.
Where tourism is, economic activity thrives.
Local population grows.
=> there's a shortage of housing, especially in city center, where people want to live, and want to go.
=> there's a competition to own the land/housing between: people who want to live there, and people who want to rent it to tourists (lower investment than if you lived there and high+frequent demand).
=> there's also a shortage of hotels AND a temporary shortage of convenience (precisely where AirBnB thrives with VC money, in order to break and change the market - that's very intentional).
Isn't it obvious? People buy appartements in nice city centers only to rent them on AirBnb, causing all kinds of disruptions (local shops turn into tourist shops, etc.) and reducing the number of flats for locals. This is exactly what is happening in my neighborhood (France). It's terrible.
Guests may have loved it, but did the neighbors love it? Did the people looking for long-term rental housing who found it difficult to find long-term rentals love it? Did the people looking to get into home-ownership only to find that residential real-estate prices were increasing now that residential properties were semi-commercial properties love it?
What kind of argument is that though ? You should go to SF or NY and tell them it's just a supply problem, they probably haven't thought of it before.
Do you know the cost of destroying + rebuilding bigger buildings in a city center ? Much higher than closing a few semi legal "airbnb hotels". And that's if you can even build in the city at all.
That's exactly it. They have thought about it but the people who complain about AirBnBs are generally the benifitors of artificially reduced supply. Nobody is renting AirBnBs in Bensonhurst, they're in the WV or Chelsea. World's tiniest violin.
As much as it pains me to use a reductionist metaphor, I'm going to. Suppose my community has a finite amount of resource X available to us that we need to live and and we only require 75% of that resource. A company comes along and offers individuals a whole pile a money to sell of their claims to the resource, so much so that the company now controls 90% of that resource. The company begins boxing up that resource and shipping it off to people who will pay more money for that resource. My community now has meet their need another way, and probably in a more expensive way.
Regardless of how the resource should have been managed, and what the authorities in my community should have done to ensure we had the necessary access to our resource I think I can still point a finger at the company say "If that company didn't exist they wouldn't control our resource."
Obviously the metaphor is riddled with unconsidered complexities but I use it as a way of raising the question of at least an ounce of culpability of the company.
If it were not the case that the resource was being shipped off and sold for more that would mean I could stay in an AirBnB for the same price as a pay for rent, which I can't.
That's pretty absurd -- you're paying a discount for being a long-term tenant with a legally binding contract (and no cleaning/daily upkeep). Would you expect buying a home versus AirBnBing one to cost the same over 10+ years?
The end product that consumes the resource may be different but the availability of the resource my community needs to sustain life is compromised when it's arbitraged.
There are many cities in Europe where AirBnB and similar services are a plague for locals. I'm sure it's great for tourists though.
First we couldn't buy and we were forced to rent because wealthy folks would buy the real estate in bulk to rent it and/or use it as a speculative investment, driving prices up and making it unafordable. Now they don't even bother to rent it long-term to locals, they're better off putting it on AirBnB for tourists at a much higher rate. Try renting a flat long-term in Lisbon these days and tell me how it goes.
I obviously don't know your situation and maybe there was some overreach in your case but in some cities government meddling is absolutely necessary lest the place turns into a Disneyland resort for wealthy tourists.
Sounds like an easy solution. Raze all the vacant hotels that surely have been put under by the lack of demand as it shifts to Airbnb and make those apartments you can buy instead.
Now you get it. Airbnb is providing a service there's a huge demand and need for, not some evil provider that's forcing something down people's throats.
You're being obtuse. It's simply a case of a tragedy of the commons, the commons in this case being available real-estate. Paris is already one of the densest cities in the world, if you add more tourist lodgings you have to push somebody else out.
Besides you make it sound like enabling more tourism is unambiguously a good thing. It's true that it has positive side-effects (mostly on the economy) but it also leads to degradation, overcrowding and, as we were discussing, an explosion of the cost of life for the locals. I often hear tourists complaining that they don't get an "authentic" experience abroad, how could they when the place they visit have been deserted by the locals?
Just look at the havoc being reigned on some neighborhoods in Miami Beach during spring break. Specifically the low-scale, residential flamingo park neighborhood of south beach.
> Airbnb and Miami Beach Are at War. Travelers Are Caught in the Crossfire.
> The Florida city, like others around the country, is trying to control the home sharing market. Renters often find out their weekend home is illegal when they get a knock on the door.
First, Miami Beach is a heavily tourist influenced market similar to where I live near Jackson Hole, WY. If you live or invest in a market like that you are doing so with full knowledge of the pros and cons of such an environment. The differences in your environment there don't start and stop with short term rentals.
Second, whatever the problem is (I assume rowdy, drunken college students?), it's a human behavior problem, not a problem with a service that enables value exchange like Airbnb.
I would say that one should look at the hovoc that reigns in neighborhoods with draconian zoning that prevents sufficient supply from coming online to meet demand for housing and hotels. We have the technologies necessary to build housing demanded by humans; we just make deploying that tech illegal.
I moved there 9 years ago and have spent the last 8 years living on Ocean Drive in South Beach. When I first moved there the neighborhood was full of high-class tourists, a lot of Europeans. The beach was not extremely crowded, you had nice restaurants and upscale shops and the vibes you were getting were similar to what you would see in the Mediterranean (Spain / south France).
Within 3 years of Airbnb expanding, the character of the neighborhood changed completely. By 2014, a lot of restaurants and shops had closed down, to be replaced by 5 dollar souvenir shops (surf style!), kebab and pizza places. Noise levels increased dramatically. Crime too. This kept getting worse and today I would describe the place as little more than a crime-ridden hood. The ghetto criminal element is numerous and ever present. The classy European tourists have left, never to return. Ocean Drive is barricaded by tons of police every weekend (soon to be every night). The beach itself is full of trash and drunken, noisy, unruly people. Spring Break (and memorial day weekend) used to be finite events. Now the same chaos is happening every night. Street racing, fights, urinating in public, condoms, dog and human feces on sidewalks, all of that and more under a lingering stench of weed smoke.
If that's not testament to how Airbnb can ruin entire communities, I don't know what is.
The locals are complaining [1], [2] but nothing seems to change except more money being thrown at police and local interests.
> When I first moved there the neighborhood was full of high-class tourists, a lot of Europeans. ... By 2014, a lot of restaurants and shops had closed down, to be replaced by 5 dollar souvenir shops (surf style!), kebab and pizza places. ... The ghetto criminal element is numerous and ever present.
Your idea is that AirBnb provided cheaper lodging that made South Beach open to people outside of the European tourists that the hotels were targeting?
Exactly. Entire blocks of stacked, brick-like units are being rented out dirt-cheap through Airbnb and of course attract the clientele one would expect.
South Florida literally invented Spring Break destination travel so I'd hardly blame Airbnb for this. The street racing and machismo culture has been there as long as I can remember (easily back through the 90s) and its the locals doing that.
I'd blame Winter Music Conference and the constant stream of other huge party events as much as anything.
I've been living here for 9 years now, I think I'm in great position to see what's going on. I don't buy your argument for many reasons, most of which I mentioned in my original post. The low-class, ghetto criminal element has nothing to do with Winter Music Conference or South Beach culture. If you go through the links I included in my original post and look at some videos, it'll quickly become apparent.
These people have been enabled by dirt cheap Airbnb prices. Traditional hotels have higher prices but also enforce codes of behavior that tend to limit if not outright ban the incidents I described. Simply, you can't get away with behaving like that in a hotel. You have to keep up appearances. Even in a party town like Miami Beach. Not to mention there's competition for the rooms with regular tourists. Airbnb allows a gang of 20 ppl to rent a single room and come here to wreak havoc.
Yes the idea that its something unique to Airbnb is a myth. Miami Beach is dominated by hotels and they have strong anti-Airbnb messaging. Meanwhile their hotels dominate the skyline and take up all of the beachfront property. Some of the hotels will act like the beach is private if you don't rent their beach chairs which is of course not true.
The hotel industry distortion field is probably stronger in Miami Beach than almost anywhere because so much money depends on it.
I also don't believe that most the Airbnb rentals on Miami Beach are particularly cheap. The one nearby that I know of charges many thousands per night as its a mansion.
I grew up in Miami and Miami Beach since the 80s. Miami Beach, and Ocean Drive have never been what you described. When I lived there fights, shootings, and prostitution was quite flagrant on Ocean. Before being redeveloped into million dollar condos, SoFi was a ghetto.
Spring Break is fairly new to the area. Prior to that the college students would hit Daytona, Panama City, or Key West. And long before that Fort Lauderdale was the Spring Break destination (showing my age).
The traditional family-owned restaurants started being driven out in 2014, to be replaced by new investor backed concepts because the rent was too high. Joe's Stone Crabs owns it spot and isn't going anywhere, I can't say the same for the restaurants around it. AirBnB didn't cause restaurants to close, speculators did.
Finally, it is the season of the snowbird. Every beach is packed with foreign tourists staying in their vacation homes on 6 month visas. When June arrives they'll leave, they always do.
Also, prior to this spring break there was only a few reasons to go to Ocean, Spring Break, Memorial Day, and Fourth of July. Now, city council and local organizations have planned street festivals basically every weekend between here and eternity.
All to say that very little of what's going on on Ocean Dr has anything to do with AirBnB.
First of all the 80s were close to 40 years ago. How about the period 2000-2010? What did change after 2010 that wasn't there before? Miami Beach was always a touristy place. Spring Break and Memorial Day were always rowdy affairs.
And when I talked about shop/restaurants closing I emphasized their replacements. It's one thing for restaurants to close in Miami Beach (happens every year).
It's quite another for same restaurant to close and be replaced by a kebab or pizza place. Entire streets that were lined with upscale shops have been turned into cash extraction mechanisms for unsophisticated, drunken passers by. What does that tell you about the character of the neighborhood?
Today's SOBE bears little resemblance to SOBE of the pre-Airbnb past.
It certainly was a factor. As was "black beach week" [1]. The Clevelander and Mango's were there in 2010 however, as was urban day weekend (as it was called then) long before Airbnb came to town. The situation started to rapidly decline after Airbnb enabled masses of low-class, unruly crowds to come to town and party, every day of the week. Every weekend of the year is a carnival-like orgy of debauchery now.
Miami real estate was especially hit hard after the financial crisis of 2008. Rich investors, American, European, and South American, were snapping up South Beach properties for pennies on the dollar and reselling them for tidy profits. I lived in an apartment in Flamingo Park that was almost 50% absentee European owners. The trendy European neighbors you were referring to upthread are the same ones renting through AirBnB while they are back home. Even though it was against the condo bylaws (long before code enforcement cracked down) they did it anyway.
> It's quite another for same restaurant to close and be replaced by a kebab or pizza place.
Because when you are on a month to month lease, which speculators love to do before razing everything before building condos <cough>Wynwood</cough>, you tend to get cheap popup places that can move in and out quickly. A pizza place just needs cheap tables and an oven. Decor and kitchen workstation planning isn't a consideration.
> Today's SOBE bears little resemblance to SOBE of the pre-Airbnb past.
I agree but not for the reasons you think. 80s South Beach was geriatric, 90s South Beach was club grungie, giving way to 00s gay/artsy South Beach, to gentrification through the 10s, until here we are today. It's trendy but tourist trendy.
Locals have already moved on to Surfside and Hollywood. Cleaner lest crowded beaches.
In Australia, they have a similar situation and their response to it has been equally mixed. Australia's drinking age is 18, and as such, many high school students will celebrate the end of formal schooling with a week long party known as Schoolies.
Surfer's Paradise and the Gold Coast saw >40k students in 2011, about 10% of the total number of graduates, and the event is gaining in popularity. Other locations also see a large influx of young adults reveling together one last time before life comes at them. Many of these beach towns have had a pull-and-tug relationship with the event and short-term rentals have always been a part of it.
So, the issue is not AirBnB and it's effects. It's that young people tend to be inconsiderate.
To be sure, these aren’t Airbnb’s taxes, any more than Hilton “pays” taxes for its guests’ hotel stays. Rather, the officials sparring with Airbnb want the company to collect and forward the taxes from guests, much as hotels do.
So this is local governments trying to railroad an online information/marketplace/intermediation firm into becoming a tax collector. The local governments can't practically collect the taxes, so they're extra-legally trying to bully AirBNB into doing it.
Business models are changing along with the societal changes in communications technology. Governments are pretending to themselves that this isn't a society-level change they should adapt to. (How would collecting such taxes be much different from collecting sales taxes?)
If Airbnb doesn't like it -- they don't need to go into the hospitality business in these places.
That's a dangerous precedent there. Any company that acts as online information/marketplace/intermediation is automatically "in the business?" That's a dangerous precedent to set. Does that mean that reddit is the defacto author & publisher of everything on reddit? Amazon is culpable as the manufacturer of everything it sells? (Not just Amazon Basics.) Something about that strikes me as not quite right and very dangerous.
> Business models are changing along with the societal changes in communications technology.
No one is entitled to their particular business model; I don't see a reason why a company has to be automatically in the green because someone looked at what they're doing and gave it a name. The changing landscape of communications technologies enables things both good and bad, and it turns out that "burning through truckloads of VC money to get away with breaking laws and dumping externalities on people" is something that's both enabled by new technologies and a huge negative for society.
Sales taxes are collected by the business conducting the transaction. AirBnB is that business. I see nothing unreasonable about requiring them to collect said taxes.
If they were Craigslist, where they were actually just a passthrough for transactions conducted entirely outside their platform, then asking them to collect sales taxes would be unreasonable.
> an online information/marketplace/intermediation firm
Well, there is what airbnb say it is, and what it really is in reality.
In a lot of places airbnb is a way to make big bucks via short term touristic rentals (coupled with no tax) instead of renting to actual people living in the city. This itself has creates many problems for local communities.
I've seen houses with 4-5 airbnb room and professional cleaners etc ... it's an hotel, minus the security, minus the insurances.
> Business models are changing along with the societal changes in communications technology.
The other way to interpret it is: "disrupting tech startups are destroying communities and local businesses, by creating / enabling tentacular monopolies which operate above the law".
How do you explain that airbnb payed less than 100k euros in 2016 in France, its 2nd biggest market at the time. [0]
All these companies are going through seriously sketchy processes to make money [1] [2] [3], they just transfer their costs and responsabilities to foreign countries, local communities or their own employees. These things might fly in the US/UK (and even there people are fighting) but they sure won't fly in a lot of EU countries.
> On some level people have the right to do whatever they please with their property. That's kind of the point of ownership to begin with.
And on some level they don't (or, perhaps more precisely, on some level it's never entirely their property if they aren't the sovereign—even if they are a member of a group which collectively constitutes the sovereign), that's kind of the point of sovereignty.
Right - it's the level dictated by the zoning laws we all agreed to when we built a governmental framework for property ownership and the management of it's externalities.
Ownership literally doesn't mean you can do whatever you please, that's the point of the top-level comment here.
On some level people have the right to do whatever they please with their property. That's kind of the point of ownership to begin with.
An HOA is a community-owned development. The individual lots are owned subject to the (HOA) rules of the development. That subordination is quite literally written into the deeds of the individual plots. So in this case, the other owners have a right to tell the individual owner what they can't do on their property.
There are a few mini-hotels - properties with more than one room. How many are corporate owned is undetermined. This guy is just bitter about something, perhaps rightfully so.
That is a pretty poor definition of hotel. Just because someone is renting out their second home/vacation home/in-law apartment/whatever doesn't mean they're corporately controlled. Many normal people in America own multiple pieces of property, especially in rural areas.
If we're only talking about cities, I totally agree though. I've stayed at a couple of apartments that were bought solely for airbnb use, and managed along a dozen other ones by the owner.
I think the "corporate-owned" piece is a misnomer. I think what they mean to say is that they are commercial operations, rather than individuals making use of extra space that they already had in their homes.
If someone buys or rents a property that is bigger than they need, for the sole purpose of AirBnB-ing the extra space, that is a commercial mini-hotel.
In some jurisdictions this is probably a good thing, where you don't have the tourism volume to warrant building a proper hotel but where there is demand for tourism accomodations; in other jurisdictions it represents a wantonly inefficient use of real estate resources.
...commercial operations, rather than individuals making use of extra space that they already had in their homes.
This has been my experience. Super-hosts with more than one listing. Apartments/homes that were obviously full-time rentals. So, not run by big corporations, but definitely run by somebody who has enough money on hand to buy property as a business venture.
I don't know about corporate ownership (other than you'd be insane to not have at least an LLC) but I've stayed in AirBNB apartments that belonged to people with many such properties. My impression was it was individuals/families with maybe 5-10 properties in a city, as opposed to some MegaCorp, but this is also has a pretty nasty effect on the rental market for locals.
There are not many "corporate-owned mini-hotels" but there are certainly hundreds of thousands of people that buy one or more apartments with the purpose of renting them out through AirBnB (or not sell apartments that they would otherwise have gotten rid off).
AirBnB doesn't make the little guy make a few extra bucks renting out a room as much as it makes those who already have money buy up studios and one bedroom apartments. The effect is that such apartments get more expensive for those who just need a place to live.
AirBnB doesn't make the little guy make a few extra bucks renting out a room as much as it makes those who already have money buy up studios and one bedroom apartments. The effect is that such apartments get more expensive for those who just need a place to live.
If only there were some way of increasing the number of housing units on a given area of land, this problem could be solved and we could have enough housing for everybody. This kind of technology could really ameliorate such problems.
Increasing the number of housing units doesn't solve the problem though. What is to stop people with money from buying those up and then Airbnbing them out?
Those "landlords/property investors" have enough cashflow and collateral to continue to expand their portfolios and get lines of credit to do so, which puts 'normal people' looking for housing at a disadvantage.
In high-demand housing areas, there needs to be more housing regulation to balance the businesses vs. individuals. It's good that there are cool places that encourage visitors to temporarily stay and spend locally, but there are also people wanting to live there that would also spend locally. The property businesses are making such a $/day killing on Airbnbs that they would rather keep that system than rent units for people to live there (and have to adhere to all the landlord laws).
Airbnb is a convenient loophole that offers more money with less effort as long as demand is high.
Increasing the number of housing units doesn't solve the problem though. What is to stop people with money from buying those up and then Airbnbing them out?
The principle of supply and demand, or basic economics. If demand for units is satisfied and an agent keeps buying and attempting to rent units, the price will collapse until the agent can no longer afford or buy them.
You don't even have to buy, you can throw down a security deposit, drop $1000 at ikea, and airbnb all month and make rent and more. You don't even have to ever step foot in the unit or meet a single guest; there are interior decorators and cleaning services that specialize in Airbnbs and you can stick the key in a lock box and change the password between stays.
I can't comment to their operational policies, but I have a coworker who owns a house they use for AirBnb, and they make quite a bit of money off of it. Enough to have a house dedicated to AirBnb, and so one of them doesn't need to work. They seem pleased with it, and they're not a corporation by any means.
In the scheme of it being "someone's home", it's not much different than renting it out for a longer period. Both are temporary and are at high risk for being kicked out. (Compared to owning it) No one I know who rents the home they're in claims it to be "their home".
It could be, sure. But in this instance, anyone who could afford that home could afford any of the other (many) houses up for sale in the area. This is in a touristy area, rather than a major city.
I can see this being an issue in a city, where housing is hard to find. But that's not the case in this instance.
In addition, register as a host in Airbnb does not require an ID proof, while register as a guest will be required to have an ID proof. And a host does not require to prove ownership of the property.
You can see it is such a convenient place for illegal business and money laundering. Some Airbnb has hidden camera for you know what it does. And as a matter of fact, many Airbnb in Japan is ran by the yakuza. They will use a pretty girl as profile pic. When you call the host, it is a yakuza guy respond to you. Actually, no problem with that as long as it is a smooth trade, but if something happens, god knows who can help you. And Airbnb only care about the host and don't give a fuck about guest.
I won't say don't use Airbnb, but just be reminded that use it if you can take some risk for some adventure.
AirBnB was a life saver for me while I was looking for an apartment in my new state. I think it's a great business model and local governments should just work with it instead of trying to legislate away something there's obviously a big demand for.
I think AirBnb is a wonderful, wonderful company. I don't want to stay in a hotel, and I don't want all of the hotel problems, including price. I value Airbnb's competition and think they are trying to do the best they can. Looking back at my history, 39 interactions across the country and not a single problem.
My beef is that it’s yet another case of outsiders pressuring local politics.
The McDonaldization of our neighborhoods continues.
Outsiders feeling owed a “piece of the action” makes it harder for people to live and work in these communities.
They demand more and more concessions to keep their profits going up, sapping attention and resources, and most importantly, time for discussing the needs of the locals.
I lived a few doors down to someone who basically ran an ad hoc AirBnB ... before Airbnb. It was pretty terrible. Parties all the time, trash, they parked anywhere (in other people's driveways...) because there were likely no long term consequences for doing so, the folks staying there didn't care because why should they?
I was on the association board, it's kinda thankless job as we had to deal with this house.
We got the usual riot act / pushback from the folks operating that short term rental about how the association was terrible and oh man the government and how we just were protecting hotels (like man, I don't have any connection to hotels...). They tried to organize the other folks who rented out their places (traditional long term rentals) to push us off the board, they actually got several to go along with it, but they failed (it wasn't even close, we had a limit on how many units could rent out at once anyway so they never were going to have enough numbers).
In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association / neighborhood. Fortunately the law was on our side and they eventually sold the unit and left.
Local governments are run by the locals and they should get to decide where businesses like that operate and zone and so forth. The idea that Airbnb should just get to be the almighty "disruptor" and land on your neighborhood with no recourse is pretty absurd at face value, especially when the argument is usually about how folks should have some freedom, but what they mean is their freedom, not the communities.
>In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association / neighborhood.
By joining a HOA, you've delegated away to the collective the right to dictate to your neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property. In your case, the system worked - because you are in a HOA. If people want to exert that kind of collectivist control over their neighbors, that's the kind of organization they should be buying homes in.
But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property? All kinds of small businesses are routinely run out of residential zoned properties. "Renting a room" seems like the kind of small business that's ideal for this situation - it takes no more infrastructure to house a vacation rental than it does to house a longer-term resident. "Hotels" require employees and elevators and truckloads of supplies delivered weekly; vacation rentals have none of that, and so the comparison makes little sense beyond "they are noisy". Leaseholders can also throw parties and be disruptive; there is an existing legal process to deal with noise complaints.
This category of complaint seems like a thin veneer around the core of truth that people who sink a colossal chunk of their nest egg and future earnings into one asset are knee-jerk averse to anything perceived as a threat to it.
>Property rights are usually a literal appeal to authority (e.g. a community or a government).
You are so hopped up on your ideology that you attributed some argument to my post that I wasn't even making. My post was criticizing the person for not even attempting to make an argument and instead devolving into just saying "you are wrong, I'm right".
Anyway, I find it interesting how angry people get about people using their homes as an additional source of income. I guess people just need a scapegoat for every little thing wrong in their lives. Look at some of the horrible anecdotes in this thread, there is someone actually blaming an increase in crime in Miami on Airbnb.
I was just following his logic that he felt it was ok that the associating decided and that if a city decided the same, then I don't see much difference.
> "what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property?"
Because any livable set of laws recognizes that externalities are a thing and need to be addressed.
I, as a homeowner, can't start amassing a large pile of radioactive material on my property. I can't start a home-based waste incineration company, even if the structure exists entirely on my property. There's a ton of stuff I can't do, because there are laws prohibiting it.
If the laws right now don't address "you can't invite enough strangers to your house such that it causes a lot of waste or damage to your neighborhood," then that's just because we didn't have broadly accessible systems in place to invite those strangers; it doesn't mean that that's now or has ever been okay, just like collecting a pile of radioactive waste in my backyard hasn't been okay since we learned about the harms of radiation poisoning.
"Why can't people do x?" Because we live in a society.
> But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property? All kinds of small businesses are routinely run out of residential zoned properties. "Renting a room" seems like the kind of small business that's ideal for this situation - it takes no more infrastructure to house a vacation rental than it does to house a longer-term resident.
The local laws which are at least indirectly decided by the people who live there decide whether people have a right to do business in residential areas or not.
> This category of complaint seems like a thin veneer around the core of truth that people who sink a colossal chunk of their nest egg and future earnings into one asset are knee-jerk averse to anything perceived as a threat to it.
I'm not a homeowner. I just dislike the idea of a company profiting off blatant disregard of the law. I personally don't really care about rentals, but if you want to do them then I hold the opinion you should get the laws changed to allow for them.
If anything, allowing vacation rentals would actually increase the value of homes in that area because it probably increases the rent.
koboll ask "what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property?" he isn't asking for the legal mechanism. He's asking about whether the law is just. That something is the law is not a good argument alone.
If the guests hadn't spoiled the experience of their neighbors I doubt there'd have been any intervention.
While people have qualms with the effect of short term rentals on housing markets, they usually don't show up on an HOA level.
The real problem is they were being bad neighbors, not that they were short-term neighbors, and once your neighbor starts to ruin your ability to enjoy your home you have a just argument to take action.
>But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property?
The fact that what you do with your own property often has direct effects on your neighbors. This is why zoning regulations exist, for example. And noise ordinances. And building codes. There isn't a magical forcefield that ends at your property line that prevents what you're doing from having an adverse affect on others.
Just like people who don't like noise should be careful about living close to other people, people who like to be left alone to do what they want with their own property need to take the same considerations into mind.
Zoning regulations are a tool of civic planning. The fact that racist civic planners use them to enact racist zoning regulations does not mean that zoning regulations in and of themselves are racist or always end up being racist.
There is tons of zoning in Texas; I think you're thinking of Houston.
Texas? The place where anybody can build a house in a flood plain and then expect the government to bail them out when the river rises? The place where currently a blazing chemical fire is allowed to burn for days and neighbors (to a chemical plant?) are told to stay indoors until it burns itself out? Doesn't sound like they are doing fine.
You may have addressed it, but it doesn't seem like you understand it.
People get away with operating small businesses in residential zones because the businesses they usually operate tend to operate unnoticed and without disrupting neighbors' lives. For example, working from home as an independent contractor, or simply receiving business mail at your home address--these things have zero impact on your neighbors, generally speaking. It's quite possible to operate such a small business out of your home or apartment without any of your neighbors ever even realizing it.
Now, if you were actually engaged in providing services to customers directly from your home or apartment, that would be a different story. If you had a steady stream of clients visiting your home, your neighbors might be right to complain about the increased traffic, noise, or any other undesirable consequences.
Treating your property like a hotel is no different from treating it like a restaurant or a hair salon or a department store; it changes the character of the neighborhood, places extra (or at the very least unexpected) load on local infrastructure (which may not be designed to handle it), potentially reduces security, and causes any number of other potentially adverse side effects.
But I'd say that your argument that operating a hotel out of your home is somehow just like operating any other kind of small business falls on its face by virtue of the fact that operating a hotel out of your home is clearly quite controversial while operating many other kinds of small businesses is not. If these things were the same, this discussion would not be happening.
>> By joining a HOA, you've delegated away to the collective the right to dictate to your neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property....
> But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property?
The fact that you live in close proximity to them so many of your activities can affect them, and that it's only by communal agreement that you even have "property" at all.
It seems the issue here is that when you are wronged (my guest are way too noisy), you don't have an adequate solution to seek compensation from me, and give enough instances of something like this happening, we turn more towards an outright ban on something that can give rise to the injustice but is not itself an injustice, but which is easier to enforce.
Perhaps if the root issues were given some easy way for one to satisfactorily resolve when they arise then their would be far less support for outright bans.
Sure, but the satisfactory resolution would be that the airbnb host gets the guests to shut up quickly (say within 10 minutes): that's not possible without extra costs and hassle that makes people give up on renting out altogether.
In general I agree that regulation should be narrowly crafted.
The problem is that any law or rule is only as good as its enforcement. People forget this too often when writing regulations, ending up with rules that are too costly, or involve too much invasion of privacy to get right.
I think the lesson is that you should always consider enforcement when writing policy. It needs to be front-and-center, not a secondary concern. A worse policy may end up being better if it's more easily enforceable.
This is a completely reasonable argument. You should absolutely have recourse if your neighbors (short-term or long-term) create a disturbance.
On the other hand, if they behave themselves just as well as long-term owners, then no, you really shouldn't have any say whatsoever about who lives in your neighbor's property.
Many HoAs/cities/countries havd rules like that to protect neighbours. The article is about airbnb working hard to violate these rules, enable others to violate these rules, and lobby foreign institutions to abolish these rules.
Your rant about people not knowing better than to diversify investment is completely oblivious of the fact that most people out there have no reasonable way to do so, and that their only protection is the existence of such rules.
> All kinds of small businesses are routinely run out of residential zoned properties.
Yup. And they typically have something in common - they don't bother the neighbors or create an atmosphere that is noticeably different than that of a residential neighborhood without the home business.
Work from a home office? No one will notice (other than the fact that you're home a lot). Teach piano lessons? As long as your students' parents don't park in front of other houses, probably not a big deal. (But people will notice.)
Want to run a metal shop out of your garage M-F? You'll get shut down because it's a disruption. Want to do metal shop projects on the weekend? No big deal, as long as you don't start too early and bother the neighbors.
> "Renting a room" seems like the kind of small business that's ideal for this situation - it takes no more infrastructure to house a vacation rental than it does to house a longer-term resident.
It's not about the "infrastructure" (when reduced to simply "a place to stay"), but about the externalities of everything that comes with frequent turnover of for-pay visitors. A vacation rental inherently means frequent turnover of residents, whereas "renting a room" means having a long(er) term resident with much less turnover.
> Leaseholders can also throw parties and be disruptive; there is an existing legal process to deal with noise complaints.
Yup, and it's easy to do because a leaseholder, well, lives there so the law can take its course. A vacation renter is gone pretty much before you can pursue any existing legal processes apart from calling the cops to come by and tell them to turn the music down. So, the AirBnB renter doesn't have to live with much/any consequences; the AirBnB "host" doesn't necessarily have consequences since they'll say "I won't rent to them again"; but the folks in the neighborhood do suffer from it.
>A vacation renter is gone pretty much before you can pursue any existing legal processes apart from calling the cops to come by and tell them to turn the music down. So, the AirBnB renter doesn't have to live with much/any consequences; the AirBnB "host" doesn't necessarily have consequences since they'll say "I won't rent to them again"; but the folks in the neighborhood do suffer from it.
Perhaps the law differs where you live, but where I live, local ordnance on repeated noise complaints gradually ramps penalties up from warnings to fines, so hosts have a strong interest in preventing partying at their properties. That seems a more appropriate legislative response than banning short-term rentals entirely.
You'd sing a different tune if a chicken factory-farm opened up next door, or if your neighbour decided to bury toxic waste in his backyard, or if he joined a band and brought them over for daily 1am practice.
Alternately, this is a blind spot in zoning laws, which exist in part to make sure that residences remain pleasant spaces to live in, and this blind spot needs to be addressed. The flipside of the libertarian "you have no right to dictate what I do" stance is that you may be generating external costs that your community has to absorb, so the legal structure should make sure you bear your share of that cost in accordance with how much you contribute to creating that cost.
Noise complaints are a downstream symptom. It's often unproductive and ineffective for laws to try to back-propagate policy by regulating downstream symptoms and hoping upstream symptoms get fixed as a result.
> The flipside of the libertarian "you have no right to dictate what I do" stance is that you may be generating external costs that your community has to absorb, so the legal structure should make sure you bear your share of that cost in accordance with how much you contribute to creating that cost.
This is a really well-crafted statement that applies widely to all kinds of issues in governance.
What you are describing is precisely the same situation I had when I lived in an apartment building next to a long-term tenant.
She simply didn't give a shit about the noise and trash she generated and all of us had to deal with it. The landlord didn't care either.
The police told me to deal with the landlord, because the noise wasn't at 3AM and wasn't "an event" like a concert. But her music was loud enough to shake my walls such that pictures fell off of them.
The town never returned phone calls. I simply vacated the apartment and told the landlord he would be more than welcome to sue me in court for the remainder of the lease.
Strangely, he never did, but I have a feeling that I would have had a hard time defending myself in court.
Though it is an unpopular opinion, I now feel that single family homes might be peferable to apartment buildings, if the caveat is that "the town and police will not do anything about anti-social behavior" as it is so rightfully called in the UK.
We actually limited the % of units that could be rented out in our association as well for the same reason (we actually allowed exceptions based on need (have to move fast and can't sell and so forth), and actually approved those 100% of the time, it just rarely came up).
Long term rentals can have problem tenants too, but long term rental owners at least had way more leverage over their rentals than short term (who really in our case didn't give a damn).
I think one of the differences is that long term rentals can establish a pattern of bad behavior by the tenant, a short term rental may constantly be in a terrible state but no one renter has committed enough repeated offenses to warrant a citation. The correct answer here (and with a lot of modern society) is that sub-contracting is not an out, the owner of the property has ultimate control over who rents from them and can put in the time and effort to vet people even if they're just staying for the weekend, it's just viewed as an unreasonable cost so people ignore it.
It's worded very poorly, too, such as "The onus is on hosts, Airbnb argues", as if there's some debate over whether 1099 contractors are responsible for their own taxes.
I'm sure local governments would love to collect a big check from Airbnb instead of hunting down thousands of tax-dodgers; but doing local tax collection authorities' work for them isn't exactly Airbnb's responsibility.
>doing local tax collection authorities' work for them isn't exactly Airbnb's responsibility.
Not by default, sure, but nothing prevents a local government from creating a law that says, "where an organization takes commissions in connection with its marketing and/or or the facilitation of payment for short-term rentals of property within our jurisdiction, the organization is responsible for collecting any occupancy taxes associated with the transaction."[0]
AirBNB ain't disrupting shit. Flop houses and illegal hotels have existed before. Silicon Valley doesn't do history ofcourse so they think that it is all new.
As you say the laws to destroy them already exist, all it takes is the effort to use it.
And listings like that are... what percentage of the total listings? 0.00001%? I bet there are more shared rooms on Craigslist than there are on Airbnb.
It appears to be aimed at students, not homeless people who want to get off the street for one night.
As the Wikipedia article I linked states, flophouses were typically rented by transients -- what we generally call "the homeless" these days. The term "flophouse" originated with hobos and propagated out to the larger culture.
I was homeless for several years. The prices listed in the thing you linked are comparable to what I sometimes paid for one night for a hotel in Fresno.
There are people these days who are without permanent residence who live in hotels. Some definitions of homelessness count them as homeless.
What you linked really doesn't fit what I am talking about. I have seen articles about illegal rentals stuffing multiple people into one room in big cities. They usually found them via Craigslits, iirc.
Most AirBnB listings are along the lines of the cost of a hotel or more. From what I gather, they wind up being a hotel alternative in most cases, not something dirt cheap with no amenities that a homeless person might rent for a night or two.
I blog about homelessness. I still talk to homeless people at times. I've had a college class on homelessness. I'm not uninformed on the topic of homelessness and what homeless people today are doing to get by.
AirBnB rentals are not some bog standard coping mechanism for today's homeless, from what I gather.
1. Would you say you, personally, were "homeless" at the time that you lived there?
2. Would you say the photo the listing was representative? Or would you say it actually looked more like a filthy dive, a la the photos in the Wikipedia article on flophouses?
3. Would you say the majority of other tenants were transients?
Anything else you can tell us here on HN to support your assertion that the listing in question fits the definition of "flophouse"?
The listing in question does fit the definition of a flophouse, per your Wikipedia link [1]. It might not fully match the traditional conception of a flophouse, but it seems fair to call it one.
[1] "flophouses...have been used for overnight lodging by those who needed the lowest cost alternative to staying with others, shelters or sleeping outside. Generally rooms are small, bathrooms are shared, and bedding is minimal..."
> , we had a limit on how many units could rent out at once anyway so they never were going to have enough numbers
What does this mean? If I owned a house in your neighborhood and had to move away for work, my options are to sell the house, or get on a waitlist till the number of houses rented out reduces?
As someone that's never owned a house, that sounds like a shitty rule that should be disrupted. I'm assuming there is a positive side to that only homeowners can see.
It certainly sounds like he's talking about a condo association ("unit"), not an HOA, which tend to care about different concerns. Rules like this make it hard for an owner to not be aware of negative impacts that their property is inflicting on their co-owners. You know--the other people involved in the con-dominium. Words are fun and educational, aren't they?
So, yes, there is a positive side. Most people have lived in places with absentee landlords. Many people don't want a preponderance of absentee landlord properties in a place where there is such direct impact from doing so; the thinking goes that if you rent out a house across the street from me, they might be annoying, but if you rent out a condo unit above mine, your tenants might flood my apartment because they didn't tell you the toilet had problems. Important difference.
If you don't like that, don't buy into a condo association that does it. It is extremely rare for a rental-limit rule to be put in place these days, so in practice you should know going in whether those rules are in place. If by some chance you live in the one in a thousand that does try to put those rules in place today, sell and move on.
The "positive side" for the homeowners is pretty obvious - it lets them keep anyone that's not one of them out of the neighborhood. I don't know the specifics of this particular neighborhood, but if it's anything like the vast majority of America, it likely is a very shitty rule that should be disrupted.
HOAs no longer are able to do that directly (even though naked racial discrimination was actually central to the original purpose of HOAs and the covenants which give life to them), but they continue to enforce cultural standards that are designed particularly to enforce the behavior preferred by a particular subculture and exclude others.
I'll give you one example: families with kids. I've known HOAs to try to pretty much straight up ban children; forbid them from playing outdoors, forbid riding bikes, forbid swingsets, trampolines, even sandboxes. Often couched in bullshit language about "protecting" the kids.
Also dog owners. I know an HOA board that was, for a time, populated by fervent dog haters. They enacted a rule that forbid dogs from all streets and sidewalks. You could only walk your dog between your house and the next to the common grassy area behind. There's been some turnover in the board, but the rule is still in effect AFAIK.
The rules you describe about children really only exist in age restricted communities intended for people age 55+. Those are basically retirement communities. Federal law explicitly allows age discrimination on that basis. Perhaps you can find a few isolated examples of other HOAs with such rules but they're extremely rare and not a widespread issue.
I like dogs myself. But others don't so it's nice they have at least a few options on communities to live where they don't have to deal with dogs.
Neither children or dogs are associated with particular subcultures. They're both about as mainstream as you can get.
> I like dogs myself. But others don't so it's nice they have at least a few options on communities to live where they don't have to deal with dogs.
No, there's nothing "nice" about it. It was a shitty thing for the board to do to a community with lots of existing dog owners who had no say in the process. Now the neighborhood has to try to turn over enough board seats to get rid of the rule. The main instigator was a cranky old lady who is now gone, so it's probably just a matter of time. In the meantime it looks like people are largely ignoring it, but that's not a solution.
To me, the "isolated examples" like this are reason enough for HOA reform movements that seem to be gaining momentum across the country. The fact that HOAs can so easily forbid activities that residents enjoyed when they bought their home, such as walking their dogs, is proof to me that new laws are needed to restrict their power.
As someone that's never owned a house, that sounds like a shitty rule that should be disrupted. I'm assuming there is a positive side to that only homeowners can see.
For starters, several federal agencies actually require COA's to limit the number of units that are not owner-occupied as a condition for government-backed mortgages. Some states and local laws also place caps on this to prevent condos from being used as unregistered hotels (see eg timeshares).
As for your options? Generally, for cases like this your option would be to sell the unit or request an exemption. If you're moving far away, it's very likely that the COA will not grant the exemption, because units rented out by distant absentee landlords tend to generate the most and worst problems that COAs deal with.
Or, the other option... don't buy property that has these rules in place and you'll never have the problem. It's not like these rules pop up randomly - you have to sign condo/HOA docs as part of the closing process.
I'd agree that many of the crazy HOA stories come from CA, they are common all over. Northern VA (metro DC) has them just about everywhere (at least anything built since the mid-70s).
But, most of those mid-70s neighborhoods have fairly light-weight rules... Some architecture review, but generally not the crazy "can't leave garage door open" or "potted plants must all be in pots 13.25" in diameter" stuff.
HOAs (in neighborhoods with houses) do a lot of things local governments do in other parts of the country, like south suburban chicago, where I grew up -- operate pools, common lawn care, etc.
I'm on a condo board currently and those are an entirely separate thing, much more intense, much more money, and much more service (when run well).
gamblor956 covered our motivations for that rule very well, if government backed mortgages aren't an option it could be pretty hard to sell your house.
Folks can debate if government backed mortgages should be a thing, but as far as an association we decided we wanted to preserve the opportunity for folks to sell easily (well as easily as possible) by matching the government limits.
Some of the folks renting at the time were quite upset... until I explained for the 12th time to them that everyone renting on that day still could rent, and then there would be a limit... so they were actually in a good spot. Takes people a while to understand sometimes ;)
eropple kinda touches on a side concern about absentee landlords and such and that was very much on our mind as well.
I did say in another comment that we allowed some exceptions if the limit was reached. In fact we approved all exceptions that came our way as there were very few requests. We wanted folks to be able to rent if they had to move fast, family event, and couldn't sell quickly. We didn't want to put anyone in a bind.
I mean, this just sounds to me like a pitch for AirBnB. They managed to solve this exact problem you're complaining about via the rating system and guests being attached to their real identity. The vast majority of AirBnB guests are very respectful and reasonable.
As for your tight local control, fuck that. No, you shouldn't get to decide exactly what happens in your neighborhood just because you got there first. You don't own the neighborhood, you own single plot of land, and people who want to buy other plots of land and collectively evolve the neighborhood in new directions should have just as much of a right as you do.
I understand that there is this odd notion that every man is sui generis and all, but you live in a society.
You can change the property under the purview of the association. It would be stupid to assert that you cannot. But you must win a vote to do so--and you agree to adhere to the results of association votes by buying into the property and into the association.
Such positive tyranny one must endure. Makes my heart break. But you have a way out! You can always choose...to not buy a place with a condo association or HOA.
Someone can change the rules of local associations or someone can just defy the rules along with enough other people that the association becomes powerless. That's the mode of operation of AirBnb, for good and ill.
>
I mean, this just sounds to me like a pitch for AirBnB. They managed to solve this exact problem you're complaining about via the rating system and guests being attached to their real identity. The vast majority of AirBnB guests are very respectful and reasonable.
They have not solved this problem at all. I lived next door to an illegal AirBNB (all short-term whole-apartment rentals are illegal in NYC).
It was a nightmare, and there's nothing I could do about it. AirBNB does not consider me a customer and has no contractual relationship with me. They didn't provide any way to determine the owner's listing when you know the address, and even if I had, there's no formal way to lodge a complaint against the owner.
The only way a neighbor can take action against their problematic AirBNB neighbor is to report them to the city government.
>As for your tight local control, fuck that. No, you shouldn't get to decide exactly what happens in your neighborhood just because you got there first.
That's right I don't get to decide because I was there first.
I get to decide because the majority elected me to the association and I carried out their will. I was a representative of the neighborhood and the neighborhood got to decide.
I say "get" but I'm not there anymore, so I don't get to anymore.
>They managed to solve this exact problem you're complaining about via the rating system and guests being attached to their real identity
I think you got it all wrong. This is not a pitch for AirBnB. If anything, the company is creating the problem, not solving it.
>As for your tight local control, fuck that. No, you shouldn't get to decide exactly what happens in your neighborhood just because you got there first.
You're taking what OP wrote out of context and molding it to fit your simplistic thinking. There are laws to protect residential neighborhoods for a reason, and they certainly are not based on "who got here first" rule.
> I mean, this just sounds to me like a pitch for AirBnB. They managed to solve this exact problem you're complaining about via the rating system and guests being attached to their real identity. The vast majority of AirBnB guests are very respectful and reasonable.
Having had a AirBnB rental two floors down: no, they did not. Most guests are reasonable, but a sufficiently high number are not. Unlike a hotel there’s no way to walk up to someone and tell them to shut the party down, so you’re stuck with talking to the guests which laugh in your face (quote: we’re here to party.) or calling the police. Neither is an attractive option. You can’t just complain to AirBnB and the host won’t - if you know how to reach the host.
AirBnB does about everything to isolate themselves and their clients from complaints.
They haven’t solved that all. The rating system is between the guest and the host. When it’s the neighbors who bear the brunt.
I’m usually not for too much local control or NIMBYIsm. However, this is distinctively different. Airbnb can be awful for the neighbors and they didn’t buy their place knowingly that they’d have to put up with that - what essentially is - a hotel in their midst.
As for your tight local control, fuck that. No, you shouldn't get to decide exactly what happens in your neighborhood just because you got there first. You don't own the neighborhood, you own single plot of land, and people who want to buy other plots of land and collectively evolve the neighborhood in new directions should have just as much of a right as you do.
The commenter you're replying to was a member of the Board of an HOA. Meaning that he lived in a condo or townhouse development or a private community. In all of these cases, all of the owners are bound by the common rules of the HOA (which, as owners, they have the right to vote on, amend, etc.), and "tight local control" is pretty much the point.
The rating system doesn't collect ratings from the victims of bad guests; it collects them from them the hosts. The hosts don't care how bad their guests behave as long as the apartment isn't (permanently) damaged.
Eh. Residents pay property tax to provide safety and so on in the area. There is a limit to what your neighbor can do, and you should be ready to deal with the cops all the time.
I don't know about that. For awhile I was doing Airbnb while looking for a place. I had the worst rental experience ever. I ended up renting one bedroom in a two bedroom apartment. The people I was staying with weren't bad, or loud. But the person I was renting from had crammed another seven or eight people into the apartment. And one day I came back and found an eviction notice on the door. Apparently it was a rent controlled apartment, only one person was on the lease, and it wasn't the person I was paying. I'm assuming because they had already had several evictions on their records. One one hand I did rent from them, but there were physical issues with the property I found after I showed up.
So, this doesn't have to go to ad absurdum to become problematic. We depend on a social contract between people who live together to make things harmonious and not devolve into violence. (E.g. neighbors showing up with guns when a party gets too loud; or abstracting the violence, members of the neighborhood calling the cops on small infractions of the law.)
So, that gets back to the problem. AirBnB has not solved the problem because the people who are affected are the neighbors of the AirBnB. If the people renting the apartment are not in the apartment itself, they will give the guests 5 stars if the house is clean at the end. However, the neighbors might give that same guest 1 star because they were partying at 3AM, keeping the neighbors awake.
So, we get back to calling in the police and making the place worse for everyone. A hotel has people on the premise to monitor; an AirBnB is not guaranteed this.
It's not about who got there first, it's about what the majority want. The greater good. People buy property in these communities with certain expectations. One of those being that they will not have to deal with people who disrupt the neighborhood.
AirBnBs bring randos into closed, private, residential areas that don't want to have to deal with people partying. Sure, it may just be fun and games for the renters who are on vacation, but for everyone else, who have to deal with it 24/7? It's not fun. It's annoying and rude.
We have zoning laws for a reason. AirBnB is encouraging people to break those laws. It's no different than anyone running a business in a residential zoned area. Do people run small businesses out of their houses? Sure, all the time and technically they're breaking the law. But the main question to ask is are they impacting those around them? For AirBnB that answer is clearly yes. It disrupts the rights of the existing neighbors that are abiding by zoning laws. Just like you can't live in a store front, we can't have people just doing whatever they want because "eh fuck em I own this"... no, you kinda don't. You rent the land from the government and there are laws you are bound by when entering in that agreement. We're trying to have a society here.
I'm no attorney but to me it's pretty clear that AirBnB shouldn't be allowed to exist as a business the way it stands today. It's incredible they've made it this far.
I'd love to hear some concrete rebuttal as to why what they're doing is OK besides the "less government/regulation" angle.
> Local governments are run by the locals and they should get to decide where businesses like that operate and zone and so forth.
Local governments are the wrong level for those sorts of decisions to be made. You don't have any right to tell your neighbors what to do with their property. Now, it's legitimate for the government to make rules of general application for everyone, but local governments have too much conflict of interest to make these decisions in a globally optimal way.
Japan, which has a national zoning law, is the right model. In our system, we'd apply it at the state level.
I like to imagine there is this magic wall between properties where nothing ever crosses over and in that situation we could somehow allow an absolute property rights sort of thing.
I mostly agree, but I do think there is a role for local government to play, as local governments tend to have more access to local information. But local government should not have the ability to be exclusionary. In other words, the state should decide how much housing, office, etc. cities must allow to be built, and cities can choose where to put it, as well as establishing reasonable height limits and so forth as long as they actually zone for the amount of building the state has mandated.
In theory, this is how the system is supposed to work here in California. We have the statewide Regional Housing Needs Allocation, which is a kind of statewide zoning that sets targets for cities, which can then zone as they want to meet those targets. Unfortunately RHNA is not enforced, and there are too many loopholes that let cities circumvent their legal obligations. The Housing Accountability Act closes some of those loopholes, but not enough. :(
> Japan, which has a national zoning law, is the right model. In our system, we'd apply it at the state level.
I agree with you on this, however, Japan regulated AirBNB because renting a room for a short period of time is a pure commercial activity and not allowed in Residential areas.
> I lived a few doors down to someone who basically ran an ad hoc AirBnB ... before Airbnb. It was pretty terrible. Parties all the time, trash, they parked anywhere (in other people's driveways...)
I lived, several times, a few doors down to someone who did all this and didn't run an Airbnb. They're just shitty people, and they're going to be shitty neighbors regardless of Airbnb.
Your anecdote created a very strange comment string with a lot of comments from people who seem to be strongly defending libertarianism, except for the part about honoring contracts.
This seems like an overly critical article. Zoning laws and NIMBY impulses should be fought tooth-and-nail and I'm glad Airbnb is doing so. The platform has allowed me to actually enjoy travel in ways I never could before.
What I feel like is missing is a communication path from the community to the platform. Because people start by calling the police to complain it immediately becomes a legal and local ordinance issue. If it were easy to report abuses to Airbnb directly, or if local police were instructed to contact them, the platform could better regulate itself.
Hrm ... ok here's a specific change I'd like to see they have a "neighbors" portal. But if you try to input a complaint it's hard to find a listing nearby and they say
"If you can’t find the listing’s web address, enter the street address and we’ll try to locate the listing. In order to protect our hosts’ privacy, we won’t be able to confirm the existence of any Airbnb listings or follow up with you."
Kind of amusing they hide it that way, seems like a good way to get AROUND any local zoning or anyone to identify folks who are buying up units wholesale to rent them out.
I'm the absolute last person to think that tech can be trusted to regulate itself for anything. We've seen how companies like Amazon and eBay cater to their power sellers, how social media caters to its advertisers, &c. &c.
It would be delightful if AirBnB were to be the exception, but as Reagan(?) said, "Trust, but verify."
Who does the verifying if we remove local government from oversight?
It's funny how all the "disruptive" startups have the same basic business model of taking money away from someone who was getting it before (generally local governments, but that cascades to many other people like medallion holders); giving some of that money to the customers and call it a discount, and keeping the rest of it for themselves.
Why should zoning laws be fought tooth-and-nail? If I buy a house in a neighbourhood full of single-family dwellings that are all one and two storeys high, should I be able to build a condo building on my land?
Can I open a nightclub in my house?
What about parking? Can I pave my front lawn and rent the space out as parking spots? Or maybe put a dumpster there for local businesses to put their trash in?
There's a tree on my boulevard. Can I cut the tree down and park a truck on the boulevard?
I decided to run a grow-op in my house. When I turn the electricity on, the lights fade in my neighbours houses because the load on my grow-up is so much bigger than the equipment is designed to support.
Mostly correct. US zoning laws in particular are responsible for urban sprawl, separation of services from housing and the massive environmental impact that produces. Default mixed use is demonstrably more efficient use of land. Cleaver neighborhoods are toxic.
Houston has zoning laws - they mandate parking for example. The laws are generally more lax than other places, but some of their mandates encourage sprawl.
Just because you are allowed to build 100 stories into the heavens doesn't mean you will when its cheaper to build flat across an empty swath of land. When you hit capacity on that empty swath of land, like in the LA basin, but aren't allowed to build high to meet demand, like in the LA basin, then you have a supply problem.
Imagine the mess that NY would have looked like if Manhattan was limited to single family homes. The city would sprawl across half of NY, NJ, and CT easy.
Because infringing on people's right to do what they want with their property deserves a hell of a lot more scrutiny than it gets right now. Trying to centrally manage what can be done where doesn't scale. See SF housing prices.
>Can I open a nightclub in my house?
As long as it meets the standards that night clubs have to meet then sure. You're unlikely to be able to do these things and be commercially successful enough to subsity in primarily residential area.
>What about parking? Can I pave my front lawn and rent the space out as parking spots? Or maybe put a dumpster there for local businesses to put their trash in?
Sure. Just be aware that you might be on the hook if you do a half-assed paving job and the runoff affects your neighbors. Once again if you truly are in a residential area where this kind of thing is not appropriate you will have a hard time being successful enough at it to annoy anyone who isn't already annoyed by everything.
>There's a tree on my boulevard. Can I cut the tree down and park a truck on the boulevard?
This is more complicated because you get into right of way issues and the city usually has a pretty substantial right of way beside the road (sidewalk?) but sure, if none of that is an issue then feel free to cut it down.
>I decided to run a grow-op in my house. When I turn the electricity on, the lights fade in my neighbours houses because the load on my grow-up is so much bigger than the equipment is designed to support.
If the power company was worried about QoS to the other customers on the street they wouldn't give you the massive breaker you need for that operation. If the neighbors are really bothered by it they can complain to the power company and if they complain enough then it will get addressed. There is no need for laws for this sort of thing. Once again if you're really in a residential area you're unlikely to get that kind of service if you really are somewhere it would be a problem. The power company has internal rules about what service gets installed where (basically their own zoning) in order to ensure that breakers on bigger equipment upstream are not tripped during times of peak load.
There's nothing stopping you from buying a piece of land and having no zoning controls. Then you can market it as a neighbourhood for people who want to be free.
Good luck finding anyone to live in that kind of neighbourhood by choice. If you have an area with zero controls, it quickly will become a race-to-the-bottom.
The kinds of people who want to live in a nice neighbourhood, and be nice neighbours, will go live somewhere else.
It turns out that people feel the same way about freedom to do what you like with your single-family home as they do about the freedom to drive a car without getting a license or being insured, and the freedom to drive on whichever side of the road you like, and the freedom to drive a vehicle without smog regulation or safety rules.
Most people don't want your freedom, because the upside of their freedom is greatly outweighed by the downsides of their neighbour's freedoms.
They'll all just go any set up gated communities where everyone buying a home must contractually agree to the neighbourhood's own regulations.
You know most of the world has much more lax zoning and land use laws than the USA right? Somehow they manage to have nice neighborhoods with nice neighbors.
There's also nothing wrong with gated communities and in fact that would be vastly preferable to having a few rich people make everybody in the city abide by their own arbitrary regulations.
These examples vary in how outrageous they are, but some of them have the ability to singlehandedly depreciate someone else's most valuable asset by tens of thousands of dollars without any sort of recourse. Even if the nightclub or parking ventures aren't successful you'll probably have a hard time getting the same value out of that house.
Yes, it's fine. You bought your lot, not your neighbor's. Zoning and land use laws are one of the primary reason why America has such shitty yet simultaneously expensive cities.
If you're buying the property for any purpose other than flipping then ROI from the sale of the property itself shouldn't be a serious consideration. Either you're living there and sale doesn't really matter so long as you don't get shafted too badly whenever you do sell or you're renting or using it commercially in which case the cost to acquire is sunk and the returns from that should more than make up for change in value and whatever you get from a sale at the end is just a bonus.
Because it is mostly used by rich property owners to artificial prop up the value of their capital investment, to the detriment of renters and people who cannot afford to purchase properties.
I mean... every one of those examples involves construction/renovation or directly impacts neighbors. Having guests over in your unchanged house, parking in your designated parking spaces, and just happening to charge money for the experience is a much more reasonable grey area - and doesn't affect tenants much if they hold the guests to the same behavioral standards as the original tenant. If they were just regular roommates/friends, it would be pretty intrusive to ban such behavior, especially if they're not violating maximum occupancy rules. I agree it's a violation in spirit, and many of the above rules get broken anyway, but there's definitely a grey area here that needs a different set of rules.
> If it were easy to report abuses to Airbnb directly, or if local police were instructed to contact them, the platform could better regulate itself.
And the fact that they don't have a feature for this shows that they don't care. They just think that a few lawsuits here and there are cheaper than adequately dealing with community complaints.
>Because people start by calling the police to complain it immediately becomes a legal and local ordinance issue.
That's because in the kind of "upscale but not too upscale" kinds of places where AirBnB tends to flourish conflict resolution is such a lost art that calling the police on each other is what people do.
I'm calling the police well before I walk over to the Miami Beach apartment blasting music at 3AM, likely filled with coked up aggressive young men.
Simple conflict resolution works great with reasonable people, but those aren't the kinds of people blasting techno and screaming all through the night.
> Simple conflict resolution works great with reasonable people, but those aren't the kinds of people blasting techno and screaming all through the night.
It may even be that more often than not, it is people where simole interaction would suffice on an individual basis, but there are two factors that still weigh in favor of summoning law enforcement:
(1) The social context of one where any individual you deal with would lose face by backing down to anyone without compulsory power, and
(2) Even if the above was not sufficient to tip the odds to “most probably individual interaction will not be productive”, the potential cost of interaction with “coked up aggressive young men” or the like doesn't require a very high probability that that is the scenario before it becomes an unacceptable risk even if the expected net benefit of individual interaction is positive.
> What I feel like is missing is a communication path from the community to the platform.
Why? The issue is between the homeowner and the community. The fact that they're using AirBnB or anything else is irrelevant. The homeowner is responsible for what occurs on their property, and the community has a right to set standards via HOA's, city/local ordinances, etc.
The communication path should be between the property owner and AirBnB to discuss issues with their private contracts/arrangements/deals.
>If it were easy to report abuses to Airbnb directly
They have made plenty clear that they don't really care about how people near the rental unit are affected. They will never make this happen unless "NIMBY impulses" put enough pressure on them to do so.
I find it really unfortunate that the airbnb debate is always so polarized.
AirBNB has often provided me a better alternative to a largely terrible hotel market that often takes racket prices and makes me pay for services I don't need. On the other hand I completely understand when people are annoyed about party folk living in the flat above them or when they lack safety regulations or don't pay the same taxes hotels do.
But none of that justifies an outright ban, there should be solutions to regulate the bad while allowing the good. Make them pay hefty fees that they may pass on to their customers if they violate night rest times. Make them follow safety regulations and pay takes. (Yeah, that will make it more expensive, but I can still avoid paying for daily room service I want to opt out and sometimes even can't and 24/7 reception staff I don't need.)
Airbnb has the ability to enforce these policies internally, which would come with the bonus of not needing to lose money to local governments.
It's simply that they don't.
In much the same way that Uber skirts the laws of background checks, Airbnb responds to complaints and attempts to introduce regulation with lawsuits. I wish the Hotel and Cab markets were disrupted by companies that wanted to optimize within the rules of the game, but they, either through lawsuits or just ignoring laws, don't play in an even setting, these traditional companies end up being burdened with more regulations than the "disrupters" adhere to.
To optimize within the cab rules, you’d need to have drivers purchase a medallion and only be able to make pickups in the city which issued the medallion...
To optimize within the hotel rules, you’d need hosts to get a hotel/rooming house license...
Cab medallions are currently transferable, so you would need to purchase enough medallions to operate the fleet you would hit at peak usage, but otherwise you'd just need to ensure that all of the driver can qualify for a medallion.
Hotel/rooming house licenses aren't un-affordable, there are regulations around them but both motel6 and mom&pop B&Bs can acquire them, so the bar is generally pretty low. For instance in Cambridge, MA it looks like it'd cost about 200$[1] to file for the license, Airbnb could probably offer legal services to help people properly apply if they cared to.
Clicking through to https://cambridgema.viewpointcloud.com/categories/1096/recor..., when you read the rules, you see "Do not apply for this if Airbnb or any short term rental, or a bed and breakfast establishment." Making it obviously difficult for AirBnB to play within the established rules...
Airbnb definitely has become a great example in the 'if you don't regulate yourself as an industry you will become regulated whether you want to or not.' Unlike some of the dynamics in some of the other industries the people that airbnb exploits are individuals who rent/own property and every new airbnb host is effectively having to relearn every problem and potential pitfall/cost that hoteliers or seasoned short-term rental property owners have already solved and priced accordingly. I feel like people don't give enough criticism of Uber/Lyft/Airbnb of them profiting off people who aren't properly evaluating their expenses as a business. Most of what they offer probably should be more expensive than what they end up being but instead because people aren't experienced enough to properly cost things and undervalue what they are providing.
I hear that argument fairly consistently about Uber drivers, but I ask most of my Uber drivers their experience on the platform. Almost every one of them seems to have quite a good grasp of the economics that are relevant to their situation.
They break down into 3 groups. The smallest are people between jobs. They're doing something that's better than their best alternative.
The next largest group are the occasional drivers, meaning Uber is not their main job. These people typically already own a car, so the fixed costs are leaving their pocket every month whether or not they drive ride sharing. Ride sharing more than comfortably covers their variable costs, so they're making money.
The largest group (in terms of rides given/taken, not in terms of drivers) are people who are driving Uber essentially full-time. Many of them have bought a car specifically for its Uber suitability (good gas mileage, low maintenance, etc) and I think these drivers are properly thinking about their expenses (because they're pretty compartmentalized).
I know it's common to think that the drivers are not fully and rationally evaluating the value proposition that Uber offers, but I see pretty frequent evidence to the contrary. There are fewer than 5% of people for whom I ask the question who respond in a way that makes me think that they think their predominant expense is "just gas money".
>On the other hand I completely understand when people are annoyed about party folk living in the flat above them or when they lack safety regulations or don't pay the same taxes hotels do.
Or creating a shortage of supply for actual people looking to rent in the cities desirable areas, which results in increase of rent. That's the biggest one imo.
They do have some effect on pricing, sure, but there is a much larger culprit in local zoning practices at work when it comes to housing affordability.
Overly aggressive zoning isn't an issue specific to SF, it is much more hilariously stupid there, but people living near or within cities in detached houses elsewhere lobby continuously against higher density and public transit to try and keep their neighborhood the quiet one. I'm up in Vancouver and we've got some really strong NIMBY idiots here that are fighting tooth and nail against expanding the skytrain so that it actually services the universities while fighting against density increases in Kitsilano which, honestly, is basically a part of downtown now.
I agree, most people see this as black and white and not grey. One thing to keep in mind though although making the hotels compete may lower prices for you it always comes at a the expense of someone else. In this case it affects the margins of huge hotel chains (not awful) and in the availability of housing and apartments for people who actually need to live in/near the city you are just visiting (really awful). You obviously can pass laws to swing the equilibrium away from people buying up all the property but at some point it becomes a loss after you factor in AirBNB's cut and you're back to the hotels. Like you said, this is multi-faceted.
I feel there is a difference between putting your home up for short term rent while you're away versus buying multiple homes that you never stay in and operating them as a self-service hotel. There's nothing wrong with this, but if you run a business, you must file the appropriate paperwork and follow the same rules as other businesses.
You could gate it on primary residence, but some people have family-owned cabins or lake homes that AirBnB would still be a good way to optimize use of the asset. It seems like zoning regulations are still a good way to regulate this.
I moved to my second home, as I left my business and had no particular reason to stay put, and put my main home on the market as an Airbnb. A residential let wasn’t an option as a) I need to stay there from time to time and b) it wouldn’t cover the mortgage.
I’m a by-the-book guy when it comes to business, so registered the place as a guest-house business premises with the council. They even remarked that I was the first Airbnb operator to do this in over a year - and there are over a thousand Airbnbs in town.
Because the place is under a certain rateable value, which is based on location and size, it is eligible for a 100% rebate on business rates. I’d gladly pay them were anything due, but nothing is.
So, not only am I in the clear with local government, but being so saves me several thousand pounds a year.
I run a vacation rental in a small town in the mountains of Colorado. I'm quite happy to pay the taxes the town demands. Our place is busy, and our guests make a significant impact on the town, spending a lot of money in local shops and restaurants. On the other hand, there is increased wear on city and county roads (many of which are gravel), and increased load on water, sewer, and sanitation services.
Cities and counties need money to provide us with the services we depend on to run our little business. Reasonable taxes and fees are a fair, expected, and necessary price. The little town we're in has struck a decent balance price-wise, and they also have a decent regulatory system set up that's designed to ensure that neighbors' complaints about parking, noise, and trash are addressed.
We're very by-the-book operators. I want the city to see money from me because I want them to have an interest in protecting my business.
There are a couple of hotels under construction in town, which makes me nervous. Hotels hate vacation rentals. I'm not fond of AirBNB as a corporate citizen, but the Hoteliers cartel is dirtier. I wouldn't be surprised if the new hotels lobby the town to ban vacation rentals outright, or craft lethal regulations like those in Tennessee recently that require all vacation rentals to install fire-suppression sprinklers [https://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2015/jan/3/cities-acro...].
>On the other hand, there is increased wear on city and county roads (many of which are gravel), and increased load on water, sewer, and sanitation services.
Why would renters cause more wear on those resources than full time occupants?
Great question. In my case, the home is consistently occupied by more people than would otherwise be living there full time, and they're much more active than a family of permanent residents would be. They eat out a lot, drive around the town and up mountain roads, and if they're skiiers or outdoor sports-people, they're in and out of town every day.
Guests are usually groups of blended family and friends, so there are more cars. This is true for us when we visit our own place; we often bring family or friends, and they bring more cars. The dirt road leading to our house definitely notices the traffic.
And then there's the water and trash. Bloody fucking hell vacation rental guests generate a lot of trash. I'm working on some ways to encourage reduced consumption, and I stock only recycled paper products -- toilet tissue particularly is a sore point with me. I con't believe how much toilet paper people use. It pisses me off enough that I'm playing with the idea of charging for it.
Otherwise, we've had mostly good luck with our guests. Mostly. I won't rent to anyone under 25, and I'm really strict about that. I also completely banned smoking of any kind anywhere on the property, inside or outside. These things have helped.
Bloody hell is firmly a part of my everyday lexicon. It's not really a cuss word here so it can replace my preferred F words in polite company.
Toilet tissue is just me being confused. I buy toilet paper, facial tissue, and paper towels in enormous quantities from costco. All recycled, but it's still a mountain of paper and tissue. I have to figure something out.
You could tell people that the septic system is not designed for large amounts of paper and is prone to clogging. Tell them that if that happens, there will be a pricey charge for a plumber to come out. You’re scaring them into being mindful without the negative taste of charging for use of toilet paper.
How do you ban smoking outside? Are you on property keeping tabs on your guests every move?
I have a nose like a bloodhound. If someone has been smoking in the house, there is no way to hide it from me. My cleaning lady is also somewhat of a detective and has been known to go through the trash if she thinks rules have been broken.
Smoking outside is a different problem. Until recently I didn't forbid it, but earlier this year I found cigarette butts in the brush below the deck, along with a burn mark on the dining table and cigarettes in the trash. That was from a large group of college aged boys.
In normal dry conditions, Colorado mountain country is like a big pile of kindling just waiting for some dumbass to toss a cigarette butt into the pine needles and set the town ablaze.
This incident really freaked me out. I took their entire security deposit, and added rules and a stern warning to my listing. At some point I'll install a camera outside to watch the deck and back yard, because I know it will happen again.
Correct, plus a couple other damaged items. The burn on the table was actually from a joint, not a cigarette. I can tell as soon as I walk into the house what was smoked and how much. Marijuana, tobacco, pot rolled into cigarillos... if I look in the trash to confirm, I'm always right. Marijuana smoke smell dissipates fully in a few days, and guests don't seem to mind a little left over. But tobacco smoke never goes away. It even soaks into the deck wood outside, so I can often tell if there was a heavy outdoor smoker there even if they leave no butts behind.
I explicitly allowed marijuana smoking inside the house up until then as a way to support legalization, and because the smoke is much more tame. But then it occurred to me: people can vape. I'm not a pot user so I guess I'm a little behind. So now, no more smoking.
But yeah, if someone burns anything in my house by leaving a live fucking coal on it, they're pretty much guaranteed to lose their security deposit. Shouldn't be too difficult.
Aside from that, I go to great lengths to give all my guests' money back. If someone just lets me know that they broke something, I never charge them for it. I suppose I'd have to charge for things like broken windows, but that hasn't happened yet.
Unsolicited recommendation from one person on the other end: don't charge for toilet paper. If your concern is environmental, I don't think it'll make an impact as people will just pay the $1 or $2 and use the same amount. If your concern is money, just raise your rate. Hosts who nickel and dime for that kind of stuff come off like major cheapskates and tend to have reviews that reflect that. I've stayed at places that charged per Keurig cup and it just seems so petty. Any hotel you stay at isn't going to bat an eye at giving you extra TP if you need it. I'd also note that someone traveling may be eating a more varied diet than their bodies may be used to being exposed to at home, the end result of which may factor into increased TP usage versus a native of the area.
This is good advice. I hate nickle-and-dimey stuff too, so yeah, good point.
You know what else I hate? Fucking Keurig. I hate the packaging, I hate the shitty brewing machines that don't brew hot enough or saturate the pods, and I hate the racketeering company. Nevertheless, one of the most consistent compliments I get in reviews is about this dinky little coffee and tea station we have set up on a bread rack. Nothing fancy, just a Keurig and another normal coffee machine and some boxes of tea and cocoa and stuff. To me it looks kind of chintzy, but a lot of guests are super charmed by complimentary coffee pods and variety packs of tea. So I grit my teeth and keep the little drawer stocked with pods.
Toilet paper again: at some point I intend to install bidets in the bathrooms. Toto makes one that reviews well. Then I'll put up some signs with cute bears and bunnies and a maybe a folksy limerick about conserving and some encouragement to wash before wiping. If people used them it would cut way back on our paper consumption.
There are many k-cups that are not from keurig, and they are %100 industrially compostable. You can also put a small compost bucket beside the pods so they would actually be composted. That plus sweetener in paper packets and you have a %100 compostable system. Maybe there are powder creamers out there that come in paper packets too.
Yes I buy Kirkland as well. You're right much cheaper, but same horrendously wasteful packaging.
So, talk to me about the bidet. I've always though that if I hosed myself off real good, then I could consistently use just one wipe with the tp to dry off, instead of needing an unpredictable number of wipings to the same without water. Is this realistic? Do you find it's consistently just one tp wipe per job? Because that right there would be a huge improvement in my material costs.
Edit: Wait, did you say compostable k-cups? I've never heard of that, BRB...
Edit2: I'll be darned. That's great. They're a little more expensive than Kirkland, but I think it's worth it. Very cool, thanks for the tip.
I've used ones with blow-dryers here in Japan and they've universally been too weak to actually fully dry you in a reasonable amount of time. Similar to a really weak hand dryer.
I use really thin 1 ply scott tp that come with 1000 sheets per roll. It actually works pretty good, but I guess for drying from bidets, it gets saturated quickly compared to more luxury tp, so you have to use more.
Maybe if I used the good stuff it would not take a lot. Also TP is a compostable and renewable resource, so I wouldn't worry that much about it's usage.
I was actually going to mention maybe trying one of those cheap bidet add-ons, but then I thought about all the guests who won't know what to do with it and might spray the wall if they touch the control while not sitting down.
Not the OP, but my dad has as beach house that gets rented out weekly over the summer. He pays short-term rental property taxes to the county. No idea if it's the same rate as hotels, but it is a tax above what a non-renting owner would pay.
Well, since the city collects taxes from us, they'd naturally be aware that we're running a business, don't you think? :)
Yes, we have a Colorado sales tax license and a city-issued business license, both hanging on the wall like any other business. Every vacation rental in town -- many dozens of them in all -- does the same. The town is small, neighbors are watchful, and city enforcement is strict.
We pay lodging and sales tax, same as a hotels. My rental rates are about half the cost for the same space in a hotel, and it's way nicer. You don't get a full kitchen in a hotel.
We pump a lot of money into the local economy -- much more than we would if we lived there full time. My cleaning lady made about $8000 off our house last year. Guests tend to be pretty active patrons of restaurants and shops, and when they eat at the home they buy food from a little grocery in town. The nearest supermarket is 45 minutes away.
It sucks that your neighborhood is suffering. But I rather doubt your situation would be much better if all the tourists were staying in hotels rather than airbnb's. Touristy destinations all face challenges, and there are myriad ways a city can screw it up.
But not everywhere is like Miami. A lot of our mountain towns are slowly dying. Some of them of tried to stay alive by legalizing casino gambling. It seems to work, but it turns your town into a casino town. Other towns are trying to navigate a delicate but potentially rewarding transition to being the kind of vacation destinations that people want to stay at for a week or more. Hotels can't help your town get that kind of business. Again, no kitchens. If I can help my town make that transition and also have a successful business for myself, it's a win-win for everybody.
Your story shows an example of doing things the "proper way" - you operate by-the-book, you take responsibility for the property, and you're an active local small biz participant.
The bigger issue is the people not doing these things. There are hosts (and guests) that simply don't give a fuck about others. Hosts (especially ones that don't live in the area) couldn't care less about their impact on the neighborhood as long as money keeps coming into their bank account, and will try their hardest to take shortcuts and avoid responsibility. Some "hosts" are more like wannabe slumlords. "Bad actor" guests also don't care about what happens to a place they are going to leave, which leads to things like trash, disturbances, and stealing.
A problem with Airbnb is that properties are not siloed; there is an environment around them. There's many places on Airbnb that are better than hotels, and there's a lot of economic impact on local communities. Airbnb needs to re-evaluate how these places are part of a community rather than isolated from one.
The "sunshine and rainbows" sentiment behind why Airbnb exists is a nice thought, but the platform is rolling into a snowball of consequences and externalities. Assholes are going to be assholes, so many bad experiences are not from normal transactions, but from assholes using Airbnb to their advantage and Airbnb turning their cheek.
Personally I've had amazing experiences on AirBnB, to the point where I usually try to make an AirBnB work over a hotel. This of course is due to certain hosts going above and beyond the call of duty.
And then I've had experiences where I wonder why I didn't get a hotel for slightly more. Usually in the city where the host owns 20+ properties and really don't give 2 shits about the experience.
I do think this service needs to exist, if only to improve the overall travel experience, but yea they need to do some vetting or figure out a much better pricing structure. I love the idea of living like a local in some apartment building, but so far this experience has usually been pretty subpar for me.
I don't disagree regarding AirBNB specifically, but sweeping generalizations about vacation rentals are destructive in communities that really need them to survive. Dozens of towns across Colorado are depending on this sort of longer-duration vacation tourism for their survival. The ones who do it well will thrive without too much change to their character (and without being colonized by casino companies). And like I said in another comment, hotels are useless for attracting this kind of tourism.
AirBNB should behave better, no doubt. And if they don't, they should be made to behave through thoughtful regulation that doesn't endanger the economy and character of places all over the country that are coming to depend on travelers.
I’ve spent a lot of summer trips hiking around small vacation towns in Colorado, and I’ve always found regular hotels to be a great way to do it. Occasionally I need to drive a bit more, but it’s not too bad.
What I like about hotels is the consistency of service and cleanliness, availability of nearby food or other services.
Don’t get me wrong: even though I’ve had some bad experiences with individual hosts on Airbnb, overall many host rentals are nice too.
I just don’t understand your negative comments towards hotels. They pay their taxes, they bear their own costs of demonstrating compliance with the law, provide a good standard of safety, cleanliness and service.
Obviously the hotel lobbying sucks, but I don’t see how anyone can think it’s worse than what Airbnb does. The hotel lobby is gaming a system in terms of competition, but from within a system overall that is not trying to in principle externalize all the burden onto citizens by skirting taxes.
Airbnb is doing something very different, trying to flip tax collection and demonstration of compliance around to make it an optional nicety they choose to extend to local governments on their own terms.
> I’ve spent a lot of summer trips hiking around small vacation towns in Colorado, and I’ve always found regular hotels to be a great way to do it. Occasionally I need to drive a bit more, but it’s not too bad.
That sounds nice, and it suits a lot of people just fine. But try doing that with a family, and on a limited budget.
I'll give you an example: last year I "rented" my own place for a week with family. We crammed thirteen of us into our house (it's properly equipped to sleep 12 but we've never had that many aside from our own family). My father-in-law took us out to dinner the first night, and we ate breakfast at restaurants most mornings. The cost of food was likely over a thousand dollars for the week, but it could easily have been double or triple that if we'd eaten out every day. As it was, some of our money went to the local grocery store instead of restaurants, and we were able to afford a week-long vacation instead of just a weekend.
You can't do this in a hotel with mini-fridge and a microwave. If you want to bring your family on a week-long vacation in the Colorado Mountains, and if you're not wealthy, then you do it by renting my house, which has a full kitchen, enough rooms, beds, and foldouts for a large family, and costs half or even a quarter of what the same space a hotel would cost.
So it's not that hotels are worse than vacation rentals. They're just different. They serve different markets. If places like mine didn't exist, the groups and families that stay there aren't going to stay in hotels instead; they're not going to come to this town at all, because hotels can't provide comfortable longer-duration vacations that are also affordable for most people.
This is extremely important for ski vacations. Skiing is expensive enough as it is, that most people can afford just a few days a year with the hotel, food, and fuel costs that come with it. But my place can make it downright cheap in comparison.
In a hotel room with an attached suite, this isn’t very hard. Most in the group can stay in small economy rooms, then use the suite for group things or big meals. My extended family (usually groups of 20+, with various budgets) does this also for beach vacations to book oceanside hotels pretty cheaply, and we also make use of shared spaces, like picnic areas or large table spaces you can use for free at some lodges.
I’ve found that groceries in and around big ski centers are often much more expensive than low-end takeout or a pizza.. plus you have to have someone in the group spend time cooking and cleaning instead of just enjoying the trip. Personally, if my budget was too limited to avoid that, or I couldn’t afford one suite at the hotel, it would be a sign that it’s not a financially good idea to plan the trip so soon and I should save money longer before going.
The trade-offs are different for everybody, which makes me feel like these just-so anecdotes simply should just be omitted from any discussion about the overall scumminess of Airbnb business practices & lobbying vs hotels.
Hey, if you're ok with fast food and take-out, that's great. Nothing wrong with that, and it gives you flexibility. But if you have to do it in a hotel up here in the mountains, you'll still spend multiples more money than you will at a place like mine -- a place that also gives you a full kitchen.
> you have to have someone in the group spend time cooking and cleaning instead of just enjoying the trip.
That person is me. I love to cook, and I assure you it's quite possible to enjoy a vacation while making crepes for your friends. :)
> it would be a sign that it’s not a financially good idea to plan the trip so soon and I should save money longer before going.
Or, if you were able to stay in a home instead of a hotel, you could save enough money to make the trip affordable now, instead of waiting until later in life to enjoy it.
It seems like you might just really like hotels. I think that's fine, and I think a lot of people agree with you. Vacations are what you make of them, and it sounds like you've really got your act together. I admire that. But it also seems like you're trying to apply your own standards and experience generally to everyone else. I'm pretty sure if you asked the folks who rented my place for a week over Christmas what they think, they'll say they'd rather not pay twice as much money for a couple of small hotel rooms in Dillon with no kitchen. Because like it or not, that's my competition.
> “Or, if you were able to stay in a home instead of a hotel, you could save enough money to make the trip affordable now, instead of waiting until later in life to enjoy it.”
I’m saying if I need to book a house rental because saving on the margins with home cooking might make or break my ability to afford the vacation, then I clearly don’t have enough money for the trip to be a responsible purchase until saving more.
So almost by definition, considerations that happen at exactly that margin decision boundary aren’t very applicable for reasoning between the two options.
> “That person is me. I love to cook, and I assure you it's quite possible to enjoy a vacation while making crepes for your friends. :)”
I love cooking too, but it ruins a vacation if I have to cook, as opposed to getting to cook, particularly meaning I would spend much more on high-end ingredients to make special meals that are much more expensive than eating at even medium-quality restaurants.. plus you still end up wasting vacation time on clean up and prep like chopping, or if things need to bake a while then someone’s stuck in the kitchen potentially long before the meal.
Any way you look at it, unless you’re doing something like a cabin vacation where all the recreation is right in and around your lodging all day, then needing to devote money and time to grocery shopping, prep, cooking and clean up is a pretty expensive chore in terms of time & money to commit to during a vacation. Clearly even if some people like it, you can imagine a lot of other people don’t see that as an effective trade-off.
But marginal cost differences aren't what's driving demand for vacation rentals. The difference in cost is huge, and there's no way around that in a lot of tourist destinations. A nice vacation rental in my town that can sleep a dozen people can be had for under $300 in the high season. Three hotel rooms, with less space, smaller beds, and no kitchen, will cost you two to three times that. Don't take my word for it; look at rates right now in and around Dillon/Silverthorn. Connected suites and a kitchenette might be the exclusive realm of luxury resort hotels, maybe a casino hotel if you're willing to drive another hour or so, and the price will be higher yet.
We're pretty far in weeds here with talk of ingredients and prep and whatnot. Like I said, for family accommodation, with the flexibility of a kitchen and laundry, there is no competition of any kind from hotels in my neck of the woods, and there probably never will be. It's not even close. My only competition is from other vacation rentals, and all us little guys currently contribute a big chunk of our town's tourism revenue.
I utterly despise hotels for vacations. They always make me feel stressed out and claustrophobic. Waking up ungodly early to make the breakfast buffet (and no kitchen for a leisurely breakfast), dodging housekeeping (and worrying about something getting stolen), universally shitty wifi, sometimes no fridge to keep your own drinks in, expensive laundry.
Whole-home-style rentals are always more relaxing, and the only reason I've used AirBnB. I have friends who feel the same way, so I'm not alone. Are we a minority? Possibly. But we exist.
I’ve stayed in several whole-home rentals that were far more stressful than hotels. Broken fixtures, water outages, disgusting roaches seen in living spaces and bedrooms, lack of amenities that were promised in the rental description, bad neighborhoods where my car was broken into, and hosts who try to charge me by claiming I didn’t properly take away trash or recycling even when I followed instructions perfectly.
Meanwhile, hotels have a great track record of safety, cleanliness and consistency of service from one place to the next. They’re not perfect, but I’m a big fan of saving just a small additional amount of money to stay in a hotel.
To boot, hotels actually pay their taxes and I don’t have to feel bad about the booking portal company for hotels hustling municipalities and finding ways to lie/cheat/steal to avoid fair burdens to demonstrate compliance with tax laws, like with Airbnb.
Yes definitely. The degree varies by establishment. Most of the shops downtown -- the art stores, rock shop, gift and clothing shops in particular -- are utterly dependent on tourism. Locals don't buy local art and crafts, and they don't buy leather jackets and hats tastefully embossed with the town's name.
The town's grocer is pretty dependent on vacationers. Locals do more of the 45 minute drive to Walmart once a week.
The restaurants in town get more local business, but I'm aware from comments and reviews that our guests eat out a lot. Even with a full kitchen, it's common for people to eat out more on vacation than they would normally at home, especially when the restaurants are seen to be part of a town's charm and reputation. Which is why I put out the menus on a side table in my home's entryway, just like the hotels do in their lobbies.
When we bring family there, we eat out a lot. We walk downtown to get ice cream in the little candy store. We never do that at home in Denver. I don't take the kids to ice cream at home. That's what vacations are for! I say, "You are naughty, awful, disappointing children, but if you be good from now on maybe we'll go on vacation again and get ice cream". I know I'm not the only one.
Any time anyone says they "want to pay taxes", you know they are lying. No one anywhere wants to pay - no one looks forward to it.
Not that I'm a fan of big government, but I don't understand why, if they really are just ignoring the law in most jurisdictions (which they are), none of these states just issue arrest warrants for the people in charge of these decisions? Why isn't there an outstanding warrant for the CEO of AirBnB from any one of the 50 US states for flagrant tax evasion? Or even going further to actually request the state where that CEO is present in to be arrested and extradited to that state? The CEO can't possibly claim they didn't know this was an issue. So then the battle will be forced in court for them to prove that they weren't responsible for collecting the tax and that if instead the property owners were in fact responsible, that AirBnB wasn't guilty of facilitating criminal tax evasion.
I'm sick and tired of these Silicon Valley companies deciding that their big idea is to decentralize so that they can ignore regulations and licensing requirements by saying "we're just a platform, the users need to do that". Same bullshit with Uber claiming their drivers aren't employees but rather "independent contractors", even though Uber sets all the rules, prices, etc. I've never heard of an independent contractor who can't determine how much they charge.
Similarly, these AirBnB places aren't legally zoned for the activity they are engaging in, nor are virtually any of the property owners licensed to do business as a lodging facility or registered and authorized to collect the occupancy taxes. AirBnB knows this and the grand scale of the illegal activity, at bare minimum, proves that the purpose of the platform is to circumvent the laws/regulations but not with an actual loophole, just by ignoring them and hoping they can grow fast enough so that they aren't just shut down hard.
I, as an individual want to lay taxes and I want them to be put to good use. I also think my income bracket pays too little taxes.
I want a thriving, stable society and I’m well aware on an intellectual level that if faced with the constant decision whether I should donate here or donate there or pay more for child-care so that they can subsidize people with less income, I’ll become overwhelmed and fail. I already fail at deciding if and where to direct an end of year donation.
A thriving society needs money to serve all the needs that a thriving society has: infrastructure, education, governance, just to name a few. I don’t always agree how and where tax money is spent. I also sometimes feel cheated when paying taxes, but more often than not it’s because I see someone else, possibly a large Corp such as AirBnB actively avoid paying their due share.
So please, make me pay taxes, but make everyone else pay theirs.
"make me pay taxes, but make everyone else pay theirs"
If you want to pay, as you stated, no one needs to force you. That was the point of my original statement. It sounds like you approve, in general, of the tax structure and the manner in which money is spent - which is totally fine. But no one needs to make you do anything that you already claim to want to do. To be clear, it sounds like you want what the taxes pay for and that's entirely different than wanting to pay. Paying is just a reality that we have to with. When I go to a restaurant, I want the food. I don't want to pay, it's just a requirement of obtaining what I desire. If for some reason the restaurant told me my meal was free, I would never be like "oh, no no. I want to pay you for this meal".
If you really want to pay taxes and feel the tax rate for your bracket is too low, you are more than welcome to make a donation to the treasury at any time:
https://www.pay.gov/public/form/start/23779454
You can also skip claiming deductions on your tax return to increase your liability and reduce/eliminate your refund (assuming you get one). This also eliminates the stress related to the end of year donations you mentioned.
It also sounds like he wants to pay higher taxes but only if that means forcing others to pay higher taxes, otherwise he could simply do as you suggested and pay more via less deductions, etc. It seems like a common leftist ideal, where in example, celebrities and politicians decry fossil fuels in the name of global warming but do absolutely nothing to set an example -- even doing the opposite.
Your claim is that no one wants to pay tax. I think Xylakant disproved your claim. Maybe you want to modify your claim that someone wants to pay tax so long as everyone else does the same?
> When I go to a restaurant, I want the food. I don't want to pay, it's just a requirement of obtaining what I desire.
IME, most people do want to exchange something for the goods and services they consume. For some, if not only so they can complain about them. I personally don't like handouts, and will go to lengths to avoid them.
So this is the new neo-liberal globalism, same game, just younger millenials doing it to each other. Airbnb is detrimental and harmful to the local socioeconomic dynamics.
Another classic YC production, so it seems, on top of the other 'questionable' startup investments.
A drunk airbnb user tried to break into a neighbor's house around 11 pm last week while the residents were inside. He was lost and thought he was at his rental, but that wasn't apparent to anyone else in the beginning, so my wife gets a call for help from another neighbor and we go to check it out.
When we get there, we discover the assailant has been treed on a shed roof by the woman whose door he had beaten on. She was home alone with her baby at the time. She was (understandably) waving a ball-peen hammer at him and shouting.
Let's call him Trey.
Trey is around 6' 3" and a bit on the husky side. He is maybe 25 and he is wearing a worn out Auburn hat and a nice polo shirt. Trey is crying and refusing to speak to any of the small crowd that has gathered, some of whom who are darkly muttering about burglars and drugs. Trey is talking into his phone, quietly, holding it like a slice of pizza.
Trey has called his mom.
My SO and I figure out what has happened about the same time. "Hey buddy, are you looking for your airbnb?" I called.
Luckily, we were able to de-escalate before Metro PD arrived or Trey was beaten to death with a hammer by a 5' tall woman. It turns out that Trey had given his Uber driver the wrong adress on the way home from Broadway; he was supposed to be about one street over. We get a hold of the groom whose bachelor party Trey was a part of, and the police give Trey a ride home.
This is the USA, I'm surprised he wasn't shot. Not joking at all, your story is actually kinda funny but it could have gone so much worse at so many points.
Is that AirBnB's fault? Is it the hosts fault? Is it the cities fault for not regulating this? Is it our society's fault for allowing drinking to the point of forgetting your address?
I think in the end it's just a series of unfortunate events, that give you a really great anecdote, which might have turned out much worse. I wouldn't claim this as evidence for or against AirBnB but man did it make me laugh.
Good on you for de-escalating the situation and keeping your head! Hopefully, Trey had the decorum to apologize later on and try to make things right.
I don't think Airbnb is a bad thing by any means; it's our go-to for day trips in many cases. I can also understand the need for cities having licencing and/or residency rules!
He wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for AirBNB. He likely could have asked the concierge at the hotel he was staying at for help finding his room in his drunken state.
He also wouldn't be there if his friend wasn't getting married and he didn't go to a bachelor party, along with a million other vendors and people he interacted with prior to getting irresponsibly inebriated and harassing a stranger. Regardless of Airbnb's legality or whatnot, the blame in this specific story lies simply on the person who chose to get too drunk.
Agreed. We had a similar situation in my town a few years back. The homeowner shot and killed a drunken intruder in the middle of the night. It turned out to be a drunk college student who didn’t know where they were. The homeowner was charged, but later acquitted by a jury.
I was glad to hear the jury agreed that the action was appropriate.
Drinking to excess has consequences, including death. Either from liver failure or lead poisionong.
He also wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for: The Host, Himself, air travel?, bachelor party?, bars he visited, brands of alcohol he drank, Uber who took him to the wrong address, His parents, his grand parents.
What if instead of the host using AirBnB he was just a local Bed and Breakfast (those existed before AirBnb). Who's fault is it then?
I forget the term for it, but there is a legal definition that limits liability in a lot of these kinds of cases because it can get very broad. I personally, find your assertion that AirBnB is to blame to be too broad. I can easily think of a situation that this same scenario happens without AriBnB.
This individual fucked up, the situation was handled really well by the OP and a few others.
Conversely, I'd say that from the article AirBNB fighting regulation and to not pay taxes is their fault.
Trey got too drunk. Trey couldn't remember where he was staying. Trey tried (unwittingly) to break into the poor woman's house. hell, Trey was the one who decided to go to the wedding in the first place. it's Trey's fault.
it doesn't seem like you actually disagree, but I wasn't sure where to put this post in the somewhat disjointed thread.
Correct, I should have not said shot and more said had a gun waiving at him.
I would say however, that while shootings are rare in the US, so are events where people run to grab a weapon. We can agree that the prevalence of guns means there is a high chance a gun is the most dangerous weapon available.
I would guess that in events where there is banging on a house guns are "involved" more in the USA than in other countries. It'd be hard to collect that data because a gun in the hand of one person can quickly de-escalate a situation.
Guns are common in the US, but most gun owners are not out looking for a chance to use them. Even those who support carry their gun with them everywhere do not pull their gun just because they can, and most have enough training to not pull their gun too soon. (pulling a gun can defuse the situation when the other party realizes it is serious, but it can also escalate the situation when the other turns to the fight side of fight of flight)
In my neighborhood (SF Mission) there's a shooting at least once a week... seems like mostly on Sundays. So it just depends where in the U.S. you're living.
The vast majority of shootings in Chicago do not happen in the inner city (aka the Loop). Most of these are on the South side and West side of the city
That can also happen to someone just staying with a friend. Therefore, the only reasonable course of action is to ban all people from staying with their friends.
I think hotel zoning should be loosened and maybe some of the regs.
There's clearly demand.
I don't buy the idea hotels are disruptive, in my urban community there are zero, but tons of commercial space there'd be no problem at all with one across the street.
In fact, it'd be good for business. Tons of offices, zero hotel space. Not good.
Some innovation in management i.e. no checkin, cleaner only come when you've gone, etc. etc. and we might get some material efficiencies.
I used to live in a flat where I was the only permanent resident on the floor and the rest were Airbnbs. My life was hell while I lived there.
I don't think most people realise what a massive negative impact these places have on the people living near by. Even if you are a good guest you may not think you are having a negative impact but you are.
I think tourists have to understand that when they use Airbnb they are giving a massive middle finger to the locals. You do not have a right to a cheap holiday and it should not come at the expense of those just trying to live their lives.
This was in Hong Kong if anyone was wondering so all the America specific issues don't apply.
The reporting on New Orleans is frustrating. They quote city officials complaining about the registration system being shut down and losing years of work, and they quote Airbnb saying that the system was shut down because the city changed the law and made it ineffective.
Seems like the journalist could've figure out what really happened here and just reported it rather than printing two conflicting accounts and wiping their hands of it.
Airbnb is such a racket, and it annoys me that they haven't historically been given the same critical treatment that Uber has. In many ways, it's way more discriminatory and more damaging to residents of a city and almost the complete opposite of Uber/Lyft (which benefits residents and visitors alike).
The only people Airbnb benefits in a given city are the landlords/hosts. It's not a "neutral" effect on other residents - it either crowds out supply that could otherwise go to a full-time resident or creates a safety/quality of life issue for neighbors who live adjacent to these properties that are being constantly filled with strangers.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 329 ms ] threadAlso, messing around near people's homes tends to illicit a primal response.
And tax evasion is a completely different topic, that is not why Airbnbs are shut down. Every industry has tax problems.
Another problem is that the proliferation of this practice seems to be disturbing the already tense situation on the housing market. Meeting an odd couple from the other side of the world is fun. Realizing that you can't find affordable flat to buy in a city because a significant portion of it is scooped up for renting and short-term leases - that drives up societal discontent.
There's also the meta level issue that holding site operators responsible for the actions of their users is a very slippery slope. Anything that chips away at the communications decency act could have terrible effects for the internet as we know it[2]. For example, as it currently stands if I were to libelously claim that Paul Graham has a meth lab in his basement[3], I could be charged with a crime, but not HN. If the CDA were weakened, blog operators could be liable for comments posted on them. I don't think anyone reasonable wants that.
I think SF's law did a good job balancing things - hosts need to be licensed by the city (the app lists their license #) and can IIRC only lease 90 days out of the year. I looked at a recent receipt for a stay, and they even collected taxes.
[1] https://www.eff.org/mention/making-civil-liberties-case-airb...
[2] https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Airbnb-HomeAway...
[3] To be clear this is a hyperbolic example, and I have no reason to think PaulG has anything illegal in his basement :)
From sports teams to manufacturing, our industries are fueled by externalizing the costs (cleanup, infrastructure, social services, etc).
Locals need to collectively take back their agency in order for things to change. Stop manning their front desks, occupying their cubicles, leaving neighbors and families behind for long commutes on crumbling roads in tin cans.
Stay home and work together as neighbors.
Fuck the locals, there's tourists that want to enjoy the sun in the summer and arabs that need to invest their petrol dollars.
You don't make a lot of money through AirBnB if you are keeping the place empty.
If airbnb hosts aren't paying taxes properly, then the hosts are committing a crime, not airbnb. Cities may want airbnb to collect taxes on behalf of hosts, because it makes enforcement much easier. That's a reasonable thing to want. However I don't see what conceivable jurisdiction Palm Beach county has over Airbnb that would enable it to coerce airbnb to collect said taxes. Accordingly, I can't imagine why anyone in airbnb's position wouldn't sue, in order to avoid the formation of precedent that allows every municipality in the country to impose whatever requirements they want on airbnb.
You may think airbnb is a net negative for many communities, and you're entitled to your opinion, but that's not evidence that crimes have been committed.
As for why US Attorneys and State AGs aren't bringing criminal charges, probably because they are actual lawyers who understand that you would have to provide evidence that a law has been broken.
Our Airbnb got shut down after a year by the local government. It wasn't a safety thing, it was a competition thing. Our Red Roof Inn charges 60 a night, but we charged 80 a night.
Our reviews could make me tear up. People saying they had the best stay of their life.
Asking them what they wanted for breakfast, hot tub temp, Nerf guns, and chatting. People loved it.
But we stopped. Government....
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: downvoted for asking a question you disagree with? What is this reddit?
If entire apartments are made into AirBnbs, there's less apartments in the market which turns the prices up, what's so hard to grasp ?
It's naive to only look at one factor and ignore the others, yet that's often how far this debate goes.
It seems very unlikely AirBnBs will "take less space" than a hotel. Hotels are quite space-efficient, given they're largely small, single rooms.
> There's a finite amount of tourism/visitors
Yes, but that could be much larger than the current level. A discussion in the context of Edinburgh: https://www.hotelmanagement.net/own/edinburgh-looks-to-limit...
It might be finite but it's exploding. Even semi remote places get crowded these days.
https://ourworldindata.org/tourism
This is just passing the buck. If AirBnB is driving up rents you have a supply problem, not an AirBnB problem.
Do you know the cost of destroying + rebuilding bigger buildings in a city center ? Much higher than closing a few semi legal "airbnb hotels". And that's if you can even build in the city at all.
As much as it pains me to use a reductionist metaphor, I'm going to. Suppose my community has a finite amount of resource X available to us that we need to live and and we only require 75% of that resource. A company comes along and offers individuals a whole pile a money to sell of their claims to the resource, so much so that the company now controls 90% of that resource. The company begins boxing up that resource and shipping it off to people who will pay more money for that resource. My community now has meet their need another way, and probably in a more expensive way.
Regardless of how the resource should have been managed, and what the authorities in my community should have done to ensure we had the necessary access to our resource I think I can still point a finger at the company say "If that company didn't exist they wouldn't control our resource."
Obviously the metaphor is riddled with unconsidered complexities but I use it as a way of raising the question of at least an ounce of culpability of the company.
> The company begins boxing up that resource and shipping it off to people who will pay more money for that resource.
Unless you live in Christiana this is probably already the case. AirBnBs tend to be in expensive neighborhoods.
First we couldn't buy and we were forced to rent because wealthy folks would buy the real estate in bulk to rent it and/or use it as a speculative investment, driving prices up and making it unafordable. Now they don't even bother to rent it long-term to locals, they're better off putting it on AirBnB for tourists at a much higher rate. Try renting a flat long-term in Lisbon these days and tell me how it goes.
I obviously don't know your situation and maybe there was some overreach in your case but in some cities government meddling is absolutely necessary lest the place turns into a Disneyland resort for wealthy tourists.
Besides you make it sound like enabling more tourism is unambiguously a good thing. It's true that it has positive side-effects (mostly on the economy) but it also leads to degradation, overcrowding and, as we were discussing, an explosion of the cost of life for the locals. I often hear tourists complaining that they don't get an "authentic" experience abroad, how could they when the place they visit have been deserted by the locals?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/travel/airbnb-miami-beach...
> Airbnb and Miami Beach Are at War. Travelers Are Caught in the Crossfire.
> The Florida city, like others around the country, is trying to control the home sharing market. Renters often find out their weekend home is illegal when they get a knock on the door.
Flamingo Park being one of them.
Second, whatever the problem is (I assume rowdy, drunken college students?), it's a human behavior problem, not a problem with a service that enables value exchange like Airbnb.
I moved there 9 years ago and have spent the last 8 years living on Ocean Drive in South Beach. When I first moved there the neighborhood was full of high-class tourists, a lot of Europeans. The beach was not extremely crowded, you had nice restaurants and upscale shops and the vibes you were getting were similar to what you would see in the Mediterranean (Spain / south France).
Within 3 years of Airbnb expanding, the character of the neighborhood changed completely. By 2014, a lot of restaurants and shops had closed down, to be replaced by 5 dollar souvenir shops (surf style!), kebab and pizza places. Noise levels increased dramatically. Crime too. This kept getting worse and today I would describe the place as little more than a crime-ridden hood. The ghetto criminal element is numerous and ever present. The classy European tourists have left, never to return. Ocean Drive is barricaded by tons of police every weekend (soon to be every night). The beach itself is full of trash and drunken, noisy, unruly people. Spring Break (and memorial day weekend) used to be finite events. Now the same chaos is happening every night. Street racing, fights, urinating in public, condoms, dog and human feces on sidewalks, all of that and more under a lingering stench of weed smoke.
If that's not testament to how Airbnb can ruin entire communities, I don't know what is.
The locals are complaining [1], [2] but nothing seems to change except more money being thrown at police and local interests.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/Residents-for-a-safe-Ocean-Drive-13...
[2] https://www.facebook.com/SouthBeachSludgeReport/
[3] https://wsvn.com/news/local/video-shows-spring-breakers-atta...
Typical night in SOBE.
> I moved there 9 years ago and have spent the last 8 years > living on Ocean Drive in South Beach.
Hello neighbor! Interesting connection - I never linked the two together but it's certainly possible.
The story of Miami Beach the last 5 years is so true and so sad.
Your idea is that AirBnb provided cheaper lodging that made South Beach open to people outside of the European tourists that the hotels were targeting?
I'd blame Winter Music Conference and the constant stream of other huge party events as much as anything.
These people have been enabled by dirt cheap Airbnb prices. Traditional hotels have higher prices but also enforce codes of behavior that tend to limit if not outright ban the incidents I described. Simply, you can't get away with behaving like that in a hotel. You have to keep up appearances. Even in a party town like Miami Beach. Not to mention there's competition for the rooms with regular tourists. Airbnb allows a gang of 20 ppl to rent a single room and come here to wreak havoc.
Also, look at sites such as Hotel Tonight. Personally seen < 50 a night rooms.
The hotel industry distortion field is probably stronger in Miami Beach than almost anywhere because so much money depends on it.
I also don't believe that most the Airbnb rentals on Miami Beach are particularly cheap. The one nearby that I know of charges many thousands per night as its a mansion.
Spring Break is fairly new to the area. Prior to that the college students would hit Daytona, Panama City, or Key West. And long before that Fort Lauderdale was the Spring Break destination (showing my age).
The traditional family-owned restaurants started being driven out in 2014, to be replaced by new investor backed concepts because the rent was too high. Joe's Stone Crabs owns it spot and isn't going anywhere, I can't say the same for the restaurants around it. AirBnB didn't cause restaurants to close, speculators did.
Finally, it is the season of the snowbird. Every beach is packed with foreign tourists staying in their vacation homes on 6 month visas. When June arrives they'll leave, they always do.
Also, prior to this spring break there was only a few reasons to go to Ocean, Spring Break, Memorial Day, and Fourth of July. Now, city council and local organizations have planned street festivals basically every weekend between here and eternity.
All to say that very little of what's going on on Ocean Dr has anything to do with AirBnB.
And when I talked about shop/restaurants closing I emphasized their replacements. It's one thing for restaurants to close in Miami Beach (happens every year). It's quite another for same restaurant to close and be replaced by a kebab or pizza place. Entire streets that were lined with upscale shops have been turned into cash extraction mechanisms for unsophisticated, drunken passers by. What does that tell you about the character of the neighborhood?
Today's SOBE bears little resemblance to SOBE of the pre-Airbnb past.
[1] http://www.blackbeachweek.com/urbanbeachweek1.html
Miami real estate was especially hit hard after the financial crisis of 2008. Rich investors, American, European, and South American, were snapping up South Beach properties for pennies on the dollar and reselling them for tidy profits. I lived in an apartment in Flamingo Park that was almost 50% absentee European owners. The trendy European neighbors you were referring to upthread are the same ones renting through AirBnB while they are back home. Even though it was against the condo bylaws (long before code enforcement cracked down) they did it anyway.
> It's quite another for same restaurant to close and be replaced by a kebab or pizza place.
Because when you are on a month to month lease, which speculators love to do before razing everything before building condos <cough>Wynwood</cough>, you tend to get cheap popup places that can move in and out quickly. A pizza place just needs cheap tables and an oven. Decor and kitchen workstation planning isn't a consideration.
> Today's SOBE bears little resemblance to SOBE of the pre-Airbnb past.
I agree but not for the reasons you think. 80s South Beach was geriatric, 90s South Beach was club grungie, giving way to 00s gay/artsy South Beach, to gentrification through the 10s, until here we are today. It's trendy but tourist trendy.
Locals have already moved on to Surfside and Hollywood. Cleaner lest crowded beaches.
Surfer's Paradise and the Gold Coast saw >40k students in 2011, about 10% of the total number of graduates, and the event is gaining in popularity. Other locations also see a large influx of young adults reveling together one last time before life comes at them. Many of these beach towns have had a pull-and-tug relationship with the event and short-term rentals have always been a part of it.
So, the issue is not AirBnB and it's effects. It's that young people tend to be inconsiderate.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309380/
https://www.schoolies.com/what-is-schoolies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoolies_week
So this is local governments trying to railroad an online information/marketplace/intermediation firm into becoming a tax collector. The local governments can't practically collect the taxes, so they're extra-legally trying to bully AirBNB into doing it.
Business models are changing along with the societal changes in communications technology. Governments are pretending to themselves that this isn't a society-level change they should adapt to. (How would collecting such taxes be much different from collecting sales taxes?)
It's not "railroading", it's called "the regulated collection of reasonable usage fees." It's how cities are run, and have always been run.
If Airbnb doesn't like it -- they don't need to go into the hospitality business in these places.
but they're a technology company!
That's a dangerous precedent there. Any company that acts as online information/marketplace/intermediation is automatically "in the business?" That's a dangerous precedent to set. Does that mean that reddit is the defacto author & publisher of everything on reddit? Amazon is culpable as the manufacturer of everything it sells? (Not just Amazon Basics.) Something about that strikes me as not quite right and very dangerous.
No one is entitled to their particular business model; I don't see a reason why a company has to be automatically in the green because someone looked at what they're doing and gave it a name. The changing landscape of communications technologies enables things both good and bad, and it turns out that "burning through truckloads of VC money to get away with breaking laws and dumping externalities on people" is something that's both enabled by new technologies and a huge negative for society.
If they were Craigslist, where they were actually just a passthrough for transactions conducted entirely outside their platform, then asking them to collect sales taxes would be unreasonable.
Well, there is what airbnb say it is, and what it really is in reality.
In a lot of places airbnb is a way to make big bucks via short term touristic rentals (coupled with no tax) instead of renting to actual people living in the city. This itself has creates many problems for local communities.
I've seen houses with 4-5 airbnb room and professional cleaners etc ... it's an hotel, minus the security, minus the insurances.
> Business models are changing along with the societal changes in communications technology.
The other way to interpret it is: "disrupting tech startups are destroying communities and local businesses, by creating / enabling tentacular monopolies which operate above the law".
How do you explain that airbnb payed less than 100k euros in 2016 in France, its 2nd biggest market at the time. [0]
All these companies are going through seriously sketchy processes to make money [1] [2] [3], they just transfer their costs and responsabilities to foreign countries, local communities or their own employees. These things might fly in the US/UK (and even there people are fighting) but they sure won't fly in a lot of EU countries.
[0] http://www.leparisien.fr/economie/airbnb-n-a-paye-que-92-944...
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/16/we-company-ceo-in-hot-wate...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/19/gig-economy...
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46018104
At every turn their solution is to sue small towns and cities so they can continue to extract wealth from our neighborhoods.
Disgusting.
On some level people have the right to do whatever they please with their property. That's kind of the point of ownership to begin with.
And on some level they don't (or, perhaps more precisely, on some level it's never entirely their property if they aren't the sovereign—even if they are a member of a group which collectively constitutes the sovereign), that's kind of the point of sovereignty.
Ownership literally doesn't mean you can do whatever you please, that's the point of the top-level comment here.
Get a social housing unit, pay €500 per month. Rent it out for €90 per day on AirBNB. Profit.
An HOA is a community-owned development. The individual lots are owned subject to the (HOA) rules of the development. That subordination is quite literally written into the deeds of the individual plots. So in this case, the other owners have a right to tell the individual owner what they can't do on their property.
Down vote with no answer?
Or maybe just vote manipulation.
More than a few. Check out AirBnB listing in Miami Beach, for example.
If we're only talking about cities, I totally agree though. I've stayed at a couple of apartments that were bought solely for airbnb use, and managed along a dozen other ones by the owner.
If someone buys or rents a property that is bigger than they need, for the sole purpose of AirBnB-ing the extra space, that is a commercial mini-hotel.
In some jurisdictions this is probably a good thing, where you don't have the tourism volume to warrant building a proper hotel but where there is demand for tourism accomodations; in other jurisdictions it represents a wantonly inefficient use of real estate resources.
This has been my experience. Super-hosts with more than one listing. Apartments/homes that were obviously full-time rentals. So, not run by big corporations, but definitely run by somebody who has enough money on hand to buy property as a business venture.
I'd wager that's 80% of their business, nowadays.
AirBnB doesn't make the little guy make a few extra bucks renting out a room as much as it makes those who already have money buy up studios and one bedroom apartments. The effect is that such apartments get more expensive for those who just need a place to live.
If only there were some way of increasing the number of housing units on a given area of land, this problem could be solved and we could have enough housing for everybody. This kind of technology could really ameliorate such problems.
https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/urban-sprawl-housin...
Those "landlords/property investors" have enough cashflow and collateral to continue to expand their portfolios and get lines of credit to do so, which puts 'normal people' looking for housing at a disadvantage.
In high-demand housing areas, there needs to be more housing regulation to balance the businesses vs. individuals. It's good that there are cool places that encourage visitors to temporarily stay and spend locally, but there are also people wanting to live there that would also spend locally. The property businesses are making such a $/day killing on Airbnbs that they would rather keep that system than rent units for people to live there (and have to adhere to all the landlord laws).
Airbnb is a convenient loophole that offers more money with less effort as long as demand is high.
The principle of supply and demand, or basic economics. If demand for units is satisfied and an agent keeps buying and attempting to rent units, the price will collapse until the agent can no longer afford or buy them.
You may want to spend some time here: https://mru.org/courses/principles-economics-microeconomics
But, again, I don't have a horse in this race.
A long-term rental may not be permanent, but it's still a home for the duration of the rental. An AirBnB is not, by definition.
I can see this being an issue in a city, where housing is hard to find. But that's not the case in this instance.
You can see it is such a convenient place for illegal business and money laundering. Some Airbnb has hidden camera for you know what it does. And as a matter of fact, many Airbnb in Japan is ran by the yakuza. They will use a pretty girl as profile pic. When you call the host, it is a yakuza guy respond to you. Actually, no problem with that as long as it is a smooth trade, but if something happens, god knows who can help you. And Airbnb only care about the host and don't give a fuck about guest.
I won't say don't use Airbnb, but just be reminded that use it if you can take some risk for some adventure.
The McDonaldization of our neighborhoods continues.
Outsiders feeling owed a “piece of the action” makes it harder for people to live and work in these communities.
They demand more and more concessions to keep their profits going up, sapping attention and resources, and most importantly, time for discussing the needs of the locals.
I was on the association board, it's kinda thankless job as we had to deal with this house.
We got the usual riot act / pushback from the folks operating that short term rental about how the association was terrible and oh man the government and how we just were protecting hotels (like man, I don't have any connection to hotels...). They tried to organize the other folks who rented out their places (traditional long term rentals) to push us off the board, they actually got several to go along with it, but they failed (it wasn't even close, we had a limit on how many units could rent out at once anyway so they never were going to have enough numbers).
In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association / neighborhood. Fortunately the law was on our side and they eventually sold the unit and left.
Local governments are run by the locals and they should get to decide where businesses like that operate and zone and so forth. The idea that Airbnb should just get to be the almighty "disruptor" and land on your neighborhood with no recourse is pretty absurd at face value, especially when the argument is usually about how folks should have some freedom, but what they mean is their freedom, not the communities.
By joining a HOA, you've delegated away to the collective the right to dictate to your neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property. In your case, the system worked - because you are in a HOA. If people want to exert that kind of collectivist control over their neighbors, that's the kind of organization they should be buying homes in.
But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property? All kinds of small businesses are routinely run out of residential zoned properties. "Renting a room" seems like the kind of small business that's ideal for this situation - it takes no more infrastructure to house a vacation rental than it does to house a longer-term resident. "Hotels" require employees and elevators and truckloads of supplies delivered weekly; vacation rentals have none of that, and so the comparison makes little sense beyond "they are noisy". Leaseholders can also throw parties and be disruptive; there is an existing legal process to deal with noise complaints.
This category of complaint seems like a thin veneer around the core of truth that people who sink a colossal chunk of their nest egg and future earnings into one asset are knee-jerk averse to anything perceived as a threat to it.
Ha. Don't come in Europe cities. There _are_ regulations in cities about that. And rightly so.
Here come the emotionally and ideologically charged appeals to authority.
Property rights are usually a literal appeal to authority (e.g. a community or a government).
You are so hopped up on your ideology that you attributed some argument to my post that I wasn't even making. My post was criticizing the person for not even attempting to make an argument and instead devolving into just saying "you are wrong, I'm right".
Anyway, I find it interesting how angry people get about people using their homes as an additional source of income. I guess people just need a scapegoat for every little thing wrong in their lives. Look at some of the horrible anecdotes in this thread, there is someone actually blaming an increase in crime in Miami on Airbnb.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
AirBnB is making it easier for individual people to ignore these rules, and the to date enforcement hasn't been particularly strong.
Or maybe buy in a city that makes the decision to not allow that kind of rental?
I don't see a significant difference in a step up from the association I was in where you deemed that ok, to a city making the same decision.
I was just following his logic that he felt it was ok that the associating decided and that if a city decided the same, then I don't see much difference.
Because any livable set of laws recognizes that externalities are a thing and need to be addressed.
I, as a homeowner, can't start amassing a large pile of radioactive material on my property. I can't start a home-based waste incineration company, even if the structure exists entirely on my property. There's a ton of stuff I can't do, because there are laws prohibiting it.
If the laws right now don't address "you can't invite enough strangers to your house such that it causes a lot of waste or damage to your neighborhood," then that's just because we didn't have broadly accessible systems in place to invite those strangers; it doesn't mean that that's now or has ever been okay, just like collecting a pile of radioactive waste in my backyard hasn't been okay since we learned about the harms of radiation poisoning.
"Why can't people do x?" Because we live in a society.
The local laws which are at least indirectly decided by the people who live there decide whether people have a right to do business in residential areas or not.
> This category of complaint seems like a thin veneer around the core of truth that people who sink a colossal chunk of their nest egg and future earnings into one asset are knee-jerk averse to anything perceived as a threat to it.
I'm not a homeowner. I just dislike the idea of a company profiting off blatant disregard of the law. I personally don't really care about rentals, but if you want to do them then I hold the opinion you should get the laws changed to allow for them.
If anything, allowing vacation rentals would actually increase the value of homes in that area because it probably increases the rent.
While people have qualms with the effect of short term rentals on housing markets, they usually don't show up on an HOA level.
The real problem is they were being bad neighbors, not that they were short-term neighbors, and once your neighbor starts to ruin your ability to enjoy your home you have a just argument to take action.
The fact that what you do with your own property often has direct effects on your neighbors. This is why zoning regulations exist, for example. And noise ordinances. And building codes. There isn't a magical forcefield that ends at your property line that prevents what you're doing from having an adverse affect on others.
Just like people who don't like noise should be careful about living close to other people, people who like to be left alone to do what they want with their own property need to take the same considerations into mind.
Texas has barely any zoning and it’s doing fine.
There is tons of zoning in Texas; I think you're thinking of Houston.
This is literally the core of the concept of zoning.
If you don't like it work against zoning laws, but there's generally a consensus on the broader topic here.
"But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property?"
Zoning. Literally, most cities and towns have laws about where someone can run a hotel. A huge number of AirBNB rentals are highly illegal.
People get away with operating small businesses in residential zones because the businesses they usually operate tend to operate unnoticed and without disrupting neighbors' lives. For example, working from home as an independent contractor, or simply receiving business mail at your home address--these things have zero impact on your neighbors, generally speaking. It's quite possible to operate such a small business out of your home or apartment without any of your neighbors ever even realizing it.
Now, if you were actually engaged in providing services to customers directly from your home or apartment, that would be a different story. If you had a steady stream of clients visiting your home, your neighbors might be right to complain about the increased traffic, noise, or any other undesirable consequences.
Treating your property like a hotel is no different from treating it like a restaurant or a hair salon or a department store; it changes the character of the neighborhood, places extra (or at the very least unexpected) load on local infrastructure (which may not be designed to handle it), potentially reduces security, and causes any number of other potentially adverse side effects.
But I'd say that your argument that operating a hotel out of your home is somehow just like operating any other kind of small business falls on its face by virtue of the fact that operating a hotel out of your home is clearly quite controversial while operating many other kinds of small businesses is not. If these things were the same, this discussion would not be happening.
> But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property?
The fact that you live in close proximity to them so many of your activities can affect them, and that it's only by communal agreement that you even have "property" at all.
I don't object to you running a hotel next door, but I expect your guests to behave themselves well..
Perhaps if the root issues were given some easy way for one to satisfactorily resolve when they arise then their would be far less support for outright bans.
The problem is that any law or rule is only as good as its enforcement. People forget this too often when writing regulations, ending up with rules that are too costly, or involve too much invasion of privacy to get right.
I think the lesson is that you should always consider enforcement when writing policy. It needs to be front-and-center, not a secondary concern. A worse policy may end up being better if it's more easily enforceable.
On the other hand, if they behave themselves just as well as long-term owners, then no, you really shouldn't have any say whatsoever about who lives in your neighbor's property.
Your rant about people not knowing better than to diversify investment is completely oblivious of the fact that most people out there have no reasonable way to do so, and that their only protection is the existence of such rules.
Yup. And they typically have something in common - they don't bother the neighbors or create an atmosphere that is noticeably different than that of a residential neighborhood without the home business.
Work from a home office? No one will notice (other than the fact that you're home a lot). Teach piano lessons? As long as your students' parents don't park in front of other houses, probably not a big deal. (But people will notice.)
Want to run a metal shop out of your garage M-F? You'll get shut down because it's a disruption. Want to do metal shop projects on the weekend? No big deal, as long as you don't start too early and bother the neighbors.
> "Renting a room" seems like the kind of small business that's ideal for this situation - it takes no more infrastructure to house a vacation rental than it does to house a longer-term resident.
It's not about the "infrastructure" (when reduced to simply "a place to stay"), but about the externalities of everything that comes with frequent turnover of for-pay visitors. A vacation rental inherently means frequent turnover of residents, whereas "renting a room" means having a long(er) term resident with much less turnover.
> Leaseholders can also throw parties and be disruptive; there is an existing legal process to deal with noise complaints.
Yup, and it's easy to do because a leaseholder, well, lives there so the law can take its course. A vacation renter is gone pretty much before you can pursue any existing legal processes apart from calling the cops to come by and tell them to turn the music down. So, the AirBnB renter doesn't have to live with much/any consequences; the AirBnB "host" doesn't necessarily have consequences since they'll say "I won't rent to them again"; but the folks in the neighborhood do suffer from it.
Perhaps the law differs where you live, but where I live, local ordnance on repeated noise complaints gradually ramps penalties up from warnings to fines, so hosts have a strong interest in preventing partying at their properties. That seems a more appropriate legislative response than banning short-term rentals entirely.
We live in a society.
Noise complaints are a downstream symptom. It's often unproductive and ineffective for laws to try to back-propagate policy by regulating downstream symptoms and hoping upstream symptoms get fixed as a result.
This is a really well-crafted statement that applies widely to all kinds of issues in governance.
She simply didn't give a shit about the noise and trash she generated and all of us had to deal with it. The landlord didn't care either.
The police told me to deal with the landlord, because the noise wasn't at 3AM and wasn't "an event" like a concert. But her music was loud enough to shake my walls such that pictures fell off of them.
The town never returned phone calls. I simply vacated the apartment and told the landlord he would be more than welcome to sue me in court for the remainder of the lease.
Strangely, he never did, but I have a feeling that I would have had a hard time defending myself in court.
Though it is an unpopular opinion, I now feel that single family homes might be peferable to apartment buildings, if the caveat is that "the town and police will not do anything about anti-social behavior" as it is so rightfully called in the UK.
Long term rentals can have problem tenants too, but long term rental owners at least had way more leverage over their rentals than short term (who really in our case didn't give a damn).
Its very straight forward and quick to evict a short term renter for violating terms of the lease(noise violation etc).
Whereas its a lengthy and pricey process to evict a long term tenant in many jurisdictions
I'm sure local governments would love to collect a big check from Airbnb instead of hunting down thousands of tax-dodgers; but doing local tax collection authorities' work for them isn't exactly Airbnb's responsibility.
Not by default, sure, but nothing prevents a local government from creating a law that says, "where an organization takes commissions in connection with its marketing and/or or the facilitation of payment for short-term rentals of property within our jurisdiction, the organization is responsible for collecting any occupancy taxes associated with the transaction."[0]
[0]https://www.arnoldporter.com/en/perspectives/publications/20...
As you say the laws to destroy them already exist, all it takes is the effort to use it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flophouse
10 people per room.
As the Wikipedia article I linked states, flophouses were typically rented by transients -- what we generally call "the homeless" these days. The term "flophouse" originated with hobos and propagated out to the larger culture.
I was homeless for several years. The prices listed in the thing you linked are comparable to what I sometimes paid for one night for a hotel in Fresno.
There are people these days who are without permanent residence who live in hotels. Some definitions of homelessness count them as homeless.
What you linked really doesn't fit what I am talking about. I have seen articles about illegal rentals stuffing multiple people into one room in big cities. They usually found them via Craigslits, iirc.
Most AirBnB listings are along the lines of the cost of a hotel or more. From what I gather, they wind up being a hotel alternative in most cases, not something dirt cheap with no amenities that a homeless person might rent for a night or two.
I blog about homelessness. I still talk to homeless people at times. I've had a college class on homelessness. I'm not uninformed on the topic of homelessness and what homeless people today are doing to get by.
AirBnB rentals are not some bog standard coping mechanism for today's homeless, from what I gather.
1. Would you say you, personally, were "homeless" at the time that you lived there?
2. Would you say the photo the listing was representative? Or would you say it actually looked more like a filthy dive, a la the photos in the Wikipedia article on flophouses?
3. Would you say the majority of other tenants were transients?
Anything else you can tell us here on HN to support your assertion that the listing in question fits the definition of "flophouse"?
Thanks.
[1] "flophouses...have been used for overnight lodging by those who needed the lowest cost alternative to staying with others, shelters or sleeping outside. Generally rooms are small, bathrooms are shared, and bedding is minimal..."
What does this mean? If I owned a house in your neighborhood and had to move away for work, my options are to sell the house, or get on a waitlist till the number of houses rented out reduces?
As someone that's never owned a house, that sounds like a shitty rule that should be disrupted. I'm assuming there is a positive side to that only homeowners can see.
So, yes, there is a positive side. Most people have lived in places with absentee landlords. Many people don't want a preponderance of absentee landlord properties in a place where there is such direct impact from doing so; the thinking goes that if you rent out a house across the street from me, they might be annoying, but if you rent out a condo unit above mine, your tenants might flood my apartment because they didn't tell you the toilet had problems. Important difference.
If you don't like that, don't buy into a condo association that does it. It is extremely rare for a rental-limit rule to be put in place these days, so in practice you should know going in whether those rules are in place. If by some chance you live in the one in a thousand that does try to put those rules in place today, sell and move on.
HOAs no longer are able to do that directly (even though naked racial discrimination was actually central to the original purpose of HOAs and the covenants which give life to them), but they continue to enforce cultural standards that are designed particularly to enforce the behavior preferred by a particular subculture and exclude others.
Also dog owners. I know an HOA board that was, for a time, populated by fervent dog haters. They enacted a rule that forbid dogs from all streets and sidewalks. You could only walk your dog between your house and the next to the common grassy area behind. There's been some turnover in the board, but the rule is still in effect AFAIK.
I like dogs myself. But others don't so it's nice they have at least a few options on communities to live where they don't have to deal with dogs.
Neither children or dogs are associated with particular subcultures. They're both about as mainstream as you can get.
> I like dogs myself. But others don't so it's nice they have at least a few options on communities to live where they don't have to deal with dogs.
No, there's nothing "nice" about it. It was a shitty thing for the board to do to a community with lots of existing dog owners who had no say in the process. Now the neighborhood has to try to turn over enough board seats to get rid of the rule. The main instigator was a cranky old lady who is now gone, so it's probably just a matter of time. In the meantime it looks like people are largely ignoring it, but that's not a solution.
To me, the "isolated examples" like this are reason enough for HOA reform movements that seem to be gaining momentum across the country. The fact that HOAs can so easily forbid activities that residents enjoyed when they bought their home, such as walking their dogs, is proof to me that new laws are needed to restrict their power.
For starters, several federal agencies actually require COA's to limit the number of units that are not owner-occupied as a condition for government-backed mortgages. Some states and local laws also place caps on this to prevent condos from being used as unregistered hotels (see eg timeshares).
As for your options? Generally, for cases like this your option would be to sell the unit or request an exemption. If you're moving far away, it's very likely that the COA will not grant the exemption, because units rented out by distant absentee landlords tend to generate the most and worst problems that COAs deal with.
This seems incorrect. They are more common than you think, especially in neighborhoods built within the last 30-40 years.
https://foundation.caionline.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/...
I don't think I've seen a development in the last 30 years that doesn't have an HOA, and it seems like like all of Florida/Texas is HOA.
But, most of those mid-70s neighborhoods have fairly light-weight rules... Some architecture review, but generally not the crazy "can't leave garage door open" or "potted plants must all be in pots 13.25" in diameter" stuff.
I'm on a condo board currently and those are an entirely separate thing, much more intense, much more money, and much more service (when run well).
Folks can debate if government backed mortgages should be a thing, but as far as an association we decided we wanted to preserve the opportunity for folks to sell easily (well as easily as possible) by matching the government limits.
Some of the folks renting at the time were quite upset... until I explained for the 12th time to them that everyone renting on that day still could rent, and then there would be a limit... so they were actually in a good spot. Takes people a while to understand sometimes ;)
eropple kinda touches on a side concern about absentee landlords and such and that was very much on our mind as well.
I did say in another comment that we allowed some exceptions if the limit was reached. In fact we approved all exceptions that came our way as there were very few requests. We wanted folks to be able to rent if they had to move fast, family event, and couldn't sell quickly. We didn't want to put anyone in a bind.
As for your tight local control, fuck that. No, you shouldn't get to decide exactly what happens in your neighborhood just because you got there first. You don't own the neighborhood, you own single plot of land, and people who want to buy other plots of land and collectively evolve the neighborhood in new directions should have just as much of a right as you do.
You can change the property under the purview of the association. It would be stupid to assert that you cannot. But you must win a vote to do so--and you agree to adhere to the results of association votes by buying into the property and into the association.
Such positive tyranny one must endure. Makes my heart break. But you have a way out! You can always choose...to not buy a place with a condo association or HOA.
(I didn't. Single-family home. Would recommend!)
I think you mean sui iuris (legally autonomous) not sui generis (a unique case).
They have not solved this problem at all. I lived next door to an illegal AirBNB (all short-term whole-apartment rentals are illegal in NYC).
It was a nightmare, and there's nothing I could do about it. AirBNB does not consider me a customer and has no contractual relationship with me. They didn't provide any way to determine the owner's listing when you know the address, and even if I had, there's no formal way to lodge a complaint against the owner.
The only way a neighbor can take action against their problematic AirBNB neighbor is to report them to the city government.
That's right I don't get to decide because I was there first.
I get to decide because the majority elected me to the association and I carried out their will. I was a representative of the neighborhood and the neighborhood got to decide.
I say "get" but I'm not there anymore, so I don't get to anymore.
I think you got it all wrong. This is not a pitch for AirBnB. If anything, the company is creating the problem, not solving it.
>As for your tight local control, fuck that. No, you shouldn't get to decide exactly what happens in your neighborhood just because you got there first.
You're taking what OP wrote out of context and molding it to fit your simplistic thinking. There are laws to protect residential neighborhoods for a reason, and they certainly are not based on "who got here first" rule.
Having had a AirBnB rental two floors down: no, they did not. Most guests are reasonable, but a sufficiently high number are not. Unlike a hotel there’s no way to walk up to someone and tell them to shut the party down, so you’re stuck with talking to the guests which laugh in your face (quote: we’re here to party.) or calling the police. Neither is an attractive option. You can’t just complain to AirBnB and the host won’t - if you know how to reach the host.
AirBnB does about everything to isolate themselves and their clients from complaints.
The commenter you're replying to was a member of the Board of an HOA. Meaning that he lived in a condo or townhouse development or a private community. In all of these cases, all of the owners are bound by the common rules of the HOA (which, as owners, they have the right to vote on, amend, etc.), and "tight local control" is pretty much the point.
So, that gets back to the problem. AirBnB has not solved the problem because the people who are affected are the neighbors of the AirBnB. If the people renting the apartment are not in the apartment itself, they will give the guests 5 stars if the house is clean at the end. However, the neighbors might give that same guest 1 star because they were partying at 3AM, keeping the neighbors awake.
So, we get back to calling in the police and making the place worse for everyone. A hotel has people on the premise to monitor; an AirBnB is not guaranteed this.
AirBnBs bring randos into closed, private, residential areas that don't want to have to deal with people partying. Sure, it may just be fun and games for the renters who are on vacation, but for everyone else, who have to deal with it 24/7? It's not fun. It's annoying and rude.
I'm no attorney but to me it's pretty clear that AirBnB shouldn't be allowed to exist as a business the way it stands today. It's incredible they've made it this far.
I'd love to hear some concrete rebuttal as to why what they're doing is OK besides the "less government/regulation" angle.
Local governments are the wrong level for those sorts of decisions to be made. You don't have any right to tell your neighbors what to do with their property. Now, it's legitimate for the government to make rules of general application for everyone, but local governments have too much conflict of interest to make these decisions in a globally optimal way.
Japan, which has a national zoning law, is the right model. In our system, we'd apply it at the state level.
The catch is that it just doesn't work that way.
In theory, this is how the system is supposed to work here in California. We have the statewide Regional Housing Needs Allocation, which is a kind of statewide zoning that sets targets for cities, which can then zone as they want to meet those targets. Unfortunately RHNA is not enforced, and there are too many loopholes that let cities circumvent their legal obligations. The Housing Accountability Act closes some of those loopholes, but not enough. :(
I agree with you on this, however, Japan regulated AirBNB because renting a room for a short period of time is a pure commercial activity and not allowed in Residential areas.
I lived, several times, a few doors down to someone who did all this and didn't run an Airbnb. They're just shitty people, and they're going to be shitty neighbors regardless of Airbnb.
I personally like the idea of a world as simple as many imagine it, but sadly I don't think it is that simple.
A great man once said: “People don’t think it be like it is, but it do."
What I feel like is missing is a communication path from the community to the platform. Because people start by calling the police to complain it immediately becomes a legal and local ordinance issue. If it were easy to report abuses to Airbnb directly, or if local police were instructed to contact them, the platform could better regulate itself.
I don't think Airbnb really cares to do that... and that kinda is where the problems start in terms of what Airbnb is really all about.
"If you can’t find the listing’s web address, enter the street address and we’ll try to locate the listing. In order to protect our hosts’ privacy, we won’t be able to confirm the existence of any Airbnb listings or follow up with you."
This supports your point and should be changed.
It would be delightful if AirBnB were to be the exception, but as Reagan(?) said, "Trust, but verify."
Who does the verifying if we remove local government from oversight?
1. I don't think Airbnb cares to do it at all.
2. It would be a very hard job even if they tried to do it.
Also wonder how many of them structurally work to disrupt themselves into a sort of untenable situation.
Like can Facebook exist at its scale ... and not sell everyone's data or just behave as it does?
Can gig economy companies exist without grabbing into tips / passing risk off onto delivery people?
I don't know.
Can I open a nightclub in my house?
What about parking? Can I pave my front lawn and rent the space out as parking spots? Or maybe put a dumpster there for local businesses to put their trash in?
There's a tree on my boulevard. Can I cut the tree down and park a truck on the boulevard?
I decided to run a grow-op in my house. When I turn the electricity on, the lights fade in my neighbours houses because the load on my grow-up is so much bigger than the equipment is designed to support.
Tough luck for my neighbours, correct?
Houston managed an impressive urban sprawl without zoning laws.
Imagine the mess that NY would have looked like if Manhattan was limited to single family homes. The city would sprawl across half of NY, NJ, and CT easy.
https://kinder.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-heard-h...
Because infringing on people's right to do what they want with their property deserves a hell of a lot more scrutiny than it gets right now. Trying to centrally manage what can be done where doesn't scale. See SF housing prices.
>Can I open a nightclub in my house?
As long as it meets the standards that night clubs have to meet then sure. You're unlikely to be able to do these things and be commercially successful enough to subsity in primarily residential area.
>What about parking? Can I pave my front lawn and rent the space out as parking spots? Or maybe put a dumpster there for local businesses to put their trash in?
Sure. Just be aware that you might be on the hook if you do a half-assed paving job and the runoff affects your neighbors. Once again if you truly are in a residential area where this kind of thing is not appropriate you will have a hard time being successful enough at it to annoy anyone who isn't already annoyed by everything.
>There's a tree on my boulevard. Can I cut the tree down and park a truck on the boulevard?
This is more complicated because you get into right of way issues and the city usually has a pretty substantial right of way beside the road (sidewalk?) but sure, if none of that is an issue then feel free to cut it down.
>I decided to run a grow-op in my house. When I turn the electricity on, the lights fade in my neighbours houses because the load on my grow-up is so much bigger than the equipment is designed to support.
If the power company was worried about QoS to the other customers on the street they wouldn't give you the massive breaker you need for that operation. If the neighbors are really bothered by it they can complain to the power company and if they complain enough then it will get addressed. There is no need for laws for this sort of thing. Once again if you're really in a residential area you're unlikely to get that kind of service if you really are somewhere it would be a problem. The power company has internal rules about what service gets installed where (basically their own zoning) in order to ensure that breakers on bigger equipment upstream are not tripped during times of peak load.
Good luck finding anyone to live in that kind of neighbourhood by choice. If you have an area with zero controls, it quickly will become a race-to-the-bottom.
The kinds of people who want to live in a nice neighbourhood, and be nice neighbours, will go live somewhere else.
It turns out that people feel the same way about freedom to do what you like with your single-family home as they do about the freedom to drive a car without getting a license or being insured, and the freedom to drive on whichever side of the road you like, and the freedom to drive a vehicle without smog regulation or safety rules.
Most people don't want your freedom, because the upside of their freedom is greatly outweighed by the downsides of their neighbour's freedoms.
They'll all just go any set up gated communities where everyone buying a home must contractually agree to the neighbourhood's own regulations.
There's also nothing wrong with gated communities and in fact that would be vastly preferable to having a few rich people make everybody in the city abide by their own arbitrary regulations.
And that's fine?
If you're buying the property for any purpose other than flipping then ROI from the sale of the property itself shouldn't be a serious consideration. Either you're living there and sale doesn't really matter so long as you don't get shafted too badly whenever you do sell or you're renting or using it commercially in which case the cost to acquire is sunk and the returns from that should more than make up for change in value and whatever you get from a sale at the end is just a bonus.
Because it is mostly used by rich property owners to artificial prop up the value of their capital investment, to the detriment of renters and people who cannot afford to purchase properties.
And the fact that they don't have a feature for this shows that they don't care. They just think that a few lawsuits here and there are cheaper than adequately dealing with community complaints.
That's because in the kind of "upscale but not too upscale" kinds of places where AirBnB tends to flourish conflict resolution is such a lost art that calling the police on each other is what people do.
Simple conflict resolution works great with reasonable people, but those aren't the kinds of people blasting techno and screaming all through the night.
It may even be that more often than not, it is people where simole interaction would suffice on an individual basis, but there are two factors that still weigh in favor of summoning law enforcement:
(1) The social context of one where any individual you deal with would lose face by backing down to anyone without compulsory power, and
(2) Even if the above was not sufficient to tip the odds to “most probably individual interaction will not be productive”, the potential cost of interaction with “coked up aggressive young men” or the like doesn't require a very high probability that that is the scenario before it becomes an unacceptable risk even if the expected net benefit of individual interaction is positive.
Why? The issue is between the homeowner and the community. The fact that they're using AirBnB or anything else is irrelevant. The homeowner is responsible for what occurs on their property, and the community has a right to set standards via HOA's, city/local ordinances, etc.
The communication path should be between the property owner and AirBnB to discuss issues with their private contracts/arrangements/deals.
They have made plenty clear that they don't really care about how people near the rental unit are affected. They will never make this happen unless "NIMBY impulses" put enough pressure on them to do so.
AirBNB has often provided me a better alternative to a largely terrible hotel market that often takes racket prices and makes me pay for services I don't need. On the other hand I completely understand when people are annoyed about party folk living in the flat above them or when they lack safety regulations or don't pay the same taxes hotels do.
But none of that justifies an outright ban, there should be solutions to regulate the bad while allowing the good. Make them pay hefty fees that they may pass on to their customers if they violate night rest times. Make them follow safety regulations and pay takes. (Yeah, that will make it more expensive, but I can still avoid paying for daily room service I want to opt out and sometimes even can't and 24/7 reception staff I don't need.)
It's simply that they don't.
In much the same way that Uber skirts the laws of background checks, Airbnb responds to complaints and attempts to introduce regulation with lawsuits. I wish the Hotel and Cab markets were disrupted by companies that wanted to optimize within the rules of the game, but they, either through lawsuits or just ignoring laws, don't play in an even setting, these traditional companies end up being burdened with more regulations than the "disrupters" adhere to.
To optimize within the hotel rules, you’d need hosts to get a hotel/rooming house license...
Hotel/rooming house licenses aren't un-affordable, there are regulations around them but both motel6 and mom&pop B&Bs can acquire them, so the bar is generally pretty low. For instance in Cambridge, MA it looks like it'd cost about 200$[1] to file for the license, Airbnb could probably offer legal services to help people properly apply if they cared to.
[1] https://www.cambridgema.gov/iwantto/applyforahotellodgingori...
They break down into 3 groups. The smallest are people between jobs. They're doing something that's better than their best alternative.
The next largest group are the occasional drivers, meaning Uber is not their main job. These people typically already own a car, so the fixed costs are leaving their pocket every month whether or not they drive ride sharing. Ride sharing more than comfortably covers their variable costs, so they're making money.
The largest group (in terms of rides given/taken, not in terms of drivers) are people who are driving Uber essentially full-time. Many of them have bought a car specifically for its Uber suitability (good gas mileage, low maintenance, etc) and I think these drivers are properly thinking about their expenses (because they're pretty compartmentalized).
I know it's common to think that the drivers are not fully and rationally evaluating the value proposition that Uber offers, but I see pretty frequent evidence to the contrary. There are fewer than 5% of people for whom I ask the question who respond in a way that makes me think that they think their predominant expense is "just gas money".
Or creating a shortage of supply for actual people looking to rent in the cities desirable areas, which results in increase of rent. That's the biggest one imo.
Stupid people are abundant everywhere.
I’m a by-the-book guy when it comes to business, so registered the place as a guest-house business premises with the council. They even remarked that I was the first Airbnb operator to do this in over a year - and there are over a thousand Airbnbs in town.
Because the place is under a certain rateable value, which is based on location and size, it is eligible for a 100% rebate on business rates. I’d gladly pay them were anything due, but nothing is.
So, not only am I in the clear with local government, but being so saves me several thousand pounds a year.
Cities and counties need money to provide us with the services we depend on to run our little business. Reasonable taxes and fees are a fair, expected, and necessary price. The little town we're in has struck a decent balance price-wise, and they also have a decent regulatory system set up that's designed to ensure that neighbors' complaints about parking, noise, and trash are addressed.
We're very by-the-book operators. I want the city to see money from me because I want them to have an interest in protecting my business.
There are a couple of hotels under construction in town, which makes me nervous. Hotels hate vacation rentals. I'm not fond of AirBNB as a corporate citizen, but the Hoteliers cartel is dirtier. I wouldn't be surprised if the new hotels lobby the town to ban vacation rentals outright, or craft lethal regulations like those in Tennessee recently that require all vacation rentals to install fire-suppression sprinklers [https://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2015/jan/3/cities-acro...].
Why would renters cause more wear on those resources than full time occupants?
Guests are usually groups of blended family and friends, so there are more cars. This is true for us when we visit our own place; we often bring family or friends, and they bring more cars. The dirt road leading to our house definitely notices the traffic.
And then there's the water and trash. Bloody fucking hell vacation rental guests generate a lot of trash. I'm working on some ways to encourage reduced consumption, and I stock only recycled paper products -- toilet tissue particularly is a sore point with me. I con't believe how much toilet paper people use. It pisses me off enough that I'm playing with the idea of charging for it.
Otherwise, we've had mostly good luck with our guests. Mostly. I won't rent to anyone under 25, and I'm really strict about that. I also completely banned smoking of any kind anywhere on the property, inside or outside. These things have helped.
Toilet tissue is just me being confused. I buy toilet paper, facial tissue, and paper towels in enormous quantities from costco. All recycled, but it's still a mountain of paper and tissue. I have to figure something out.
How do you ban smoking outside? Are you on property keeping tabs on your guests every move?
Smoking outside is a different problem. Until recently I didn't forbid it, but earlier this year I found cigarette butts in the brush below the deck, along with a burn mark on the dining table and cigarettes in the trash. That was from a large group of college aged boys.
In normal dry conditions, Colorado mountain country is like a big pile of kindling just waiting for some dumbass to toss a cigarette butt into the pine needles and set the town ablaze.
This incident really freaked me out. I took their entire security deposit, and added rules and a stern warning to my listing. At some point I'll install a camera outside to watch the deck and back yard, because I know it will happen again.
is this legal? I thought you were only allowed to deduct actual damage / cost of repairs from a security deposit, not punitive charges.
I explicitly allowed marijuana smoking inside the house up until then as a way to support legalization, and because the smoke is much more tame. But then it occurred to me: people can vape. I'm not a pot user so I guess I'm a little behind. So now, no more smoking.
But yeah, if someone burns anything in my house by leaving a live fucking coal on it, they're pretty much guaranteed to lose their security deposit. Shouldn't be too difficult.
Aside from that, I go to great lengths to give all my guests' money back. If someone just lets me know that they broke something, I never charge them for it. I suppose I'd have to charge for things like broken windows, but that hasn't happened yet.
You know what else I hate? Fucking Keurig. I hate the packaging, I hate the shitty brewing machines that don't brew hot enough or saturate the pods, and I hate the racketeering company. Nevertheless, one of the most consistent compliments I get in reviews is about this dinky little coffee and tea station we have set up on a bread rack. Nothing fancy, just a Keurig and another normal coffee machine and some boxes of tea and cocoa and stuff. To me it looks kind of chintzy, but a lot of guests are super charmed by complimentary coffee pods and variety packs of tea. So I grit my teeth and keep the little drawer stocked with pods.
Toilet paper again: at some point I intend to install bidets in the bathrooms. Toto makes one that reviews well. Then I'll put up some signs with cute bears and bunnies and a maybe a folksy limerick about conserving and some encouragement to wash before wiping. If people used them it would cut way back on our paper consumption.
I use these guys myself, and they are 0.30 a cup from Costco: https://www.sanfranciscobaycoffee.com/index.php/onecup-for-k...
I like the rainforest blend the best, but you will probably want a variety pack to see what guests like the best.
Also bidets don't really reduce tp usage for me, since you need it to dry up.
So, talk to me about the bidet. I've always though that if I hosed myself off real good, then I could consistently use just one wipe with the tp to dry off, instead of needing an unpredictable number of wipings to the same without water. Is this realistic? Do you find it's consistently just one tp wipe per job? Because that right there would be a huge improvement in my material costs.
Edit: Wait, did you say compostable k-cups? I've never heard of that, BRB...
Edit2: I'll be darned. That's great. They're a little more expensive than Kirkland, but I think it's worth it. Very cool, thanks for the tip.
There are fancier models that have a built-in blow dryer so you wouldn't even need to dry at all, but they require an outlet near the toilet.
Maybe if I used the good stuff it would not take a lot. Also TP is a compostable and renewable resource, so I wouldn't worry that much about it's usage.
Agreed 100% re: Keurig. :)
When you travel, how many people do you cram into a single room? How much are you driving around the town you're visiting?
The answer to both is: probably a lot more than someone who lives there.
Do you collect the same taxes as hotels do? Have you registered as a business with your city?
Yes, we have a Colorado sales tax license and a city-issued business license, both hanging on the wall like any other business. Every vacation rental in town -- many dozens of them in all -- does the same. The town is small, neighbors are watchful, and city enforcement is strict.
We pay lodging and sales tax, same as a hotels. My rental rates are about half the cost for the same space in a hotel, and it's way nicer. You don't get a full kitchen in a hotel.
We pump a lot of money into the local economy -- much more than we would if we lived there full time. My cleaning lady made about $8000 off our house last year. Guests tend to be pretty active patrons of restaurants and shops, and when they eat at the home they buy food from a little grocery in town. The nearest supermarket is 45 minutes away.
It sucks that your neighborhood is suffering. But I rather doubt your situation would be much better if all the tourists were staying in hotels rather than airbnb's. Touristy destinations all face challenges, and there are myriad ways a city can screw it up.
But not everywhere is like Miami. A lot of our mountain towns are slowly dying. Some of them of tried to stay alive by legalizing casino gambling. It seems to work, but it turns your town into a casino town. Other towns are trying to navigate a delicate but potentially rewarding transition to being the kind of vacation destinations that people want to stay at for a week or more. Hotels can't help your town get that kind of business. Again, no kitchens. If I can help my town make that transition and also have a successful business for myself, it's a win-win for everybody.
The bigger issue is the people not doing these things. There are hosts (and guests) that simply don't give a fuck about others. Hosts (especially ones that don't live in the area) couldn't care less about their impact on the neighborhood as long as money keeps coming into their bank account, and will try their hardest to take shortcuts and avoid responsibility. Some "hosts" are more like wannabe slumlords. "Bad actor" guests also don't care about what happens to a place they are going to leave, which leads to things like trash, disturbances, and stealing.
A problem with Airbnb is that properties are not siloed; there is an environment around them. There's many places on Airbnb that are better than hotels, and there's a lot of economic impact on local communities. Airbnb needs to re-evaluate how these places are part of a community rather than isolated from one.
The "sunshine and rainbows" sentiment behind why Airbnb exists is a nice thought, but the platform is rolling into a snowball of consequences and externalities. Assholes are going to be assholes, so many bad experiences are not from normal transactions, but from assholes using Airbnb to their advantage and Airbnb turning their cheek.
And then I've had experiences where I wonder why I didn't get a hotel for slightly more. Usually in the city where the host owns 20+ properties and really don't give 2 shits about the experience.
I do think this service needs to exist, if only to improve the overall travel experience, but yea they need to do some vetting or figure out a much better pricing structure. I love the idea of living like a local in some apartment building, but so far this experience has usually been pretty subpar for me.
AirBNB should behave better, no doubt. And if they don't, they should be made to behave through thoughtful regulation that doesn't endanger the economy and character of places all over the country that are coming to depend on travelers.
What I like about hotels is the consistency of service and cleanliness, availability of nearby food or other services.
Don’t get me wrong: even though I’ve had some bad experiences with individual hosts on Airbnb, overall many host rentals are nice too.
I just don’t understand your negative comments towards hotels. They pay their taxes, they bear their own costs of demonstrating compliance with the law, provide a good standard of safety, cleanliness and service.
Obviously the hotel lobbying sucks, but I don’t see how anyone can think it’s worse than what Airbnb does. The hotel lobby is gaming a system in terms of competition, but from within a system overall that is not trying to in principle externalize all the burden onto citizens by skirting taxes.
Airbnb is doing something very different, trying to flip tax collection and demonstration of compliance around to make it an optional nicety they choose to extend to local governments on their own terms.
That sounds nice, and it suits a lot of people just fine. But try doing that with a family, and on a limited budget.
I'll give you an example: last year I "rented" my own place for a week with family. We crammed thirteen of us into our house (it's properly equipped to sleep 12 but we've never had that many aside from our own family). My father-in-law took us out to dinner the first night, and we ate breakfast at restaurants most mornings. The cost of food was likely over a thousand dollars for the week, but it could easily have been double or triple that if we'd eaten out every day. As it was, some of our money went to the local grocery store instead of restaurants, and we were able to afford a week-long vacation instead of just a weekend.
You can't do this in a hotel with mini-fridge and a microwave. If you want to bring your family on a week-long vacation in the Colorado Mountains, and if you're not wealthy, then you do it by renting my house, which has a full kitchen, enough rooms, beds, and foldouts for a large family, and costs half or even a quarter of what the same space a hotel would cost.
So it's not that hotels are worse than vacation rentals. They're just different. They serve different markets. If places like mine didn't exist, the groups and families that stay there aren't going to stay in hotels instead; they're not going to come to this town at all, because hotels can't provide comfortable longer-duration vacations that are also affordable for most people.
This is extremely important for ski vacations. Skiing is expensive enough as it is, that most people can afford just a few days a year with the hotel, food, and fuel costs that come with it. But my place can make it downright cheap in comparison.
I’ve found that groceries in and around big ski centers are often much more expensive than low-end takeout or a pizza.. plus you have to have someone in the group spend time cooking and cleaning instead of just enjoying the trip. Personally, if my budget was too limited to avoid that, or I couldn’t afford one suite at the hotel, it would be a sign that it’s not a financially good idea to plan the trip so soon and I should save money longer before going.
The trade-offs are different for everybody, which makes me feel like these just-so anecdotes simply should just be omitted from any discussion about the overall scumminess of Airbnb business practices & lobbying vs hotels.
> you have to have someone in the group spend time cooking and cleaning instead of just enjoying the trip.
That person is me. I love to cook, and I assure you it's quite possible to enjoy a vacation while making crepes for your friends. :)
> it would be a sign that it’s not a financially good idea to plan the trip so soon and I should save money longer before going.
Or, if you were able to stay in a home instead of a hotel, you could save enough money to make the trip affordable now, instead of waiting until later in life to enjoy it.
It seems like you might just really like hotels. I think that's fine, and I think a lot of people agree with you. Vacations are what you make of them, and it sounds like you've really got your act together. I admire that. But it also seems like you're trying to apply your own standards and experience generally to everyone else. I'm pretty sure if you asked the folks who rented my place for a week over Christmas what they think, they'll say they'd rather not pay twice as much money for a couple of small hotel rooms in Dillon with no kitchen. Because like it or not, that's my competition.
I’m saying if I need to book a house rental because saving on the margins with home cooking might make or break my ability to afford the vacation, then I clearly don’t have enough money for the trip to be a responsible purchase until saving more.
So almost by definition, considerations that happen at exactly that margin decision boundary aren’t very applicable for reasoning between the two options.
> “That person is me. I love to cook, and I assure you it's quite possible to enjoy a vacation while making crepes for your friends. :)”
I love cooking too, but it ruins a vacation if I have to cook, as opposed to getting to cook, particularly meaning I would spend much more on high-end ingredients to make special meals that are much more expensive than eating at even medium-quality restaurants.. plus you still end up wasting vacation time on clean up and prep like chopping, or if things need to bake a while then someone’s stuck in the kitchen potentially long before the meal.
Any way you look at it, unless you’re doing something like a cabin vacation where all the recreation is right in and around your lodging all day, then needing to devote money and time to grocery shopping, prep, cooking and clean up is a pretty expensive chore in terms of time & money to commit to during a vacation. Clearly even if some people like it, you can imagine a lot of other people don’t see that as an effective trade-off.
We're pretty far in weeds here with talk of ingredients and prep and whatnot. Like I said, for family accommodation, with the flexibility of a kitchen and laundry, there is no competition of any kind from hotels in my neck of the woods, and there probably never will be. It's not even close. My only competition is from other vacation rentals, and all us little guys currently contribute a big chunk of our town's tourism revenue.
Whole-home-style rentals are always more relaxing, and the only reason I've used AirBnB. I have friends who feel the same way, so I'm not alone. Are we a minority? Possibly. But we exist.
Meanwhile, hotels have a great track record of safety, cleanliness and consistency of service from one place to the next. They’re not perfect, but I’m a big fan of saving just a small additional amount of money to stay in a hotel.
To boot, hotels actually pay their taxes and I don’t have to feel bad about the booking portal company for hotels hustling municipalities and finding ways to lie/cheat/steal to avoid fair burdens to demonstrate compliance with tax laws, like with Airbnb.
The town's grocer is pretty dependent on vacationers. Locals do more of the 45 minute drive to Walmart once a week.
The restaurants in town get more local business, but I'm aware from comments and reviews that our guests eat out a lot. Even with a full kitchen, it's common for people to eat out more on vacation than they would normally at home, especially when the restaurants are seen to be part of a town's charm and reputation. Which is why I put out the menus on a side table in my home's entryway, just like the hotels do in their lobbies.
When we bring family there, we eat out a lot. We walk downtown to get ice cream in the little candy store. We never do that at home in Denver. I don't take the kids to ice cream at home. That's what vacations are for! I say, "You are naughty, awful, disappointing children, but if you be good from now on maybe we'll go on vacation again and get ice cream". I know I'm not the only one.
Not that I'm a fan of big government, but I don't understand why, if they really are just ignoring the law in most jurisdictions (which they are), none of these states just issue arrest warrants for the people in charge of these decisions? Why isn't there an outstanding warrant for the CEO of AirBnB from any one of the 50 US states for flagrant tax evasion? Or even going further to actually request the state where that CEO is present in to be arrested and extradited to that state? The CEO can't possibly claim they didn't know this was an issue. So then the battle will be forced in court for them to prove that they weren't responsible for collecting the tax and that if instead the property owners were in fact responsible, that AirBnB wasn't guilty of facilitating criminal tax evasion.
I'm sick and tired of these Silicon Valley companies deciding that their big idea is to decentralize so that they can ignore regulations and licensing requirements by saying "we're just a platform, the users need to do that". Same bullshit with Uber claiming their drivers aren't employees but rather "independent contractors", even though Uber sets all the rules, prices, etc. I've never heard of an independent contractor who can't determine how much they charge.
Similarly, these AirBnB places aren't legally zoned for the activity they are engaging in, nor are virtually any of the property owners licensed to do business as a lodging facility or registered and authorized to collect the occupancy taxes. AirBnB knows this and the grand scale of the illegal activity, at bare minimum, proves that the purpose of the platform is to circumvent the laws/regulations but not with an actual loophole, just by ignoring them and hoping they can grow fast enough so that they aren't just shut down hard.
I want a thriving, stable society and I’m well aware on an intellectual level that if faced with the constant decision whether I should donate here or donate there or pay more for child-care so that they can subsidize people with less income, I’ll become overwhelmed and fail. I already fail at deciding if and where to direct an end of year donation.
A thriving society needs money to serve all the needs that a thriving society has: infrastructure, education, governance, just to name a few. I don’t always agree how and where tax money is spent. I also sometimes feel cheated when paying taxes, but more often than not it’s because I see someone else, possibly a large Corp such as AirBnB actively avoid paying their due share.
So please, make me pay taxes, but make everyone else pay theirs.
If you really want to pay taxes and feel the tax rate for your bracket is too low, you are more than welcome to make a donation to the treasury at any time: https://www.pay.gov/public/form/start/23779454
You can also skip claiming deductions on your tax return to increase your liability and reduce/eliminate your refund (assuming you get one). This also eliminates the stress related to the end of year donations you mentioned.
IME, most people do want to exchange something for the goods and services they consume. For some, if not only so they can complain about them. I personally don't like handouts, and will go to lengths to avoid them.
Donate to the US Treasury: https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html
Another classic YC production, so it seems, on top of the other 'questionable' startup investments.
A drunk airbnb user tried to break into a neighbor's house around 11 pm last week while the residents were inside. He was lost and thought he was at his rental, but that wasn't apparent to anyone else in the beginning, so my wife gets a call for help from another neighbor and we go to check it out.
When we get there, we discover the assailant has been treed on a shed roof by the woman whose door he had beaten on. She was home alone with her baby at the time. She was (understandably) waving a ball-peen hammer at him and shouting.
Let's call him Trey.
Trey is around 6' 3" and a bit on the husky side. He is maybe 25 and he is wearing a worn out Auburn hat and a nice polo shirt. Trey is crying and refusing to speak to any of the small crowd that has gathered, some of whom who are darkly muttering about burglars and drugs. Trey is talking into his phone, quietly, holding it like a slice of pizza.
Trey has called his mom.
My SO and I figure out what has happened about the same time. "Hey buddy, are you looking for your airbnb?" I called.
Luckily, we were able to de-escalate before Metro PD arrived or Trey was beaten to death with a hammer by a 5' tall woman. It turns out that Trey had given his Uber driver the wrong adress on the way home from Broadway; he was supposed to be about one street over. We get a hold of the groom whose bachelor party Trey was a part of, and the police give Trey a ride home.
So, that can happen.
Is that AirBnB's fault? Is it the hosts fault? Is it the cities fault for not regulating this? Is it our society's fault for allowing drinking to the point of forgetting your address?
I think in the end it's just a series of unfortunate events, that give you a really great anecdote, which might have turned out much worse. I wouldn't claim this as evidence for or against AirBnB but man did it make me laugh.
Good on you for de-escalating the situation and keeping your head! Hopefully, Trey had the decorum to apologize later on and try to make things right.
I don't think Airbnb is a bad thing by any means; it's our go-to for day trips in many cases. I can also understand the need for cities having licencing and/or residency rules!
He wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for AirBNB. He likely could have asked the concierge at the hotel he was staying at for help finding his room in his drunken state.
I was glad to hear the jury agreed that the action was appropriate.
Drinking to excess has consequences, including death. Either from liver failure or lead poisionong.
What if instead of the host using AirBnB he was just a local Bed and Breakfast (those existed before AirBnb). Who's fault is it then?
I forget the term for it, but there is a legal definition that limits liability in a lot of these kinds of cases because it can get very broad. I personally, find your assertion that AirBnB is to blame to be too broad. I can easily think of a situation that this same scenario happens without AriBnB.
This individual fucked up, the situation was handled really well by the OP and a few others.
Conversely, I'd say that from the article AirBNB fighting regulation and to not pay taxes is their fault.
it doesn't seem like you actually disagree, but I wasn't sure where to put this post in the somewhat disjointed thread.
I would say however, that while shootings are rare in the US, so are events where people run to grab a weapon. We can agree that the prevalence of guns means there is a high chance a gun is the most dangerous weapon available.
I would guess that in events where there is banging on a house guns are "involved" more in the USA than in other countries. It'd be hard to collect that data because a gun in the hand of one person can quickly de-escalate a situation.
Chicago had 2948 shooting victims in 2018. That's 8 shooting victims a day.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/chicago-murder-total-2018-...
To someone living in Europe, these rates defy belief.
There's clearly demand.
I don't buy the idea hotels are disruptive, in my urban community there are zero, but tons of commercial space there'd be no problem at all with one across the street.
In fact, it'd be good for business. Tons of offices, zero hotel space. Not good.
Some innovation in management i.e. no checkin, cleaner only come when you've gone, etc. etc. and we might get some material efficiencies.
I think tourists have to understand that when they use Airbnb they are giving a massive middle finger to the locals. You do not have a right to a cheap holiday and it should not come at the expense of those just trying to live their lives.
This was in Hong Kong if anyone was wondering so all the America specific issues don't apply.
Ludicrous.
[0] https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2496/how-does-manual-occ...
Seems like the journalist could've figure out what really happened here and just reported it rather than printing two conflicting accounts and wiping their hands of it.
The only people Airbnb benefits in a given city are the landlords/hosts. It's not a "neutral" effect on other residents - it either crowds out supply that could otherwise go to a full-time resident or creates a safety/quality of life issue for neighbors who live adjacent to these properties that are being constantly filled with strangers.