This is going to happen in most cities; it has to, because the pendulum has swung too far from "abusive regulation" to "abusive lack of regulation".
People like to invoke the evil "hotel lobby", which I'm sure does exist!, but it is not even a little bit hard to find loud, angry citizens complaining. Those complaints are entirely predictable: people buy or rent residences in buildings expecting those buildings to be inhabited by long-term residents, then some part of the building gets converted to a hotel. People aren't OK with that.
There are also places where vibrant short-term rental markets may exacerbate tight housing markets.
I've had nothing but good Airbnb experiences, in SFBA, NYC, and London. I hope Airbnb works this out. But they don't really hold all the cards here.
I think that's the thing about Airbnb. The experience is usually good for the people getting paid, and the people getting the service. It is frequently bad for people who are not part of that exchange at all, and just happen to be in close proximity.
The owner of my apartment building has set up an illegal air bnb in an empty apartment(I'm going to guess this is a rent controlled or stabilized apartment "under renovations"). Usually it isn't an issue, besides for frequently seeing groups of strangers come in and out of the building. Last week though, a lovely fellow decided that, after drinking what must be approximately 2 liters of wine, he was going to pick my door to puke outside of(5 floors below his air bnb) at 2AM. He then started crashing into the wall separating my bedroom and the hallway a number of times. Then he went down into the lobby, puked some more right in front of the door, then peed in the stairwell. I think it's pretty straight forward to see why tenants don't want air bnb rentals in their residences.
> The experience is usually good for the people getting paid, and the people getting the service. It is frequently bad for people who are not part of that exchange at all, and just happen to be in close proximity.
In fairness to the "libertarian crowd", the smart ones usually do grok negative externalities, and come up with grandiose (if naive) schemes for internalizing them. The likely result most of the time is a community that spends 20 hours out of every day in various town hall meetings, byzantine tax and fee schedules, an enforcement arm that would have to rival the Stasi in order to actually work, and of course the whole thing is very susceptible to corruption.
But they do know what negative externalities are, at least.
I only call it a "tax" as a shorthand, libertarians would not call it that. Rather they devise a system where, for example in the case of air pollution, there is no such thing as a public good, and instead of regulation and fines, potential air polluters would need to enter into a contract with the owners of the air in order to secure the right to pollute the air. And it pretty much goes downhill from there.
It's one of those things that might sometimes work okay on paper, but the trouble is that you can't actually try it out in practice due to the difficulty of assembling into a coherent community, a critical mass of people with the correct sort of deranged insanity to want to try it in the first place.
By calling them "fees" or "voluntary contributions" or similar.
Taxes are only bad if a government extracts them at gunpoint. If a non-governmental force extracts them at... well, the gun is still there, I suppose, but hidden behind a layer of "If you don't pay, we sue, and if you don't pay after the lawsuit, the guns come out"... they're morally A-OK.
The solutions always involves either some kind of enforcing organization (ie - a government) or a hand wavy 'the market will provide' appeal to fervor.
I get your point but (partly to play devil's advocate)...
How is this significantly different from traditional businesses?
- Good for people getting paid.
- Good (maybe) for people getting the service (which is often mediocre at best).
- Bad for competitors.
- Bad for people who invested in a competing service/product/related industry.
- Often bad for the environment, neighbourhood etc.
Yes, Airbnb's "thing" (dirty little secret) is that some widespread neighbor abuse as documented in an HN anecdote is polluting the social value of a $20B startup.
Solution? Instead of allowing building managers/owners to allow/disallow short term leases by their lessees as determined by the externality-including market value of such a policy, let's just ban it altogether. The principle of the least-elegant solution.
I would imagine many, if not most, people's leases don't allow them to rent their places out. You see many listings that require discretion regarding entry, particularity as to where to park on the street, and forbid talking with neighbors.
NYC might be an exception as it seems like subletting is a big thing there.
Almost all full-space(that is, not staying in an extra bedroom while the owner is present) air bnb units in NYC are illegal. Subletting is usually legal, unless stated in your lease, but there are laws against short term stays(< 30 days).
...and? If this amounts to dirty looks in the shared hallway or similar, it's pointless.
In fact, it's worse than pointless: The caring, socially-responsible people who don't want to have assholes will be hurt worst, and will be motivated to leave the business after a few bad apples, whereas the people who honestly don't give two shits until the police show up will carry on regardless, and take on more assholes as long as their checks don't bounce.
Social approbation only works well in tight-knit societies where someone not liking you can have ripple effects through everything you do. "The Scarlet Letter" is an example, both of how it works and how it is honestly a bad way to run a society.
You need laws to put teeth in the "don't do that" parts of the social contract, and you need to enforce those laws. Lawsuits can work, but they're messy and expensive and generally so draining for both sides that winning one is something of an academic point. That's one reason we as a society attempt to use lawsuits as a method of last resort, and create regulations and regulatory bodies which can enforce punishments without sending an injured party through the massive financial and personal ruin of bringing suit against someone.
When nearly any service, technology, or community hits an eternal September critical mass, there's going to be people who don't adhere to the "don't be a dick" philosophy of whatever bandwagon it is that they are joining. At that point, the timer to the beginning of true disruption and the end of innocence starts ticking down fast.
AirBnB has hit that (several times, in several ways). Uber has hit that. The general tech industry and tech culture in the bay area has hit that. Drones and to a lesser extent, 3D printing, are getting pretty close. On demand services (Instacart, etc...) are close as well.
It's also just a scale thing. Activities that most people are OK with as a occasional and informal person-to-person thing turns into something else entirely when "there's an app for that."
Yes. When I lived in an apartment building, I wouldn't have cared if one of my neighbors occasionally rented out their spare bedroom to a friend of a friend. But when half of the units in the building are renting out rooms, and some of them are 100% dedicated to short-term rentals, it gets to be too much. In other words, ruining it for everyone...
I'm confused.. tragedy of the commons is when nobody owns something thus nobody takes care of it. Folks who rent on AirBnB either own it or have defacto control over it.
This isn't an example of tragedy of the commons at all.
> I'm confused.. tragedy of the commons is when nobody owns something thus nobody takes care of it.
"Tragedy of the commons" is a common name for a multiparty game that bears some relation to the two party Prisoner's Dilemma, wherein each party has a dominant strategy of defection, despite the fact that the resulting universal defection has a lower utility for all parties than universal cooperation would.
(In more economic than game-theory terms, this is a situation where cooperation has an internalized cost and an externalized benefit, and the reverse is true for defection.)
The situation where nobody owns exclusive rights to common grazing land and thus everyone overgrazes their sheep on it and wrecks it, resulting in harm for everyone, is the typical illustrative example from which the name is drawn, but the "Tragedy of the Commons" doesn't refer exclusively to the situation where waste results from the absence of exclusive rights.
Yes. When nobody owns something, nobody takes care of it. Consider the sound environment. No one charges you to broadcast your music or your voice through the air. Another example would be odors from cooking or smoking.
People in proximity share resources even if they don't want to. Anonymous temporary interaction affects what people think they can get away with. If we're neighbors for a year, we can sort out our differences and come up with some rules. I promise not to have a loud party without telling you in advance, for example. If we're having a shorter term interaction, say over a weekend, I don't know your expectations, and frankly i don't care. so i'll just go ahead and be loud till you call the police.
Ironically, the historic commons referred to there actually had customary rules that prevented overgrazing -- it wasn't the idealized "free-for-all" that this term now evokes -- and modern neighborhoods and apartment complex likewise have such rules to prevent overuse of public resources or common goods, such as limits on rentals to non-tenants (which are being flouted).
I can see drones hitting that... I can envision lots of drones in the sky, and some falling down and hurting someone, but 3d printing? Who could ever be pissed off about that? 3d printing is very akin to a molding-clay hobby, I just can't conceive of any harm done through 3d printing. (Hobby CNC milling is getting big these days... now that I can imagine being dangerous/too noisy, but even those complaints are small)
Watch this kid's YouTube channel - you don't need anything as fancy as a 3D printer or even a lathe. Basic welding or even just sawing off pipes gets you a lot. Here's a handgun he made at home:
They used to be called "zip guns" or "Saturday night specials": Cheap, sometimes home-made firearms with mostly coincidental accuracy (You hit what you were aiming at? Pure coincidence!) and a penchant for exploding in the user's hand.
They're to mass-produced firearms what cheap bathtub hooch is to Jim Beam.
Wikipedia mentions them along with much more sophisticated designs:
I once watched a Vice documentary about Afghanistan, name escapes me at the moment, and they showed this blind guy making a replica of a Russian Makarov handgun by hand, with very basic tools. We used to manufacture revolvers before 3D printers, the industrial age, modern welding techniques, or pretty much most of the technology we enjoy today. The truth is, you can make a perfectly untraceable, very reliable, simple gun with out 3D printers.
It's not without comparison in today's society. Because, well, guns exist. Equipment that gun manufacturers use (which is probably a combination of lathe machines, milling machines, etc.) are not illegal for someone to have. There is probably regulation that those big machines have to be installed in your facility to some codes, but nothing that a normal person couldn't have have if they had the will and the money.
Anyway, that said, I think you're wrong factually too -- 5-axis milling machines have existed for a long time and they can create practically anything a 3d printer can (with much, much higher resolution if you've got the money).
The difference is the learning curve and cost. It was the same thing in 1993, connected computers existed for a long time before that, but they were pricy and there was a steeper learning curve in the 80s to getting online. Even if the learning curve itself didn't drop, it's easier to surmount the learning curve when there is a critical mass.
With computers, prices dropped and the learning curve wasn't much of an issue anymore. CNC Mills and lathes still require a much greater skill and up-front cost than a 3D printer needs. With CNC machines, there's usually still an additional necessary step required to turn a model into a tool path, based on your machines. So you still have a learning curve no matter which way you cut it (pun intended).
I don't think 3D printing will be a viable way to distributively mass-produce weapons, it's the fact that somebody already has been able to produce functional weapons with 3D printing, and it's comparatively much easier buying a $10K mill and generating tool paths.
> CNC Mills and lathes still require a much greater skill and up-front cost than a 3D printer needs.
I think you're not up to date with recent developments in this space. What you say is no longer true with things like Carbide3d and Carvey. With this new line of "Desktop CNC milling" machines, it's as easy as 3dprinting (if not easier). And the price is comparable (if not cheaper). E.g., compare the Carvey with a Makerbot... or an Ultimaker. It's cheaper than both. If you're willing to be brave and buy a kit, it's even cheaper. Heck, even before this wave you could get a CNC router for very cheap. You could be under the 4 figure range -- with 3d printing it's hard to go below 4 figures and get a decent and reliable machine (though admittedly it very much is possible).
That's interesting, I had always thought the same as the poster you're replying to. It really shows the psychological/brand difference. I'm far more likely to go out and buy a 3D printer. Perhaps it's the word "printer" or it's some imagined preconceptions about the learning curve -- there is a lot of effort going into making 3D printing super accessible right now, and that's the problem pointed out a few comments up this thread.
When it's accessible to everybody it's accessible to the people we forgot were also included in "everybody", those with bad intentions -- or simply different ones, such as maximising their personal profit from an apartment rather than living there and being part of the neighbourhood. If we start seeing mainstream magazines talk about desktop CNC milling machines and classes pop up to teach kids how to use them -- and you know, with the Maker movement that's certainly possible and is probably already happening somewhere -- then these technologies become just as "dangerous" as 3D printers.
You can trace back every regulation to its inception a corresponding precedent where someone was being a dick. Of course now comes along the sharing economy skirting many regulations, and of course there are dicks here who abuse the system (which would have been caught by the original regulations which were in effect before this 'sharing economy' disruption).
Systems can be abused through many mediums. If hobby CNC machining had gotten big like 3d printing earlier, certainly we would have seen exactly the same kind of rebuke as some in the 3d printing circles are receiving now. I think now it's particularly hard to come up with good answers. Regulating 3d printers seems difficult. After all, building one yourself from scratch isn't that hard (indeed, many do do this). So you don't know if and when the bad actors with intent to harm are making weapons. I'm an anti-gun person, so I think the answer is having no regulations of 3d printers, but coming down hard on people who misuse 3d printers in making very dangerous things.
This is going down a needlessly technical route. The overarching point is that it's possible to create something that is normally sold in a regulated, tightly controlled setting.
Now, either everyone should be allowed a gun without background checks etc., or lathes/3D printers/whatever that can manufacture a gun are a problem.
More likely, the 3d printed gun fanatics will be evolving themselves out of the gene pool as their printed receivers fail to contain the charge and they all wind up with stumps for hands or worse.
To add to other comments - it's not that we invented guns after developing CNC technology. We've been using firearms for hundreds of years, and this alone should tell you it's entirely doable to manufacture a gun at home, especially with ammunition being already available. And even using old manufacturing methods, you can still apply all the scientific and technological development we've made, because the knowledge is available on the Internet.
Because lots of people don't understand what 3D printing is and figure it's a device where you do....something...and the thing you're printing pops out, ready to use. Most people who have seen what ~current hobby-grade 3D printers are capable of with ABS or PLA realize how ridiculous it is, but people who see "you can now 3D print a gun!" on TV news might not.
I'm not sure "purchase one" and "be gifted one" count as "personal use". Purchasing, in particular is (I am guessing, I am not a lawyer) commercial activity.
We've been building decent guns for hundreds of years. You don't need computer controlled anything to make a working firearm for murder or self-defense.
As, @NathanKP said, there's the gun debate, but there's also copyright (and other IP) debate as well, which I feel is far more dangerous to the technology because there is a lot more money behind that and seriously entrenched interests.
Instead of looking at it as a licensing opportunity, they are doing the same as music industry did with every new recording medium that came about.
3D printing will have a "Napster" moment where some technology comes along and raises awareness to the mainstream level, and suddenly all the big IP holders will be up in arms and come after that technology.
But by then it will be too late, and the true disruption will happen and change everything about manufacturing small goods at home.
I'm not sure if it'll have a Napster moment, or a moment quite like Napster. Napster was about having specific songs that other people made. Most of the makers in the 3d printing scene are not exactly printing from cad files stolen from manufacturers, they're building the models themselves with Autodesk software and Solidworks and Blender and so on. So there isn't going to be any day in which a manufacturer sues little folks to get money like companies were and still are able to do, because the manufacturer didn't create it, or have any part in creating it.
I think he was talking about objects that have value because of their name/brand. Someone could probably print little Jedi action figures far cheaper than they cost in the store, because in the store you're paying for the IP, not just the plastic or the design work. Even if I'm designing my ripoff action figure myself, I'm modeling it after one I see in the store.
I'm not convinced either about 3D printing having a Napster moment. But Napster does provide another good example of how scale totally changes things. The music industry didn't really have a serious problem with personal mixtapes or copying a friend's album. (Not saying they necessarily liked it but it wasn't a public issue.) Napster, on the other hand, that let you trade songs with 100,000 of your closest friends...
> The music industry didn't really have a serious problem with personal mixtapes or copying a friend's album.
I don't know about the RIAA and mixtapes, but the MPAA tried to get VCRs banned. As Jack Valenti (MPAA) explained to a congressional panel, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
Just wait until Disney finds out that you can make Mickey Mouse shaped pieces of plastic on an Ultimaker.
Yeah, I'm aware of the Sony case. And there was also often copy protection on commercial VHS tapes. AFAIK, nothing similar happened with music pre-P2P sharing although RIAA never actually condoned it.
I expect part of the reason is that the genie was already so far out of the bottle with cassette tape (and even reel-to-reel) that even they probably felt that it was pointless at that point to fight. However, a number of countries did impose a fee on blank media: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
> Most of the makers in the 3d printing scene are not exactly printing from cad files stolen from manufacturers, they're building the models themselves with Autodesk software and Solidworks and Blender and so on. So there isn't going to be any day in which a manufacturer sues little folks to get money like companies were and still are able to do, because the manufacturer didn't create it, or have any part in creating it.
New sensors coming down the pipeline will allow your smartphone camera to image objects down to micron resolutions from ~1 meter away.
Consider everyday things around you: smartphones, laptops, etc. None of these can be 3dprinted. Things you can 3d print are... smartphone cover, smartphone stand... things you can afford to be plastic in its entirety. I think you guys are overestimating what 3dprinters are capable of. There's a lot of tinkering required to create anything of even moderate complication. And it's almost always cheaper to just buy it if it's available at the store, because the printer costs and the consumables (pla, abs or whatever filament) costs, and time costs.
You can't even 3D print a good smartphone cover. The one I use was injection molded to very tight tolerances and involves multiple different kinds of plastic joined together. Let's see a 3D printer do that.
3D printing isn't going to harm the neighbors. It has the potential to disrupt existing product development and manufacturing economics if people can easily and accurately create copies of physical objects at home. If 3D printing becomes common, we will have to re-think how we regulate intellectual property around the design of phyiscal objects, in the same way that digital music and cinema have forced us to re-think how we pay for and get paid for those goods.
I'm skeptical that 3d printed objects could replace very much of what we now obtain from factories. In industrial design, the materials and fabrication process are (supposed to be) selected very carefully with an eye towards cost, physical properties, chemical properties, etc. Even my phone case, which might be the simplest product I own, was made not just from any old plastic, but from a very particular plastic that's optimized for phone cases.
Whereas with 3d printing, we're currently stuck with a kind of plastic that's optimized for compatibility with a 3d printer. It's unclear whether we'll ever be able to print from other, better plastics. And that's saying nothing of other materials like steel, glass, and ceramic, which are often necessary in useful consumer products.
drones will really 'hit that' when they shrink to the size of a large [fairly quiet] bug, and the ML gets good enough to follow someone around without incident... yikes.
Problem with Uber is not users or drivers. It's the Uber upper management itself that's being dicks. Scale or lack of it won't make a difference here, unfortunately.
I've posted this a few times in the past, but it's important to realize that the current hotel regulations have evolved over the past century in response to abuses by both tenants and landlords. Brushing these regulations off as tools used by the industry lobby to lock out competition is over-simplification.
That's the same issue as with Uber - generally laws tend to evolve in response to the environment. Yes, they accumulate cruft, but there is always a reason behind the way it looks.
Not really. I read that as moral censoriousness combined with patriarchal idiocy and class bias. It's people who think they have superior morals thinking "lesser" people have deficient morals.
This is people who think they are smart assuming that anything they don't understand is dumb. So I suppose the common thread is ego and false pride leading one to underestimate others.
Tobacco, alcohol, and pharma lobbies combined === a lot of cash. What's funny to me is that they chose prohibition instead of taking advantage of how much people want it and giving the government a cut like they do with all their other products.
I don't think the specifics are comparable, tho. Even as a pedestrian or skater, I'd rather be sharing the road with an uber or a lyft. At least here in SF and in oregon, traditional taxis are reallllly bad.
Not from the US, but in the UK I'd much rather see a system where I can give a real feedback about the ride. There's a lot of talk about how Uber is not responsible for drivers and is only matching parties to workaround the law. In practice it looks like this to me:
In a usual "city-approved" taxis you get crazy behaviour, parking in dangerous places, speeding, etc. Try complaining and you'll learn that drivers only rent the communication equipment - the company is not responsible for what they do.
In Uber, I got a dangerous driver only once (where "dangerous" meant tailgating, but nothing really bad). He got 3 stars and a comment. I got 2 emails following up on the situation and Uber's assurance that the driver has been talked to.
So yes, I'd much rather share the road with an Uber/Lyft driver, because I know the feedback actually works in that case. There's another case of what insurance they have of course... but that's another topic about actually using the service.
> So yes, I'd much rather share the road with an Uber/Lyft driver, because I know the feedback actually works in that case.
Yeah, the feedback system seems to be a cool idea. In case of Uber though, keep in mind that the driver will get fired if their average rating drops to ~4.6 stars. That 3 you left there? Probably had a really big impact on him.
Yeah it's kind of crazy how people expect to see 4.5+ star ratings on everything but then also often use 3 stars to mean average, like the people who leave 3 star reviews for apps that say "looks interesting, I'll check it out later."
Taxi drivers face fewer repercussions for shitty driving. Interestingly, as a function of Uber being illegal here, Uber drivers are super duper careful about what they're doing; if they have an accident, then the traffic authority isn't going to be very happy with them.
But, to be honest, a crappy driver is a crappy driver. Taxi drivers just seem to be worse in my personal experience.
I remember reading something about how if they increased the number of medallions in NYC by 20% then the additional traffic would actually cause a decrease in total passenger throughput. I don't remember where I read it, though.
Here's one take on it (though I'm not saying this is the only one).
In New York, taxis are part of the public transportation network. Taxi drivers go through extensive training to know where pretty much any address in the five boroughs is, and the fastest routes to get there. In order to incentivize taxi drivers to go through this training, and to incentivize owners to buy and maintain vehicles, the city limits the number of vehicles on the road at a given time to incentivize drivers and owners to go into the taxi business. According to the 2014 NYC Taxicab Fact Book, there are 13,437 medallions in circulation -- assuming that 70% of them are on the road at any one time, and taking the figure that 94% of pick-ups occur in Manhattan or at JFK or LaGuardia, that implies that there are over 200 taxis operating per square mile in Manhattan ... that's A LOT !!! It's not uncommon to grant a limited monopoly to a public utility to ensure consistent service.
Why lease medallions? Utilization. It would be really hard (and unsafe, and unpleasant) for an owner-operator to be in the car for more than 80-90 hours per week, whereas a leased car can be in operation for almost the entire 168 hours.
All that said, driver knowledge is much less important than it once was, with GPS (though taking routing advice from a mapping service in Manhattan could be a bad idea). Safety is probably less of a concern now too, since Uber tracks its drivers' every move. And, it's clear that medallion owners are reaping a lot of profit at the expense of drivers willing to work for sub-minimum wages. So, it's probably time to renegotiate the contract.
I think that this regulation also helps to cater for people with disabilities. For purely profit-oriented service, there's no point in adjusting cars for their needs, because they're a tiny subset of client base and therefore don't matter.
There shouldn't be incentives for drivers to go into the taxi business other than the market. Taxi rates should not be regulated, supply and demand ought to be enough. What broke the market was the extremely expensive medallion racket. They don't limit hairdresser licenses or medical licenses, why taxi medallions? It's a highly distorted market often controlled by highly corrupt mob related interests. How is that a good idea? The free market is surprisingly efficient when not encumbered by Byzantine attempts to regulate everything.
The free market is surprisingly efficient - in other words, ruthlessly effective - at eliminating money sinks. Like passengers with disability, which are only tiny part of client base (and not too wealthy a part) but require special adjustments to cars. I don't see how fully deregulated taxi business would do anything but ruthlessly eliminate them from the client base.
Yes, maybe we could use little less regulation. My personal issue with Uber is not the concept of less-regulated taxis. It's that it's managed by a bunch of sociopathic assholes, who openly try to exploit drivers and the community for profit, painting themselves as white knights while using every underhand tactic they can get away with to sabotage competition.
Well if deadlyfoxgrandpa's post is true that might make sense. You have to consider the additional load on the infrastructure of having more taxis on the road in an already congested area. He says passenger experience might go down with more taxis!
Last I checked there is no government regulation for the taxi business when done on privately owned property (either that you own or that you have permission from the owner to use). I wonder how many hairdressers are currently operating on a New York City street? Probably no where near the number of taxis.
Well, when you hear enough people saying "The government is always the problem" like it's a religious dogma, and claiming that a free market can solve every problem, for ever and ever amen, it gets a bit tiresome.
I live in downtown Los Angeles. In my community of buildings all tenants were served letters that threatened eviction if we put our place up on Airbnb. It is specifically outlined in majority of our leases. Several people I know have been evicted as a result. Regulations aren't even needed some buildings are just taking care of this issue on their own. For my specific building and as a renter, I'm okay with there being no Airbnb places.
> Regulations aren't even needed some buildings are just taking care of this issue on their own.
Some buildings won't take care of it (especially in situations where people are buying whole buildings to rent out), leaving their neighbors without much recourse without regulation.
Oh I know this is true and I definitely didn't mean it as a blanket statement. But it seems for most of the historic core neighborhood that the buildings are enforcing their own leases/rules.
If people are buying whole buildings to rent out, what argument do the neighbors have for shutting down airbnb activity?
I understand the argument for apartment buildings. If someone in your building buys/rents a unit, then puts it on airbnb, they decrease your security because strangers are going in and out of the building.
I do not understand the argument for an entire building. If I own a building, it should be my right to decide who stays there. As long as the airbnb guests are not throwing wild ragers, I don't see what argument the neighbors could have.
> If people are buying whole buildings to rent out, what argument do the neighbors have for shutting down airbnb activity?
Most cities require hotels go through a permitting and approval process, usually in part to ensure things like security, parking, etc. are accounted for, and only allow them in certain areas zoned for such commercial usage.
Right, residents of adjacent (or even nearby) properties would have an issue with it. Same as if I bought an apartment building and started using it as a factory. It's exactly why we have zoning.
A whole rented building has the same problems (loud guests, people abusing shared spaces, etc) as a single apartment rented to short-term guests, but on a larger scale.
Think of it this way: I would like to trade my right to run a hotel out of my house in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that my neighbors won't do this either. This is the kind of neighborhood I would like to live in. I don't demand that every neighborhood be like this, but it's what I choose for myself.
Yes, this will require some restrictions on how people can use their properties in some places. Keep in mind, though, that this arrangement is only possible with some sort of law or community regulation. Without this, any single individual can come in and deny this choice to everyone else living there.
I'd say that if it is very important to you to be able to short term rent your apartment or house, you should buy one in a community where it is legal. You should not impose this choice on neighbors who chose to live where it is not legal.
"Regulations aren't even needed some buildings are just taking care of this issue on their own. "
Not necessarily.
In some cases the ability to have tenants able to rent out their units will allow the landlord to charge more rent for that unit, because the tenant is able to offset the rent. That is good for the landlord, but not good for the other residents who are bothered by the short term rental activity. As others point out it can also add to an increase in rental costs by creating artificial price pressure since tenants can afford to pay more.
I agree with that, but if I owned a building and my renters were using Airbnb, my assumed liability and risk on the property is probably skyrocketing. Also the wear and tear on the property is probably going to accelerate.
See, that's a bit different I think. You seem to be talking about subletting. Whether you agree that people should be allowed to sublet or not, it is part of all leases I have ever heard of.
I think the discussion comes around to controlling people's activities within their homes and on their land. If you own a home no one should be allowed to tell you who you can and cannot have over to your house and what type of home business you operate.
If they want to regulate something, which may be necessary, simply enforce already existing regulations and policies regarding noise and disruption. Who is the local government to tell you for how long you can or cannot rent out your home to to someone. Are they going to crack down on renting out a loft to a student too?
> If you own a home no one should be allowed to tell you who you can and cannot have over to your house and what type of home business you operate.
So your issue is with zoning laws. So, if you buy a building in a zone that allows you to run an AirBnB-type business, would you be okay with the zone changing after you've made your purchase? Because your asking the residents of these spaces to accept the opposite.
So if you decide to have a few hundred people in your yard for a rave every night, or operate a burning tyre business, that's no-one's concern but your own?
Many people believe that they have the right to do whatever they want, but only up to the point where it begins to interfere with other people's rights.
The rest depends on your definition of "interfering with other people's rights."
Someone could reasonably believe that subletting is well within the limits of his/her principle whereas noise is not. Others, meanwhile, could argue that both are violations of the principle.
You probably don't really believe that. For instance, if you buy a house in a sleepy residential neighborhood, you probably don't really believe it's reasonable to convert it into a noisy 24/7 tool and die shop.
The interesting question is, where do you draw the line at what should and shouldn't be regulated?
> Community consensus, which as luck would have it, is fairly easy to come to on a local geographic level.
Unfortunately that's not really sustainable. For instance let's say the community agreed that you can turn your home into a noisy 24/7 tool and die shop. Now 5 years past and half of the neighborhood has different home owners in it (quick turnaround for moving half a community but I've seen crazier things). Now the entire community wants them GONE.
Do we say it's okay one year then a few years later go "oh sorry but you can't do your business here anymore"? Moving or even closing up could cost the business owner a substantial amount of money not to mention the loss of customers now not necessarily knowing they moved, etc.
Point being while I don't know where the line is for regulating and not regulating something I also don't think community consensus is a silver bullet.
The community originally says it's okay for 24/7 noise. Some of them move out and other people move in. They know when they move in that there is a 24/7 noise shop there, and they don't have much right to demand because they are the thing that's changed.
Exactly, and who is the agent of change when your neighborhood fills up with transient tenants? Why, it's AirBnB of course. Ergo, AirBnB should be regulated.
I've said it before: cities that care about their current residents should enact 2 limits: tourist zones where year-round full-unit, full-building rentals are allowed, taxed and regulated like hotels (yes, you run a business, you pay commercial property tax, in addition to sales and nightly tax). And then in the remaining residential zones, limit homestays to 40 or 60 days, regardless of whether they are owner occupied or not, with AirBnB collecting taxes and fees for the city and reporting all nightly counts to the city. There could also be complete homestay exclusion zones, but that can also be handled by condo/neighborhood association rules.
The regulation can be tailored to local desires and needs: number of days, requiring permits or just allowing anyone to operate, and requiring owner-occupancy during visitor stays or not.
Note that nothing prevents regular residences at resident-occupied tax rates in the "commercial" zone, just that buyers in that zone know they can convert if they want, but so can their neighbors.
I agree completely. We have different zoning laws, so why is San Francisco applying a single short term rental law across the entire city?
As I said in an earlier post, I would like to trade my right to run a hotel out of my house in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that my neighbors won't do this either.
However, I certainly don't see why the preferences of people who live in largely SFH zones in the outer mission or outer sunset should govern north beach or the inner mission. That's up to them.
You're not sure about a solution, but I am: community consensus and governance.
If there needs to be a noisy shop there, people will want it to be there. If there doesn't need to be one there, people will want it to move to an industrial zoned area.
That's good for society.
Generally with a condo you have less freedom than you do if you buy a house with no common areas.
Hotels are prepared to deal with problems that tenants may cause. Locks are re-programmable between stays. Security, housekeeping and maintenance people on staff. Etc.
In a condo building, any problems caused in the common areas are going to end up being the responsibility of the association. Which is generally going to be ill equipped and probably unwilling to deal with any issues since they are getting no benefit from it.
You have never been able to do what you want with your house. Try, for example, not cutting the grass. Most cities have laws against that. And this is just an example, it is even worse if you try to use your house for commercial purposes.
Yes, and 'not cutting the grass' laws are frequently ABUSED by governments to basically kick out poor people from their neighborhood and pave it over for redevelopment for cronies.
And why, other than NIMBY, should other owners care (let alone get to restrict) whether you live in your house or let other people pay you to live in it?
They should care whether your tenants behave responsibly, but then they also care whether you behave responsibly, so there's little difference there.
The entire premise of government (at each level of granularity: federal, state, local, housing association) is that society must determine what is acceptable behavior and what is not. E.g., You cannot dump toxic waste on your land.
You enter into an implicit (or explicit) contracts with your HOA or local government when it comes to zoning, and this introduces restrictions -- it's not NIMBY (necessarily), since you knowingly agreed to the restrictions when you purchased. This is why {Walmart, Airports, etc} cannot just be built willy-nilly in residential neighborhoods.
> The entire premise of government (at each level of granularity: federal, state, local, housing association) is that society must determine what is acceptable behavior and what is not. E.g., You cannot dump toxic waste on your land.
Not disputing that; however, it makes far more sense to regulate things that actually affect neighbors (noise, dumping, etc) rather than proxies for those (long-term versus short-term residency). It shouldn't matter whether the residents are short-term or long-term, as long as they're held to the same standard.
> You enter into an implicit (or explicit) contracts with your HOA or local government when it comes to zoning, and this introduces restrictions -- it's not NIMBY (necessarily), since you knowingly agreed to the restrictions when you purchased.
It's NIMBY when those restrictions are arbitrary (in particular when they restrict things that don't actually affect neighbors, other than their sense of moral outrage) and changeable in ways that affect existing residents who haven't agreed and only bought into the old restrictions.
The problem is that those things that actually affect neighbors are mostly things that have to be remediated after the fact assuming that they can be--and, perhaps, on multiple occasions. So it's not unreasonable to put in place pre-emptive rules that reduce the chance of those things happening in the first place.
I'll give a simple example. my aunt owns a house here in AZ, and one out in NY. Lives in each for 6 months out of the year (ish). When she's not there, she rents them out.
About a year ago, Verizon sent her DMCA takedown notices, and started their "warning" system (i.e. the step program or whatever it's called). I told her about the safe harbor protections, and she spoke to the tenant several times.
Literally, the only thing that stopped the tenant from torrenting was installing OpenWRT on the router and setting up the nftables/iptables to block udp traffic (only after talking to the tenant 8 times).
The only thing that can prevent some people from behaving badly is the absence of a chance to do so.
Zoning is already a solution to this problem, why do we need to solve it again? Only places zoned for business/tenancy should be acceptable places to rent.
"it makes far more sense to regulate things that actually affect neighbors (noise, dumping, etc) rather than proxies for those (long-term versus short-term residency)"
Here's the thing, even this is an area where people will reasonably disagree.
For instance, suppose you have a couple of kids, and they build friendships with the other kids around your neighborhood. Let's say that a family with a couple of kids gets outbid on the house next to you, because the new buyer can price in the profits of putting 3 bedrooms full time on airbnb, whereas the family would be filling them with two extremely expensive young children. In this case, airbnb could end up turning a substantial amount of the SFH housing stock into hotels.
Kids are just one example of the ways people may wish to live in a neighborhood. Obviously, kids are not the only reason people might wish to get to know their neighbors and form longer relationships with them.
So these people would like to trade their right to put their house or apartment on airbnb in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that their neighbors won't do this either. Other people won't, which is why I support zoning laws that regulate tenancy length, but would prefer to see them kept as local as is practically possible.
What I firmly believe is that these zoning laws are reasonable[1] in some areas, and that people should not break the law and impose a hotel on a neighborhood that has democratically chosen to live under this kind of zoning regulation.
[1] There are clearly unreasonable neighborhood regulations that are not up to majority vote, and history is full of them.
> the pendulum has swung too far from "abusive regulation" to "abusive lack of regulation".
Of course, this always depends on your definition of "abusive" and your beliefs about the role of government (or other) regulation.
> people buy or rent residences in buildings expecting those buildings to be inhabited by long-term residents, then some part of the building gets converted to a hotel.
I'm just not sure why the duration of a resident's stay has relevance to neighbors' preferences or government regulations. What are the neighbors' actual concerns, and why can't those be handled directly? If it's excessive noise, then isn't that just as bad whether it's a long-term resident or a string of short-term residents? Same goes for any other concern I can think of, like maintaining the outward appearance of the property.
Neighbors complain because outer doors are propped open, short-term tenants are loud (or throw parties), and common facilities (like lobbies) are trashed. These things in turn make true renters aware of the fact that the common space in the building have been opened up to strangers, which justifiably makes them feel less safe.
It's not complicated.
These aren't people patrolling every apartment in the building (some of these buildings are huge). They're tenants who are noticing the actual externalities of Airbnb tenants.
I'm saying that these externalities seem like they can be dealt with directly, by rules requiring doors to be closed, rules about the treatment of common areas, noise limits, etc. without any reference to the duration of residents' stays.
Those rules already exist. In a medium-sized apartment building with common areas, leases assuredly spell these things out. The problem is that rules in leases aren't effectively binding on short-term tenants, because it takes longer to enforce the rules than those short-term tenants will be staying anyways.
Also, you can reasonably assume that boilerplate leases for apartment buildings forbid directly these kinds of short-term rentals. Most boilerplate leases require individual approval by the landlord for any sublessors.
> The problem is that rules in leases aren't effectively binding on short-term tenants, because it takes longer to enforce the rules than those short-term tenants will be staying anyways.
Why aren't they binding on the property owner, thus disincentivizing owners from renting out the property?
You're just dropping back to the top of the conversation, before I brought up the issue of regulating specific symptoms rather than one potential cause (short-term rental).
There is no realistic way of policing short term tenants. Sure, you can leave them a bad air bnb review. But then they will leave you a bad air bnb review for retalation, so you don't want to do that.
How do you punish someone who breaks the rules for a one night stay?
People with long term leases can be threatened with eviction for breaking the rules, which usually carries with it pretty big expenditures of time and money for moving, finding another apartment, etc. People who show up with all of their possessions in a suit case and stay for 1-2 nights don't have much to worry about.
> How do you punish someone who breaks the rules for a one night stay?
If you are talking about AirBnB tenants breaking rules set by the AirBnB host -- which is implicit in the rejected option of bad AirBnB reviews -- you file legal action for breach of contract.
If you are talking about other neighbors or the property owner who didn't consent to the AirBnB host, then, either they file nuisance complaints against the host and/or property owner or, if they are the property owner and the host is their tenant, they evict the host for violating their lease.
Who punishes the property owner? Where do the fines go? Do I get some of it, since I had to deal with people puking 2 liters of half digested wine and hot dogs onto my door?
I don't understand. I'm not arguing for some new group that implements and enforces these rules. I'm just suggesting that rules based on specific community problems (like noise) make more sense than on the much broader potential problem of short-term occupants.
The fines can go the same place they currently go. I don't know where that is, or if neighbors receive any of it, but that is a separate issue that also applies to long-term occupants puking on your door.
Long-term issues are nominally solved by mainly eviction and/or lawsuit. But they are in practice solved by neighbors working out polite understandings because they don't want to deal with angry neighbors and/or eviction/lawsuit.
Short term occupants don't have the same incentive to be neighborly because they'll be gone soon. And the threat of eviction is basically useless against somebody who's planning to leave anyhow.
The related theoretical construct is Prisoner's Dilemma as compared with Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Or in IPD-land, it's where ω is low (short-term rentals) versus high (long-term rentals):
Short term tenants need not be treated any differently than the property owner, the property owner's family, or the property owner's friends. If the property owner causes problems him- or herself, or gives anyone permission to use the property who then causes problems, then that should be cause for eviction, lawsuits, fines, or whatever penalties are already in place.
The incentives of short term tenants are irrelevant, because all penalties would be applied to the property owner. The working out of polite understanding still works fine. If short term rentals are causing problem, neighbors should urge the property owner to either stop doing it, or figure out a way to get better tenants.
Speaking from experience, the working out of a polite understanding does not work fine. All humans have practice at being human around other humans, and given a multi-year situation, they will have time and incentive to sort it out.
But not all humans have practice giving detailed instructions to temporary renters on how exactly to behave so as to be indistinguishable from the actual resident. The property owner's absence breaks the key feedback loop driving the polite understanding. And further, as I already explained, the temporary residents have much less incentive to follow whatever micromanagement has been ordered. I understand that you think it's the same in theory, but people are living not in your head but in actual apartments.
Of course, we are treating short-term rentals just like we are treating other home-based businesses: we are regulating them. Zoning laws are the general-case solution to this, and some cities are applying them here.
And why should the government get involved? Find an apartment complex where the owner agrees to not do short-term leases, and expect to pay a slightly higher rent for the stipulation.
> It's not complicated.
Everything is complicated when the government gets involved and starts inventing regulations.
Why would a short term resident care about the outward appearance of the property? Why, really, would they care that a neighbour thinks their music is too loud? They've moving out in three days anyway.
Close quarters living like we have in major cities is a very delicate dance that involves building a relationship with your neighbours. Introducing someone not committed to that can absolutely cause huge problems.
> Why would a short term resident care about the outward appearance of the property? Why, really, would they care that a neighbour thinks their music is too loud? They've moving out in three days anyway.
Because they could be fined or otherwise penalized for violating noise ordinances, which apply just as well to short-term and long-term residents.
This is a naive view of how quiet-enjoyment-type laws are enforced. It can take weeks to months to bring action against neighbors for violating noise ordinances (if they even exist).
When I moved into my current SF apartment, I verified with the management that short-term rentals were forbidden in the lease terms, and that they'd be willing to take action against tenants who violated that clause. I have no desire to live in a building occupied by people who have no incentive to live in harmony.
This seems similar to people who admire an idyllic view of other people's trees from their house, and then complain when the actual owner of that other property takes down the trees that were providing that view. "Not neighborly" is not a crime; you can't even sensibly define what it would mean, other than "don't do anything I don't like". Which leads directly into NIMBY.
There are long-term residents who hold similar views about not particularly caring to know or interact with their neighbors, and that's not against the law either.
(Also, does "quiet-enjoyment-type laws" sound like dystopian doublespeak to anyone else, or is it just me?)
For the record, though, there's nothing wrong with the owner of an apartment building prohibiting the renters or owners of the apartments from subletting them via AirBnB or any other means. It's perfectly fine for them to say "don't rent out your place or we'll kick you out". So if they want to construct an apartment building that caters to long-term residents who object to living near short-term residents, they can. And if they want to rent out their apartments on a short-term basis, or let their tenants do so, to the possible detriment of their ability to attract long-term residents, they can do that too.
"Not neighborly" is not a crime; you can't even sensibly define what it would mean...
Yes, the nature of living in a society with humans is that you sometimes have to take situations on a case-by-case basis, and cannot have a single set of rules that will guide you to correct action in all circumstances.
(Also, does "quiet-enjoyment-type laws" sound like dystopian doublespeak to anyone else, or is it just me?)
"Quiet enjoyment" is the technical term. Between the intellectually dishonest rhetorical device of calling something I said "dystopian" and your absurd assertion that one could use a noise ordinance against short-term tenants, it's pretty clear that you're not arguing in good faith here.
> Yes, the nature of living in a society with humans is that you sometimes have to take situations on a case-by-case basis, and cannot have a single set of rules that will guide you to correct action in all circumstances.
That's a very old and ongoing argument, between having a concrete set of potentially inflexible laws (which are particularly dangerous when they restrict the human capacity for understanding and forgiveness), and having the arbitrary and changing moral sensibilities of humans ("I'll know it when I see it"). Both have their own set of bugs. I don't think it's reasonable to universally say you cannot have a single set of rules that works everywhere, nor is it reasonable to always defer to collective moral sensibility (which often gets the wrong answer as well).
I do, however, think it's reasonable with either approach to limit outrage and sensibilities to what actually affects people, rather than proxies for that, or worse yet things that neighbors have no business controlling.
> "Quiet enjoyment" is the technical term.
I never said it wasn't, and I didn't intend it as a rhetorical device; sorry if it came across as such. I meant it as a genuine question; it seems like an odd term, compared to for instance "noise ordinance" or similar.
I meant it as a genuine question; it seems like an odd term, compared to for instance "noise ordinance" or similar.
Gotcha, I interpreted that as you saying I was using doublespeak, rather than that the term itself was doublespeak-ish. Apologies for the misinterpretation.
> the nature of living in a society with humans is that you sometimes have to take situations on a case-by-case basis, and cannot have a single set of rules that will guide you to correct action in all circumstances.
Which sounds like a great reason to not have a rule prohibiting short-term occupants in residential zones.
Look at it the other way. If you have a short-term tenant that behaves, your neighbors probably won't notice, and even if they do, they won't care. It's normal that sometimes you want a friend / family member / (boy|girl)friend to stay over. It's entirely fair to make a blanket ban on subletting but not enforce it too eagerly. This way, you're taking the responsibility for people which you invited to stay.
That might work in practice, depending on the community culture. But I am not generally a fan of prosecutorial discretion because of how ridiculously easy it makes unfair enforcement.
> But I am not generally a fan of prosecutorial discretion because of how ridiculously easy it makes unfair enforcement.
I consider it to be a lubricant in the engine of law. You can't run law to the letter, because defining the law is an AI-complete problem. The law tends to have more corner cases the more detailed you make it, and by executing it unconditionally, with maximum efficiency, you're going to harm a lot of innocent people. On the other hand, too much grease, and the engine won't run at all.
That's why I often remark about the importance of trust on a societal level, and my dislike towards the current trend of replacing trust with trustless systems. Trust is what keeps society together, and what allows it to work without humans having godlike introspection and cognitive powers.
I'd say that the whole problem of having short-term tenants is precisely that you're pretty much forced to come up with 'a single set of rules' to force them to behave, due to transitory and impersonal nature of it.
The organic nature of case-by-case resolution of issues pretty much requires a long-term tenant that has some for of long-term relationship to the property and neighbors. Social pressure and personal responsibility come into play.
It's the difference (roughly) between a teacher-student and a parent-child relationship. In the former case, the (usual) lack of personal ties requires explicit rules. In the latter case, a lot of rules and conflict-resolution is more organic and case-by-case.
> It can take weeks to months to bring action against neighbors for violating noise ordinances (if they even exist).
Then that applies equally to short-term and long-term occupants. Of course, the point of the rules and penalties is to disincentivize the behavior, not just to have recourse after the behavior occurs. Assuming there is a reliable process of enforcing the penalties, and the penalties are set appropriately, they should function to sufficiently disincentivize the behavior.
To choose a more permanent example - property damage. If the tourist damages the property, you make the property owner pay for repairs. OK. Maybe AirBnB can help the property owner track down the tourist to get the money for repairs, maybe not. But the point is that the damage still happened in the first place - a longer term tenant that faces their neighbours every day would be far less likely to have done the damage in the first place.
But if you hold the tenant responsible for the actions of their subletters, then they'll be less likely to sublet their room (or at least be more discerning about who they let sublet); the end result is that the issue diminishes.
Well, that's a physical limitation. Arrow of time and whatnot. It also applies to all penalties. Of course, the point of the penalty is not simply to raise money or get revenge after a rule is broken. The purpose is to disincentivize breaking the rule in the first place.
The worst penalty you could incur via air bnb is a negative feedback. I'm almost certain there is no method in place for enforcing monetary fines for breaking rules. Then again, how would one even report rule breaking? If you live next to an illegal air bnb unit, how do you inform air bnb that your local rules are being broken? How do you show them what your local rules are? How do you prove they are being broken?
Just throwing out an idea, not a particularly well-formed one:
Air BnB could allow you to enter your address on the site if you wish to report noise or disturbance. Without informing you who the occupant is or forcing you to submit personal ID beyond your unit or house number; based on your proximity to any booked Air BnB properties the nearest user would get a ping via SMS and if they continue to make noise the lessor gets a ping via SMS.
The ping would be done without letting the reporter know any information other than a nearby user has been notified. The lessor SMS could include the phone number of the lessee so that they don't have to go hunting for the details and can act on the information quickly.
You'd need to set it up in such a way as to prevent someone spamming the system with random addresses or ceaselessly pinging the lessee/lessor.
I think that's the problem - there's no effective mechanism to penalize a short-term tenant for excessive noise, parking violations, smoking on premises, etc.
Faced with lack of efficient mechanisms, HOAs or city councils after hearing a few horror stories just throw the baby with the bathwater by outlawing all short-term stays, even if 99% of short-term stays are quiet decent non-confrontational tenants.
> I think that's the problem - there's no effective mechanism to penalize a short-term tenant for excessive noise, parking violations, smoking on premises, etc.
Sure there is: make the property owner ultimately responsible, if they're not already. Then watch how fast they actively seek out solutions that pass on more liability to the tenant.
> Faced with lack of efficient mechanisms, HOAs or city councils after hearing a few horror stories just throw the baby with the bathwater by outlawing all short-term stays, even if 99% of short-term stays are quiet decent non-confrontational tenants.
Yeah, most regulation seems to be reactionary in response to a small fraction of high-profile incidents. "How do we not make the news? How do we not get blamed?"
Most HOAs are kinda toothless on the enforcement side, as any financial penalties could be met with property owner's "document it and prove it" response, at which point there's little recourse.
Speaking from experience here, having been a member in an HOA with a smoking tenant nearby (nothing related to AirBnB, this was a long-term lease).
> Because they could be fined or otherwise penalized for violating noise ordinances,
Oooh, I'm so scared of fines from a local authority in a town I'm visiting for two days and never coming back to again after I return to my own country on the other side of the world.
Or, more likely, because the actual property owner would be fined or otherwise penalized for allowing the violation of the local rules. So the question becomes Why would owners offer short-term rental at all, or without some reliable vetting process?
Yes, and there is a more established community process to get consensus on how people will get along with each other, and mediate any disputes. Many condo buildings have monthly meetings of the owners, for example. Short-term residents have no real investment in being part of a group of neighbors who they get along with long-term. The buildings where this functions best are already taking some steps to crack down on AirBnBs themselves, though, without waiting for cities to get involved. Usually the condo association contract gives them the legal tools to do so, although it varies by state & building how effective that is.
> Yes, and there is a more established community process to get consensus on how people will get along with each other, and mediate any disputes. Many condo buildings have monthly meetings of the owners, for example. Short-term residents have no real investment in being part of a group of neighbors who they get along with long-term.
And speaking as a long-term resident who has no interest in local politics, like who leaves their trash bin by the edge of the road for a day after trash pickup, or whether grass is two inches too long, personally I actively avoid places with a homeowner's association.
When I've lived in suburban areas with detached family houses, I also found the homeowners' associations somewhat useless and didn't go to any meetings. But I've found them more useful in apartment and condo buildings, where a pleasant living experience usually requires a bit more cooperation. That seems to be a common view, since attendance is a lot better at tenant/resident-association meetings in buildings, than at any suburban homeowner's association I've seen.
Yeah, I could easily believe that; when you share a wall, your neighbors' behavior matters a lot more than when you have an air gap and good soundproofing. (One of many reasons I prefer the suburbs.)
What I'm saying is that, if there are X+1 decibels coming from a property, and there is a law or community rule that X decibels is the loudest allowable noise, then why can't that rule be enforced regardless of the nature of that property's residency?
How long do you think it takes to sue and/or fine someone over this sort of thing? It's not like if 3 of your neighbors vote to file a complaint about the noise your bank account gets debited $100 within the hour. Have you ever been involved in a legal dispute in rel life? Even a small claims court issue can play out over months.
Resolving everything on a case-by-case basis means high transaction costs. A blanket ban on some less-than-popular activity is arguably economically inefficient, but the net cost to individuals is negligible, whereas the cost to someone negatively affected by the unpopular activity is high, and we can all (except perhaps for you) imagine being the one stuck with the problem.
Say this is happening to you: you're trying to sleep but the short-term renters next door are having a loud party, and although you already asked them to stop they ignored you. You lie awake fuming about it, but planning for how you would like to get the property owner fined isn't doing anything to stop the noise right now. Furthermore, even if the property owner is fined, then it's still possible that in 6 months time he'll rent the place out to some jerks who'll do the same thing. So, the property owner may get fined again, but the jerks don't care, because they're jerks - it's oin a stolen credit card, they're leaving the country, they're high on drugs and are incapable of realizing that this will result in bad credit, whatever. Do you want to go through the same process of filing a complain and eventually having the property owner fined every time this happens, or do you just want to get with your neighbors and say 'fuck it, no more short-term rentals in our building/street' at the next HOA or neighborhood meeting?
Because enforcing a thousand tiny regulations like, no higher than x decibels, no more than 10 people, and no leaving doors to common areas open is difficult. A short term tenant finds it easier to get a way with breaking these rules because he knows he will be gone tomorrow, and it is more difficult for people to associate him with a particular apartment if he's only been there for a few days. Most cities realized that length of tenancy is a good heuristic, so to make enforcement easier they developed zoning laws around it.
There are real objective difference between living in a building with short term vs long term tenants, and there is no easy way to force short term tenants to behave like long term tenants.
Have you ever had to deal with a noisy neighbor? In SF, there is no recourse. Tenants can't be evicted and the police don't care. About the only thing you can do is to enter an escalating war of noise making. Short term rentals exacerbate the problem because there is no incentive for the renters or neighbors to play nicely.
Are you saying there is recourse for short-term rentals, but not for noise violations? If that's the case for some odd reason, then it needs to change.
There is no reason for short term renters or their neighbors to behave. For instance, at one AirBnB rental, my upstairs neighbor used to do jumping jacks in boots - maybe just to piss off the people below, I don't know. For that matter, renters often party late into the night on weekdays. Renters on AirBnB at least have a few options - they can contact AirBnB, they can file a chargeback, or they can eat the loss and move.
I don't agree. If you are a hotel, you are a corporation who's primary business and income is renting out rooms. If you have what is usually just a sole proprietorship, you should not be subject to the hotel tax. What is it whit this damn country that people want to just start bending definitions and terms to fit their despotic little minds will.
What, next we're going to require Sally's lemonade stand comply with Sarbanes Oxley??? I can't stand it when people want to bend the rules just because things are not turning out how they had hoped or in their favor.
When Sally's lemonade stand expands to thousands of locations across the country and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, it will have to comply with Sarbanes Oxley, along with all the other regulations in the food and beverage industry.
AirBnb is a pretty big corporation at this point, they should start playing by the rules.
Lets be clear, you are the only who wants to bend the rules for the people doing AirBNB. AirBNB is a hotel company, essentially. I don't see any reason why it should have a free 14% margin over hotels .
Some people are renting out a spare room, or maybe the whole house for a couple of weeks while they're away.
Some people are buying properties purely to rent out via AirBnB, making use of a surprisingly large number of startups set up to provide guest screening, cleaning and welcoming services for AirBnB guests, and having it as one of their main income sources. Not only is it the latter group attracting the attention, it's also the latter group that's bending the definition of "hotel" to avoid being classified as one.
I cannot stand it when people start to apply rule exemptions as a rule.
Generally rules are designed for general case, yet in some (legally or not) specific cases we just close our eyes. Sally's lemonade stand is an exception - even though agencies could fine her to oblivion we just don't do that, because it is more beneficial for society. If she starts doing that on any scale larger than several hours per month, then it could very well be entirely different story.
In some parts of the world it is illegal to be drunk in public. Bars are public, buses are public. Even though you are braking the law just by going home on a bus/taxi after a night out, noone will arrest you if you are doing that quietly.
Hotel is by definition place that provides lodging on short term basis. And general rule is that hotels pay taxes. Again noone is going to extract taxes for allowing some friend of friend even if it involves direct or indirect (we call it barter) reimbursement.
AirBnB is not letting friend of friend stay for a night. It is a business. So, please, stop bending the rules yourself and try to claim that lodging regulations should not apply to AirBnB.
> What is it whit this damn country that people want to just start bending definitions and terms to fit their despotic little minds will.
I actually mostly agree with this. Laws are generally designed in a manner "mostly people will not do foo or neighbourhoods will sort it out themselves, therefore enforcing regulation on foo will be more expensive than revenue generated". And then come people like you, who try to bend definitions in a way that implicit social contract works in their favour.
> If you are a hotel, you are a corporation who's primary business and income is renting out rooms. If you have what is usually just a sole proprietorship, you should not be subject to the hotel tax. What is it whit this damn country that people want to just start bending definitions and terms to fit their despotic little minds will.
Hotels may be corporations, but they can also be other business forms, including sole proprietorships or partnerships. Sole proprietorship hotels aren't particularly uncommon. You are the one bending definitions.
> What, next we're going to require Sally's lemonade stand comply with Sarbanes Oxley???
Most SOX provisions apply -- by their text -- to public companies; except things like rules prohibiting willful destruction of evidence related to a federal investigation. Obviously, by the text of the law, the former wouldn't apply to a typical lemonade stand, and, the latter wouldn't apply to anything a typical lemonade stand would do even to the extent that the rule would in principal apply to them.
whether you transact business as a corporation or a sole proprietorship, you should be taxed and treated the same. this is the silliest thing ive ever heard.
and frankly, all airbnb renters should be treated as a class(or a franchisee), in which case they are more like a corporation then a sole proprietor.
There's also the Hotel Act in most cities which allows police to enter whenever they want. Airbnb rentals are private so can't do their prostitution entrapment stings. They are already lobbying here claiming the sky is falling because they don't have unfettered access to shakedown tourists anymore.
They pass the collected taxes onto the government, and probably have the same opinion on hotel taxes as a retail shop would have on sales tax - it would boost business somewhat, if it were lower, but oh well.
From personal anecdotal experience, when traveling alone for short term, chain hotels are frequently cheaper than AirBnB - the host has to hit you up with cleaning fee per stay, while a large hotel has economies of scale working in its favor as far as cleaning, parking, utility bills and other stuff.
If you reasoning is correct than we should have seen the similar use of force in the legislation of regulating Couchsurfing. Nope, nothing happened, I was happily hosting several Couchsurfer guests in my rental in Santa Monica. When money is involved than suddenly it is a huge issue and they have to shut down Airbnb. Am I the only one seeing the double standard here?
It's not clear that anyone has the legal means to stop you from hosting your friends for free.
Besides, couch surfers typically stay in the same house as the current resident, and he/she has to maintain good relations with the neighbours.
The apartment adjacent to mine recently got turned into a short-term rental place. Most of the time there's no problem, but every couple of weeks an extremely loud group of tourists comes over and treats it like a party house, making tons of noise, blasting soccer games on the TV with associated loud cheering, etc.
Couchsurfing hosts generally don't give up their entire place to their guest(s), which is how the short-term rental market operates. According to the article, they explicitly legalized the situation where you're sharing a unit, but you have to pay taxes.
You are assuming that Airbnb hosts give up their entire place. I never been to any Airbnb where that was the case, it is anecdotal evidence but without presenting the numbers you can't really make that argument. On the other hand I was in CS hosts apartment alone. This is also just anecdotal evidence, but I think in this topic these details have nothing to do with outcome of that voting.
Of course some Airbnb hosts give up their entire place. There's a big button to limit your search to just those properties.
Airbnb shows 667 out of 918 rentals in Santa Monica are for the entire place, i.e. no host present. The vast majority of rentals there won't have an owner present.
What's funny is every major city I've ever been in has had ultra-short term, private apartment rentals. AirBNB just made it extremely popular and easy to rent a room or your flat without putting a lot of work in.
I think that is the real innovation of the "api businesses" like airbnb and uber. of course, there is politics and unions and taxes (oh my!), so it gets muddied.
Hundreds of additional units potentially being opened up for traditional rentals certainly sounds like a good thing for rapidly-rising Santa Monica rents.
Pulling up AirBNB listings for a random week a few months from now in SM also makes it look like most of the stuff being listed is small apartments/houses, not the swanky giant houses that would be well outside the market of the typical renter who's currently being squeezed. However, it's unclear from a cursory look how many units were permanent rentals versus "I travel on business a lot so I can have guests stay when I'm not here" type stuff which is much more reasonable.[1]
There's a fair bit of new residential construction going on, but it doesn't seem like enough yet, and I think a city—especially one that already has an easily-healthy number of tourists/visitors—has more responsibility to residents regarding rent than to visitors who are experiencing a likewise-overheated hotel market.
[1] although it's not a pleasant thought to think that for many people, things are tight enough that the money made from renting out their place (and the risks that go with it) when not home is a significant boon to their life.
SM also has strong rent rules, a smart building owner would rather AirBNB their available space as they can charge more for it and aren't locked in for X number of years if the tenant doesn't move.
A good friend lives in a nice building in SM, the owner wont fix one of the elevators because he is trying to push the seniors out that pay less then 50% of the current market value, so he can raise rent.
Without delving into the specifics of any particular legislative district, this is effectively the domain of zoning codes and other legislative tools of urban planning.
While not a literal contract, certainly a layer of legally encoded social contracts with a long history.
Yes, that's what zoning regulations are for. You don't have a contract stating that your neighbor won't open a manure factory next door, it's implicit that your neighbors will abide by the zoning laws.
Common law takes time to adjust to new technologies, but it comes out with much better standards and regulations -- that everyone agree with -- than government.
>> "people buy or rent residences in buildings expecting those buildings to be inhabited by long-term residents, then some part of the building gets converted to a hotel"
But isn't that what Home Owners' Associations and condo bylaws are for? If you don't want to risk this happening in your apartment, don't buy one that permits other residents to do this. Thank you Market.
Home Owner's Associations are just mini-governments. Why is a government consisting of a 4 block home owners association deciding to ban AirBNB okay, but it is not okay for a city government to do this?
More choice within that city for all parties involved. The HOA to decide to allow or not, and those looking for places to live to find ones that match their preference.
I think this is always the main motivation of replacing one-size-fits all government policy with the ability of smaller components governments to decide on their own, for any political issue.
The mini-governments could enact policy that meets the demand of constituent groups within a small corner of the larger entity, vs being forced to follow a "majority" position mandated city-wide that does not match minority preferences.
Most people rent. Airbnb is mostly an externality to landlords, too; as long as the rent is being paid, they can afford to slow-roll complaints about Airbnb tenants.
I understand what you're saying. I'm not understanding who in the current situation has any right to have grievance. In a situation where apartments/homes allow airBnB in their bylaws/HOAs, everyone - the landlords, the neighbors (whether or not they rent) and the short-term renters are all acting in accordance with their legal agreements that they voluntarily agreed to.
In a situation where HOAs/bylaws do not allow renting on airBnb, there already exist proper legal channels for enforcing contracts, and these extra regulations are not needed.
Your comment made it seem like these extra regulations somehow ease these complaints (which you are implying are legitimate).
Is my understanding correct?
I have used Uber -- and I love the concept of free people making side deals with property/time they have to earn a little extra cash. Been going on forever. Likely will continue. With or without some kind of community oversight.
Which brings me to my point: must we always be swinging one way or another on a pendulum? For the vast majority of transactions, it seems like we've solved this for both sides of the transaction, buyer and seller. The remaining piece is negative externalities.
Part of the problem here is that most anything you do in life is going to have some sort of negative externalities, the only thing that changes is the magnitude -- much the same concept as anything you consume is a poison, the only thing that changes is the dosage.
It just seems that the scales will always be tipped against guys like Airbnb or Uber. If a million people rent an Airbnb apartment and one person gets killed or raped? Headlines will say "Airbnb leads to killing and rape on the east side!" If the same numbers happen in a hotel? No headlines.
So even as a libertarian I'm in favor of some reasonable kind of accommodation between banning and complete laizzez faire. The problem is that I've yet to see anyone define "reasonable" in a way that doesn't sound like a knee-jerk reaction.
And let's face it, these kinds of transactions will continue no matter how many city councils vote them down. The problem needs a public airing and 100 possible solutions tried. I'm sure one will work. Perhaps some sort of insurance with all risk factors made public? Neighbor rents out his apartment as an Airbnb and partygoers destroy your yard? File a claim. You get your yard back, Airbnb has somebody who handles these problems, and the neighbor's insurance rates go up. We see this a lot with driving: the ticket isn't much of a concern for folks, but the rising insurance rates hurt for a long time afterwards.
Any reason that needs to happen with a blanket ban and not just building bylaws. I feel like the goal should be that different buildings try different things, until we figure out what "no one around me may use airbnb" is worth in terms of higher rent. Then people could do what works for them.
> but it is not even a little bit hard to find loud, angry citizens complaining. Those complaints are entirely predictable: people buy or rent residences in buildings expecting those buildings to be inhabited by long-term residents, then some part of the building gets converted to a hotel. People aren't OK with that.
Why is the answer not "get over it"? What's their legitimate complaint about having short-term residents nearby? If people are complaining about bad behavior by those residents, punish that.
I call a 14% tax rate for a single service abusive. Why does a hotel tax exist in the first place, where does that money go, and why is the tax rate higher than the sales tax?
This is going to happen in most cities; it has to, because the pendulum has swung too far from "abusive regulation" to "abusive lack of regulation".
That is absolutely false in 2015 compared to the past, and since your premise is completely false its very sad that this is top rated comment....a sad commentary on the present bad state of HN.
So the only problem with AirBnB is that some residents are too loud?
Is the solution to have governments ban AirBnB all over the world, or do you think people might be able to just agree on house rules that forbid disturbing other residents at night?
It's amazing how blind people are to common sense.
Sure, and this is a good example. I think most people would agree that we should ethically prefer to have more housing than more vacation rentals, but these are demands on the same good.
Hawaii, for example, is pretty poor. If we halted the renting of property, then presumably available long term housing availability would increase... yada yada yada, housing prices become more affordable.
At the same time, tourism would crater and the locals would have less income.... yada yada yada, housing is relatively expensive again (until some unknown economy evolves).
If you think the idea of letting some unknown economy evolve to make up the deficit from tourism is morally/ethically acceptable, then is it not morally/ethically acceptable for me to say "people should move to where they can afford housing?"
Besides, shouldn't outsiders be allowed to enjoy the natural beauty of a place? They need to sleep somewhere when they visit.
My only concerns are 1) the diminishment of property rights and 2) the idea that we can artificially force equilibrium without negative feedback. I'm not in favor of gentrification, but I do believe property values should reflect demand.
I don't think the idea is black & white, nor is this some libertarian position.
By the way, I completely agree with you. I actually live in Los Angeles county, and there NEEDS to be regulations regarding housing. This city is so crowded and congested.
For the record, I'm not against Airbnb, but city are zoned and regulated for a good reason. Airbnb needs to work it out with cities on how to allow their business to operate.
HN has a no gratuitous negativity suggestion / guideline. Like most rules on HN, it's not a strictly enforced, guard tower snipers, sort of line in the sand.
It's a strong hint to the community to cut back on negativity.
Emphasis on this: "Avoid gratuitous negativity" - the gratuitous part.
> Those complaints are entirely predictable: people buy or rent residences in buildings expecting those buildings to be inhabited by long-term residents, then some part of the building gets converted to a hotel. People aren't OK with that.
So just write in a contract "This residence can not be used as a hotel". Done, problem solved. Why on earth do we need government's involved again?
> There are also places where vibrant short-term rental markets may exacerbate tight housing markets.
AirBNB in a small influencer in the housing market, i would be pretty disgusted if my elected officials were pursuing airbnb in an effort to normalize the housing market. To me it would be like the capitan on the titanic telling everyone to start hauling water to save the ship.
> I've had nothing but good Airbnb experiences, in SFBA, NYC, and London.
I have never used it personally but to me it seems everyone who has a complaint isn't using it and is being affected by externalities which they can only fight using the government.
Any other actions disgruntled people would otherwise take would be illegal by nature due to property rights.
So just write in a contract "This residence can not be used as a hotel".
That's a very standard clause in most leases, and in some agreements that mutually agree on restrictions of use of owner-occupied housing. City zoning regulations also apply to many of these situations. Right now there are many, many, many (but not all) Airbnb rooms that violate multiple legal agreements or applicable laws that apply to the person offering the rooms on Airbnb. It remains to be seen what form of enforcement will work best to make sure those lease agreements or other contracts are honored, and the zoning regulations obeyed.
EDIT: Several comments here mention the legal history of how regulations developed in the first place. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote, "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience."
>So just write in a contract "This residence can not be used as a hotel".
Actually, I've never seen a lease that allows subletting as an AirBnB. It's always against the rental agreement. AirBnB are basically just facilitating people violating their signed contracts, and we mostly look the other way because everyone hates landlords anyway.
As a Santa Monica resident, I think this is great.
Santa Monica has, by some indices, the most expensive hotel rooms in the state. This has driven a huge demand for short rentals near the beach. I have no access to numbers but my personal anecdata is interesting for the number of people I know involved in grey-market short term rentals and the number of people unable to find available apartments, let alone available apartments anywhere near the rents 2-3 years ago pre-AirBnB.
I did protracted apartment searches in the same area of Santa Monica in November 2012 and 2014 and the difference in price and availability was immense. At the same time I had one friend who was making a full time job out of "hosting" for AirBnB-ed condos and apartments either bought or rented in the past year by deep-pocketed "investors" in Malibu and Santa Monica with the sole purpose of short term rentals. I know another young lady who rents three apartments and lives in whichever one is earning the least on AirBnb. She nets about $1000 a month doing this and manages to take 3 single residential units off the market in the process.
There's a lot of people doing variations on this business model and it is absolutely pushing out the longer term residents. I've seen many of my beach friends (mostly involved in entertainment, good living wages but not anything like tech wages) progressively pushed further and further afield as random housing events (unit selling, massive renovation, roommate disputes) mean they cannot afford to relocate anywhere near the place that they are leaving. That is also despite their earnings increasing through normal career progression.
My parents came to visit last Christmas and they used AirBnB to rent a back house for a week a few blocks from my apartment. It was great. Do I think that shouldn't be allowed? No, but considering their host was running a year-round business out of their home I don't think it is unreasonable to treat them like a business.
But if the most economically valuable use of Santa Monica land is hotel / tourism / short-stay, then perhaps the whole place should be turned into hotels.
Not saying I agree with this but it's something that should be considered.
I'm also a Santa Monica resident/homeowner and I'm very disappointed by this legislation.
I have a lot of family out of state, and when they visit, it's great that they can rent an entire house on AirBNB/VRBO. We did this for my wedding (in Santa Monica) and it worked out fantastic.
When I travel, my house is basically empty. I don't see why I can't rent it out to another family.
I agree AirBNB should charge the hotel tax & all that, but the approach of outright banning whole unit rentals seems wrong.
Housing prices in Santa Monica are out of control (not as much as San Fransisco though), but I don't agree AirBnB is to blame for that. Santa Monica is just a nice place where a lot of (rich) people want to live.
That said, I agree that AirBnB guests should pay hotel tax. Otherwise they have an unfair advantage.
This is an interesting perspective that i hadn't considered, and honestly i can't think of any balance. If you penalize Airbnb renters with taxes and nonsense licensing you're going to end up with less diversity where just a select few end up doing the same thing you're describing instead of the many that do it now. While if you do nothing you're going to keep pushing real residents out through price hikes. Tough situation.
However, I do think that this is very limited to areas of already high demand and shouldn't be a blanket policy across a whole region.
I said nets, not grosses. She has two places rented out 10-20 days a month and the total revenue pays for all three rents plus about a grand left over. She lives in whichever apartment seems to get the least interest on AirBnB and occasionally switches it up.
I'm really torn here. On one hand, as a homeowner, I would be pretty upset if my neighbors turned their houses into "hotels". There would be a lot of noise and a lot of people who don't care much about the neighbors since they are only here for a few days.
On the other hand, I just got back from traveling to Europe, where all of the bookings we made were AirBnB. My wife and I were traveling with our 4 month old baby, and there weren't any hotels that could really meet our needs as well as the apartments that we rented. The trip would have been much harder without AirBnB.
I think Santa Monica went too far here -- they should have left some wiggle room for folks who want to rent out their place on weekends and such, like the folks we rented from in Vienna.
When your family was travelling, did you make extra noise at the houses and apartments you rented? Why do you expect most people to disrespect the people around them if they are only there temporarily?
And when you are at a hotel and people are acting up.. You can go to the manager.
What happens when your neighbor decides to rent their place via Air BNB, And folks are noisy and disrespectful.. Who do you complain to?? The home owner?? Do you think he's going to kick the people out? They are a revenue stream, and you are not.
Well.. you may say. I'll call the cops. Ok. Your neighbor gets a warning.. then eventually a 300 dollar fine.. Your neighbor can afford a few fines a month from a few random loud nights as long as the air bnb money keeps coming in. In fact your neighbor will need to make sure their place is full more nights if you start calling the cops.
Party Hotels and Shut the Fuck Up Hotels, where walls are not paper thin.
AirBnB can throw a few checkboxes there to manage this, and figure out if a place is in a residental condominum with a lot of non bnb neighbors, or it's in the middle of downtown next to all the bars.
So this actually brings up an interesting point: There are many of us that use AirBNB, like you, and are quiet, respectful, and essentially good actors.
The problems that almost everyone seems to talk about are the (rare) bad actors -- the loud, disrespectful, messy, troublesome guests who ruin the residential experience for others.
So I wonder if the solution is in the platform itself -- it's not AirBNB that people don't like, it's bad AirBNB'ers. And maybe if AirBNB puts some real effort into cracking down / banning / preventing bad AirBNB'ers, a lot of the bigger issues & externalities go away...?
Until JerkSleepers starts, with the goal of disrupting that evil incumbent AirBNB by letting people exercise their freedoms and do what they want. I mean...HomeAway is already what you want AirBNB to do.
The rating system on Airbnb is supposed to discourage rude behavior though, right? If a guest is a prick, at least in theory, they get reviewed as such, giving future potential hosts the ability to screen them. I wonder if there is any parallel with hotels where they maintain any kind of shared blacklist.
The only thing I can agree with and makes any rational sense is that this is grotesque government over reach because some degenerate officials don't like something.
I think this will need to be settled in court, but it is absolutely disgusting to try an apply a hotel tax to someone who is renting out a single place. Sure, classify a company that owns and rents out several places as a hotel, because they are at that point, but don't fucking tell me what I can do with my house on my land. It's disgusting.
I realize that it might upset you to live in a civil society, but the act of doing so does behoove you to adhere at least cursorily to the social contracts that have existed since long before you were born. Part of that social contract is "don't be a shithead neighbor." We tell you you can't have loud parties at 3AM when it affects other people, too. If the people engaging in short-term rentals are enough of a problem--and, when I've encountered them, they certainly have been, so I'm sympathetic--then, yes, we as a society, that thing you live in, will act to curtail the cause of the symptom that hurts us.
You can move to the backwoods of Idaho and rent anything you want. If you want to live amongst people, then act like it.
(I have a theory that a large part of why the Valley wants to put so much of civil society to the torch is because there isn't much of one there, now that very large corporate interests have a stranglehold, but I cannot prove it.)
Hotel taxes are popular because they primarily tax non-residents, who don't have a say in local policy. As long as they're not so high that they counterproductively decrease tourism, they can be almost arbitrarily high.
That doesn't necessarily make them sensible, just less controversial because non-residents don't get to vote.
Agreed, though that only seems to add to the problem: Hotel taxes are politically difficult to reduce, which means that short-term rentals taxes will be the same.
Come to think of it, why shouldn't Airbnb renters pay the same tax as hotel customers? It doesn't seem hard to implement and shouldn't cause a shortage of tourists (there were plenty staying at hotels/motels before Airbnb became an option).
Yeah, I hope they can find some middle ground; there's a definite need for AirBnB. I remember back when I worked at a Motel 6 and all the hotels in the area would sell out on weekends when there was a popular event. The hotels were also able to charge "surge" pricing so to speak, and some people had no choice but to pay the huge costs. AirBnB could have handled the overflow. So maybe some regulations could allow for special events. I think that was original use case, anyway.
Is it reasonable that hotels and my friend with a couple of spare bedrooms in his house should have to compete on a level playing field in terms of regulation, inspection, taxation, and the like? Because as far as I can tell Airbnb does not operate anything; they are just a booking service for people who rent out spare bedrooms. It doesn't seem reasonable that my friend with the big house should have to jump through all the same hoops as the professionals running the Marriott or whatever.
Well, as the guy staying there, I'd like to have SOME guarantee that the place isn't unsafe, unsanitary, cheating me or spying on me. So as a consumer, then yes I do want them to jump through all the hoops.
For an opportunity to stay in some random person's spare bedroom, a web site with reviews from people who have stayed there previously sounds like a perfectly reasonable level of guarantee. Requiring people to act like professional hoteliers in their spare time seems likely to kill the whole project, which would be a shame as it makes travel both cheaper and more fun.
The cheaper part is the issue. How cheap? What can they skip? Smoke alarms? Clean bathrooms? Hotels have to meet a minimum bar. Does AirBnB? Why not? This is going to end up in court sooner or later. Does hotel law cover it? If not, we have to write those all over again, for AirBnB.
Just yesterday somebody posted about their house getting trashed by AirBnB renters. So its started already. Who's insurance is responsible? Is it a civil matter, or criminal? What rights do the owners have, to charge the renter's credit card for damages?
I still don't understand why you care. If you are worried about having this happened to you, what's so difficult about refraining from renting your house out? Just... don't do that. If the people renting their houses out are comfortable with the risks, why do you need to get involved and protect them from themselves? Perhaps you can imagine that they are human beings, like you, who have made informed decisions. Perhaps their risk judgements simply don't match up with yours. Why should they make their decisions according to your risk judgements instead?
I see that you care about this but I don't understand why, since it is clear that you are neither host nor guest in this scenario, and the people who are hosts and guests are not, by and large, particularly worried about the problems you are hyping up.
> Just yesterday somebody posted about their house getting trashed by AirBnB renters. So its started already. Who's insurance is responsible?
Insurance isn't responsible in the first instance. Insurance becomes responsible if either (1) the person who is responsible has an insurance contract that provides insurance for that liability, or (2) the person injured by the damage has insurance for the loss independent of liability (obviously, this insurer will then go after the person responsible for the harms to recover its costs, if possible.)
I was under the impression that unfavourable reviews are filtered out? I looked into staying in New York on AirBnB but given that not many places had negative reviews, this made me question the validity of it, especially considering the amount of money that would be shelled out to stay (the other side of the world for me).
We can say that, but it doesn't end there. Paying folks money means I get value in return. There will be disputes about the value; lawyers get involved.
The whole hotel-thing is 100's of years of working that out in law. Now we start over? Just because AirBnB is cool, and we want it to succeed? I don't think this is going to end well.
> It does. If you are concerned with safety issues, then don't go there.
The 'free market' doesn't address safety well; that's why we have regulations. For example, it's not sufficient to say, 'if you are concerned about the safety of this restaurant's food, don't eat there'. No consumer has enough information to make that judgment reliably, and many consumers have additional challenges (consider the elderly, travelers from other countries who lack English or culture literacy, etc.). Also, the remedy (the Airbnb host gets bad reviews) is too late if someone is injured or loses their property; the system has failed at that point.
> We also have bonding, insurance and civil liability, which serve the same purpose in a more flexible way.
Those solutions are useful, but only sometimes work and when they do they only provide money after the fact. In many cases, such as injury, death, or crippling fraud (e.g., an elderly retiree loses their home and savings), that's not sufficient.
The way insurance works is that risky behavior leads to higher premiums. Insuring a sports car is more expensive because studies show risky driving is associated with sports cars.
Hosts that don't treat neighbors respectfully or guests safely will quickly see bonds confiscated and premiums raised until they are out of the business.
Likewise, insurers often provide discounts for good behavior like taking safety courses, a history without incidents, installing anti theft devices, etc.
And requiring insurance also gives neighbors a recourse (payouts from the policy) if the block is set on for or something (though there are already laws and regulations about that sort of thing).
> And requiring insurance also gives neighbors a recourse (payouts from the policy) if the block is set on for or something
No, legal liability rules give the neighbors recourse. What insurance and/accountability bond requirements do is reduce the risk that insolvency will prevent a liability judgment from being satisfied (though one which exceeds the required coverage may still not be fully satisfied if the liable party is insolvent.)
> I am unaware of any "sufficient" solution in any field. Despite millions of pages of regulations, people are still being injured, killed or defrauded.
No solution is perfect. Planes still crash; should we do away with the FAA?
That choice inflicts negative externalities on everyone else. I understand that the concept of negative externalities throws a wrench into this sort of shallow pseudoeconomic theorizing, but they exist and must be considered in a credible discussion.
> It doesn't seem reasonable that my friend with the big house should have to jump through all the same hoops as the professionals running the Marriott or whatever.
I agree. The regulations were written for a different market; new regulations are needed that provide a level playing field for competition, which means hotels aren't at a 14% price disadvantage and short-term rentals can cost-effectively comply.
It's going to take some innovation.
(I'm assuming the hotel regulations are too onerous for short-term rentals, but I don't know much about them.)
Maybe. All I see right now is the traditional scream of the incumbent big business freaking out that a clever new business model is threatening the service monopoly underlying their profit model. The safety concerns are maybes and could-bes.
While I love Airbnb, it can truely be destructive to housing markets, at least to an extent. Here in Portland, OR it's beginning to become a larger problem as housing is getting bought purely to rent out.
I just hope we can come to a point where perhaps there is a way to allow airbnb to exist, while making it illegal to rent out property purely to rent it. This could allow it to be more like the bed and breakfast logging that it tends to feel like. I'm thinking restrictions to aid this are artificial limits to how many people/how many days per year you can rent out rooms in your home, which airbnb would be required to record.
I still have no idea how things like sanitation will be handled. Right now an airbnb host has very little obligation be sanitary like a hotel, except that it might make their reviews worse.
AirBNB is a very small part of the housing problem in Portland. As of 4/30/2015, Portland area had 1,110 properties categorized as "Entire home/apt". That same metric was 814 on 4/30/2014. Portland also has legislation specifically for AirBNB (they have to register with the city, pay taxes and get a "less than 30 days" lodging permit).
The primary housing problem here is an influx of people from more-expensive cities (LA, SF, Seattle, NYC) moving in and snapping up homes to actually live in. Meanwhile the city is making it difficult for developers to add any real housing density within the Urban Growth Boundary (and instead are thinking about expanding the UGB. Ugh.).
So there's no real "problem" aside from Portland is a desirable city to live in and people are flocking to here.
I used to love Airbnb. I've been on their basically since inception and have stayed in dozens of cities. Everything has been positive. Lately, though, it's been degrading in a few ways:
1. Pricing in major markets is no longer competitive with hotels. Since most Airbnb properties lack anything close to the amenities offered by hotels, it's just not economically compelling anymore.
2. The last several times I've stayed, I've felt the effects of the new scrutiny. I've been to clandestine meetings with hosts, purportedly on premises, only later to find out that the listed address is false. "Enter through the alley door," and, "Say you're my cousin, if anyone asks" are typically elements of the conversations. That's not what I pay for.
Now, my first choice is hotels, and it's only the rare case that I opt for Airbnb.
> while making it illegal to rent out (buy?) property purely to rent it
Why? You're making the notion of landlords illegal? What purpose does this solve, what benefit is there? Why should I not be allowed to purchase a house and then place a tenant in it?
In many places the rental community is larger than the homeowner community, these houses would simply sit on the market, rather than have someone buy it and put a renter in it. How on earth can you justify making home rentals illegal?
Technically, wouldn't home prices just fall until they were affordable enough for the community to purchase them? I suppose they could just sit in the owners hands forever, but that seems unlikely. I would think that, after some amount of time, they would prefer to have liquid capital over no capital.
Not taking any side in this debate, but that makes some economic sense to me.
Here's a very interesting article about the Portland real estate market. It argues that all-cash investment purchases are distorting the market. Similar effects are happening in many cities.
Don't ever move to a college town. I'd bet 90% of the houses near campus are rentals and roughly 35-45% of the remaining houses within 4-5 miles of campus are rentals year round.
It makes houses within walking distance 2-4x as expensive, houses in the target area about 1.5-3x as expensive.
Seems like an easy fix - just make it prohibitively expensive to own multiple properties.
All these problems revolve around rich folks investing in real estate to make a buck - that that is even a thing, is insane.
Housing is for people to live in, not for you to buy, renovate, sell. Or buy, rent. Or buy, tear down, build new, sell/rent.
It's all part of a greater problem - when folks can become multi-millionaires by gaming the system instead of contributing to it and do so with impunity, we have what we have.
Housing prices are inflated by people who buy/sell for profit, coupled with retarded regulations that favor that over people trying to live their lives.
Great, and then either the raised costs of owning multiple properties gets passed down to the renter or people decide not to rent out houses and property in the first place, making renting itself almost impossible. Then we'll end up of neighborhoods that could have grown filled with urban blight that no one wants to invest in due to the fear of their property value continuing to tank or neighborhoods.
Used Airbnb recently for a trip to LA for a friend's wedding. Myself and a few friends were able to rent a house in the hills which was way nicer, less expensive, and significantly easier than organizing a block of hotel rooms. Aside from moments where some would have to wait due to both showers being used, the trip was much more enjoyable.
While I agree that some rules need to be adjusted for Airbnb type of rentals, I really can't think of a reason why anyone would want to straight up ban it.
> The rules legalize “home-sharing” – in which the occupant rents a couch, spare bedroom or backyard unit – but require hosts to obtain a business license and pay Santa Monica’s 14% hotel tax.
The owner must be present during home-sharing, so each property owner should be limited to sharing one property at a time. Since the properties must be licensed, it should be easy to shut down the multiple-property Airbnb landlords.
What this might enable is "sharing" a huge property, say an apartment complex, essentially opening up a new class of low- or no-amenity hotels.
I have a friend in Santa Monica who rents 2 apartments. One he rents very cheap via some sort of rent control/housing assistance program. He then proceeds to rent the rooms out on AirBnB. He gets enough business to pay for the apartment he lives in and live frugally without having full-time employment.
It's hard to blame cities when this (and other) kind of abuse is going on.
> One he rents very cheap via some sort of rent control/housing assistance program
He is probably not untitled to housing assistance if he has another apartment. He should make as much money as possible and stop that scheme because if he get caught doing that he may go to prison for fraud.
There's a lot of this going on because the incentive has been so strong, the arbitrage so great, and the penalties so rare. I think the city is striking an excellent balance with this vote.
I think I get all points of the debate but the key question for me is...why are there so many airbnb rentals. Clearly there's some sort of demand, clearly the hotel econsystem doesn't handle it well enough. That's the root issue that needs investigation. Tighter regulations of airbnb are more of a hotfix than a long term solution imo
My uninformed gut instinct without doing any research is that the hotel market is probably over regulated and the prices are artificially high or there are simply not enough available rooms (lobby mini-monopolies or whatever you want to call it) and that's the reason why people flock to lower priced/other available options.
I guess a study on residential to short term rent demand would be helpful.
Yes: this is precisely the issue that most people seem to be ignoring.
I traveled in Europe a bit last year and was amazed at the affordable options for travelers. Between nicer hostels and hotels that offered small single rooms with a communal bathroom, I was able to get a clean place to sleep for $25-70/night. I haven't seen that in the US outside of AirBnB.
Most US hotels give you a huge room with a huge bed for a high price, and they're either located right in the middle of downtown or all the way on the edge of the city so you'd need to rent a car.
When I'm traveling, I much prefer to ditch the bullshit standard amenities like room service, a pool, continental breakfast, etc. and get a simple room in a part of town where people actually live. Even more so if I'm visiting friends.
Not sure what in our regulations makes this unpopular, but it's the real problem.
There isn't any mystery. Property owners in residential neighborhoods absolutely do not want a stream of transients passing through the hood. This is not new. Airbnb just flew under the radar long enough to avoid the hammer of long standing inn-keeping/boarding-house regulations.
I just moved out of downtown Santa Monica, from an apartment building that was swamped with Airbnb renters that caused all kinds of problems.
Airbnb is doing good and evil in the world. They deserve to be forced to reduce the evil to reasonable levels. Maybe apartment buildings shouldn't be generally permitted, for example.
There seems to be a general sense that short-term rentals make housing unaffordable. I disagree. We came up with the technology to scale a given piece of land to hundreds of residents at a low marginal cost a long time ago. Unfortunately, we've outlawed that technology in the vast majority of the American urbanized area. As a result, the demand to live on a particular piece of land far outstrips the supply of homes, and this competition makes prices skyrocket.
Build more homes. Build a lot of them. It's the only way to keep our cities affordable.
I just don't think city councils are going to be able to put a billion dollar genie back in the bottle.
Airbnb is a p2p market. When regulation attacks p2p markets, they don't die, they adapt.
Airbnb itself might die like Napster, but someone else will find a way to take their place. Maybe the company that replaces it will be based outside US borders, safe from any subpoena for rental records.
> When regulation attacks p2p markets, they don't die, they adapt.
I think we've seen that iteration with craigslist -> apts/housing -> short-term/sub-lease, and in many popular destinations the space was prone to scams and shady dealers.
Exactly. This is the same thing as rubber-hose cryptanalysis--if somebody can get hold of that meat carrier for your brilliant brain, they can figure out what you're doing. And so AirBNB will lose. (They've knuckled under wherever confronted.) So will the next one.
However, government has a right to close loopholes in existing regulations (e.g. hotel tax) that are opened by the changes in the environment (e.g. availability of new technology such as airbnb). It's unfortunate that they chose to do this by an outright ban. It's especially unfortunate for homeowners who can't as easily leave the community if they disagree with the councils decision.
As I read through the comments in this and previous posts about airbnb, I noticed that a majority of issues cited by angry neighbors are related to renting of units in apartment buildings, as opposed to single family homes. I'm not suggesting that there are more abuses of the service in apartment buildings (though here may well be for a number of reasons), merely that the abuses are more troublesome in these cases because of the resources shared by neighbors (staircases, walls, etc.). It seems to me that the owners or managers of apartment buildings, and the homeowners associations of condos, should be able to enact reasonable limits to short-term rentals of their own properties in their rental agreements. To me this is a much more desirable way to attack the problem, rather than a hasty ban, as it may give people more choice in the matter. I say may because it's probably equally likely that apartment buildings would blindly start banning it as well. Nonetheless if I am someone who cares about using the service, I would try to find apartment that allows it.
The article seems to highlight a legitimate use case that the regulation is screwing up, which also happens to be Airbnb's original purpose - to sublet while you are out of town or otherwise not using the space.
Sure, Airbnb has grown way past that, but in my mind there is a very big difference between running a business on Airbnb and subletting while you are away to help pay for a trip. A provision with a cap of how many nights a year one could sublet without being considered a hotel would be a lot more sensible.
While I'm sure it would be difficult to enforce, services like Airbnb and HomeAway would probably cooperate in disclosing booked stays per address. It wouldn't be that hard to link the data together and spot violators. I'm sure residents would help as well.
While I'm sure it would be difficult to enforce, services like Airbnb and HomeAway would probably cooperate in disclosing booked stays per address. It wouldn't be that hard to link the data together and spot violators.
I can say with first hand knowledge, that HomeAway at least engages with cities politically to build cases for short-term rental advocacy from economic development to enabling and increasing the attractiveness of tourism in cities where they operate. They setup sessions with city and community leaders and work on actionable regulation and legislation with cities to introduce fair laws for rentals.
I'm no shill for HomeAway, but I do have a close personal friend who works on the Government Affairs team and have witnessed their efforts with my own eyes. At least in their case, HomeAway works with cities, instead of against them.
Maybe AirBnB needs a standards enforcement division. A 24-hour service where you call them up, make your complaint, and they send over some big scary people to knock on the offender's door and ask them to "turn it down" or "pick up their garbage." Local government offices and the landlords themselves can't respond quickly enough (the former can't/won't send someone there at 2AM and it'd be pretty tough to get the latter to run over to your apartment for this sort of thing.) Basically AirBnB police.
As an aside, if anyone is looking to locate a startup in Los Angeles, do your future employees a favor and avoid Santa Monica. Downtown LA and Culver City are far more sensible options and allow for a reasonable commute and/or nearby housing at lower prices than Santa Monica.
Only because it's contrary to your own personal interest.
The owners of these properties have clearly determined that the actual value they can realize on the properties they own is maximized by Airbnb as opposed to a more traditional rental. They're certainly happy, as are -presumably- their short-term renters.
A downvote, a shill accusation, and no counter-argument.
Perhaps you could take a different approach and explain to me why you feel the interests of a single renter should supersede those of a property owner and 10's or even hundreds of shorter-term renters.
We just rented a place for a month on AirBnb only to find out that the owner kept two cats there (undisclosed); my wife has severe cat allergies. Now we're having to fight tooth and nail to get our money back, and the property owner is saying that her policy is no refunds, period. So yeah, I kinda get why people can cozy up to the idea of regulation.
You were perfectly willing to take that risk when using the service for whatever advantage you thought it had over a traditional hotel (price, location, whatever).
You lost on that bet. Rather than than trying to decide if you are willing to take that risk next time or to pay a little extra for certainty with a traditional hotel, you want all the option removed to everyone.
This dilemma isn't at unique to hotels, the "cheap with risk versus expensive, reliable name brand" applies to nearly everything. Do you get leaves cleared by some guy off of Craigslist, or spend more for "real" landscape contractor? Do you get your car brakes redone by Joe the Mechanic, or do you pay extra to go to Midas?
Out of curiosity, when you say "undisclosed" did you ask and they told you "no"? I've certainly stayed in any number of regular B&B's that had pets on the premises and I'd be very surprised if all them them explicitly stated the fact on their web site.
That seems like a very good reason to cozy up to the idea that you should be able to get your money back from a host who misrepresents the property being rented, but not a particularly good reason to cozy up to the idea of arbitrary short-term rental regulation.
Regardless of who enforces the rules, my point is that the rule prohibiting the misrepresentation of a business transaction is much more reasonable than the rule prohibiting (or significantly limiting) short-term rentals.
The greater point is that if Airbnb providers were already regulated this type of thing might not be an issue, ie: playing by the same rules hotels do.
That seems rather irrelevant to the issue at hand. That is a contractual dispute. What, are you going to write regulation that people have to disclose their cat ownership in case of allergies?
Yeah, it seems as if the exact same thing could have happened in the case of a fully-licensed B&B. And I'm not sure I'd have acted differently as the owner. If you have special requirements whether it's allergies or access, it's sort of on you to ask. In my experience, cats and dogs are not at all uncommon in B&Bs and other non-traditional-hotel housing.
There are many things a reasonable person would expect of a short term rental. It is unreasonable to expect a contract to enumerate every one of them. For that matter, no cancellation policies create extremely perverse incentives.
I don't believe this problem should be solved with regulation - AirBnB should handle it better internally. For that matter, I would advise you to ask the landlord ahead of time in the future and to only pay with AmEx - they side with their customers the vast majority of the time in the case of charge backs.
I recently saw an airbnb advertising in my city in france.
The more I hear about uber and airbnb and those websites who try to replace existing services that doesn't use internet, the more it looks like some libertarian business model.
I'm not against it, but once insurances and the law adapt to it, I wonder if it will really be attractive anymore.
Sadly that's what happens when you challenge an existing business model and industry who are afraid and will spare no expense to get legislation passed preventing competition from battering your profits.
I understand that services like Airbnb and Uber are unregulated, but instead of working with these companies to draft legislation that addresses the concerns, you're seeing draconian bills just outright banning them. It doesn't matter what the people want, when there is money involved, you can bet the side who doesn't necessarily make the most noise, but has the most money will win.
Whether or not politicians, corporations and residents afraid of change like it or not, the sharing economy is here to stay and will always find a way around any opposition. Look at Uber, opposed not only in multiple states in the USA, but also in other states in other countries.
Competition from hotels is just one side of the issue.
The other side is safety and security. I lived in a building next to a hostel for a year and a half. It was well maintained and the guests were regulated. Never had any complaints about the guests. On the other hand, my next door neighbor rented out his condo AirBnB style for a few months. It was obnoxious, the owner was remote and the guests were never regulated. The common areas were trashed, the guests were loud, and none of it mattered because they only had to deal with the consequences for a short term.
The fact of the matter is: there needs to be a distinction in regulation between short term and long term housing. As much as I am a fan of startups that make life convenient, the unregulated nature of AirBnB makes life difficult for anyone else not in the exchange. That's what hotels are for, to abstract that difficulty so that it only involves those within the boundaries of the exchange: the guests, the owners, and the service.
VRBO has been around for longer than AirBnB, and specializes in full-unit or whole-house short-term rentals. But I never see them mentioned in these sorts of articles, either as a company that is affected by these types of regulations, or as a company that has taken a public position for or against these types of regulations.
Why is that? On previous stories the issue has been bedroom rentals, or listing rented apartments (i.e. short-term subleasing). But this seems to target whole-unit short-term rentals, even if they're owned. That seems to be right in the VRBO wheelhouse. For example: 158 listings:
I can't speak to VRBO, but I know that HomeAway is very particular about chucking out bad renters and works very closely with local governments to build fair legislation around short-term rentals.
(Disclaimer, such as it is: former TripAdvisor employee, incidentally touched their Vacation Rentals stuff a few years ago, don't really care about it and I use HomeAway.)
I think this is predictable in many more cities across the world. There is already people buying properties with the sole goal of converting them into airbnb units. And this on areas which are supposed to be residential, which is a big problem for people who happen to actually live there.
In my apartment building there's an apartment that is rented out through Airbnb. There's also an apartment rented out to two students...
We have a lot more issues with those two students and their friends than with all of the Airbnb short term renters. It's anecdotical but I don't believe that short term renters are more likely to cause issues.
Airbnb's concept is also not new. Before Airbnb people rented apartments on Homelidays. It's interesting that thanks to the critical mass of Airbnb and their marketing people become more aware of it.
Any new innovation has social impact and a part of the society, including the ruling bodies, react by trying to reverse the change. Any innovation will have some negative impact on the society because of lack of laws regulating the change. AirBnB is facing it, so is Tesla, and Uber. But, it is apparent, at least for the previously listed examples, that these are ideas whose time has come. I do not get worried by such decisions of ruling bodies. They are only temporary.
I wish the article explored the penalties associated with continued rentals in violation of the new regulations. Obviously there could be tax penalties but I'm curious if there are additional civil fines, potential criminal violations, or hell maybe civil forfeiture laws might apply (I saw that tounge and cheek but after another front page post that may be a reality?). Would airbnb pay costs and lawyers fees like Uber has done?
So renting entire apartment is banned, but renting parts of it are OK? Apply the "Singapore solution": lock up one bedroom, so the owner can claim they live there, and rent out the rest. (Under Singapore public housing rules, subleasing entire apartments is forbidden, but renting out parts is OK. Sounds familiar, no?)
good, now they just need to shutdown the other regulation skirting companies like Uber as well.
It's not fair these companies skirt well known and age old laws to create an unfair advantage(and wealth) for themselves, by simply ignoring those laws. Play by the same rules as your competitors do and see how well you fair. Disruption by evading legalities isn't really all that impressive... the cartels and mobsters have done it for decades.
Libertarianism, i.e the deluded belief that unfettered capitalism is perfect and the panacea for all the world's ills, is very popular in certain SV startup circles. Uber, for example, blatantly ignoring local bylaws and regulations makes perfect sense when seen through libertarian tinted goggles.
god forbid that a governing body gives the low influence nuisances less attention than the powerful social nuisances. Slumlords all over the place, but of course the first thing on the governing bodies agenda is to make sure nothing disrupts the hugely homogeneous industry that is room rentals.
I'm critical of Uber because Uber is exploitative and kinda shitty, but I see a difference in kind here. AirBNB causes negative externalities to people around the participants in the transaction. Uber, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't.
Unless you're part of the general public who lives in a desirable area, and your rent is increasing because limited housing is being turned into unregulated hotels.
I should say, I've used AirBnB many times and always had a great experience, but this isn't a clear cut "good" vs "evil" issue.
Completely agree. I'm just saying it's not a clear cut issue of the public vs. the hotels.
There are legitimate arguments for limiting someone's ability to rent out their living space to short term tenants that have nothing to do with the hotel lobby. As someone who lives in an apartment building with fairly thin walls, I can sympathize with some one not wanting a parade of short term tenants as their neighbor.
Folks, let's be honest. This is mostly about ornery landlords who are bitter that they are missing out on perceived higher rates for their properties. Add in a few nosy neighbors who have nothing else to do to make them feel important other than file complaints with their local HOA/city/whatever.
AirBNB should seriously hire a full time team of economists to publish studies defending their company. The efficiency gains are tremendous.
People like to invoke the evil "hotel lobby", which I'm sure does exist!, but it is not even a little bit hard to find loud, angry citizens complaining. Those complaints are entirely predictable: people buy or rent residences in buildings expecting those buildings to be inhabited by long-term residents, then some part of the building gets converted to a hotel. People aren't OK with that.
There are also places where vibrant short-term rental markets may exacerbate tight housing markets.
I've had nothing but good Airbnb experiences, in SFBA, NYC, and London. I hope Airbnb works this out. But they don't really hold all the cards here.