In the case of housing, at the basic level, we pay a monthly rate in order to have a place to sleep (and maybe live & eat). But embedded in our rules and laws are assumptions about how that works, and one of those core assumptions is stability (that is, people who make this exchange of money for housing will remain in the housing for longer spans). Our noise ordinances are based on long timelines for investigation, monitoring, and enforcement because they embed the assumption of stable tenancy. Our building codes assume certain occupancies and our maintenance schedules assume certain rates of wear. Our building security practices assume that people with the keys have an invested interest in restricting access.
These assumptions may or may not be desirable, but they exist, and because of their existence renting an apartment (I have different feelings regarding owned single-family dwellings) for short-term AirBnB-style rentals violates not only the social contract with neighbors, but the unwritten contract involving a number of ambient practices with potentially negative consequences.
I'm not 100% against short-term subletting, and I'm certainly not against having relatives stay over, for example. But this is a classic example of both money and automation fundamentally changing an existing practice -- people are "doing the same thing", but at a scale and in a way that results in an emergent difference.
I do not mean to say that having a permanent traditional life is less desirable to some people. I simply think that the laws of our land should respect freedom of choice and thus not bias any particular lifestyle. I think it is especially egregious to have laws telling people what they can and cannot do with their own home in a manner that has no tangible effect on their neighbors. I find it dubious (and empirically unsupported) that the presence of airbnb guests has any measurable effect on any neighborhood.
Everyone has an opinion about airbnb. Here's my big worry.
San Francisco's population of children has plummeted in my lifetime (I grew up in SF in the 70s). In this time, I think it has gone from about 22% to a current rate of 14% or so. I guess it's just important to me that SF continue to be a place people are from, rather than a place where young people move prior to having families, or (increasingly) a place where empty nesters move and enjoy the city after having families.
Here's the thing, I consider this to be a very economically vulnerable stretch of life. I have two kids, in SFUSD, and I'm starting to see just how colossal a disadvantage a family with two kids would be in a bidding war against someone who intends to put the extra bedrooms in a SFH or a 3 bedroom apartment on airbnb instead.
It's no secret that housing is in short supply in SF, and that the price of a house or apartment in SF reflects what the highest bidder is able to pay. It's also probably not surprising that kids are very expensive. A two income family (pretty tough to live in SF if you aren't) means daycare - and daycare costs, conservatively, over $2,000 a month per kid. Even if they're in SFUSD ("free"), after care at school with run you about $4,000 a year per kid, and summer camps will add another $3000 or so per kid, if you're doing things the inexpensive way.
Now, imagine that a family with two kids now has to compete against a bidder who plans to put the "spare" bedrooms on airbnb, and who factors that into the bid. The family has two very expensive, non-revenue generating children. The airbnb buyer has a massive advantage here, and I see it as another factor that could potentially put massive new pressures on an already collapsing population of families with children. It could also reduce turnover - someone who no longer needs the extra bedrooms and might have in the past downsized (opening up a SFH for a new family) now rents the bedrooms out full time on airbnb.
Sure, these problems could have existed with permanent, long term tenants, but I do think that it was less likely. Airbnb definitely makes it far easier and more profitable to do this - this is one big reason why the company is so large and profitable itself. Is this happening? I don't know, I don't have the data. Until then, it's just a fear, though not (in my opinion, obviously) an unfounded one. But if they company won't open up the data and recognize the possible danger, my guess is that the public will support strict regulations.
very rare.
bidding against someone who's going to Airbnb the extra rooms
increasingly common.
The weasel-wording they use in their ads is to get around TV network (and sports league) squeamishness about running ads for sports betting.
for example, there's absolutely ZERO chance a hotel will cancel your room on you 12 hours before you show up in europe.
wrong
But why are you anti-airbnb?
Could you explain why you don't like airbnb? Did the CEO kick you in the puppies, or something?
How about--because I find the serfitude economy ineffective outside areas that are already well-served through other mechanisms.
Most of these middlemen are actively interfering in the most profitable cities and areas while ignoring those places where they would actively be useful because they are less profitable.
People would find AirBnB, Uber, et al. much less distasteful if they weren't interfering in dense cities where there is existing infrastructure and were instead focusing on areas that are underserved and would welcome them very much. (For an AirBnB example see: Kittanning, PA--almost nothing in spite of the fact that there are no hotels--heaven help you if you need a hotel while helping with a sick relative in that area during graduation season, leaf viewing season, or the start of hunting season--even normal times in winter are difficult because the hotels have quite a driving distance in bad weather).
Add in the fact that these same companies are taking a middleman cut of money in return for pushing all of the risks onto individuals and externalizing the costs onto the general public.
Top it off with the fact that said middleman generally knows that the end users are actively flouting the law.
As for the claim that "these companies" are "pushing all of the risks onto individuals", I would cite the $1,000,000 insurance policy that Airbnb provides the host to take the risk off of them: https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee
It's not their fault. However, AirBnB, Uber and all the other serfitude economy ilk would get a lot less static if the at least tried to incentivize people in order to serve these kinds of underserved areas. Instead, they're trying to elbow their way into the already well-served markets--often while ignoring the law.
> As for the claim that "these companies" are "pushing all of the risks onto individuals", I would cite the $1,000,000 insurance policy that Airbnb provides
Did you read the page you linked? Did you note that it doesn't cover "personal liability"? Which is the whole reason you would likely need $1,000,000 in insurance? And I guarantee that your personal liability insurance won't cover AirBnB rentals.
Given the size of pool and statistics that AirBnB has, the fact that AirBnB doesn't just insure everybody tells me exactly what I need to know. I trust AirBnB's actuaries, and those actuaries have basically said "unprofitable if we cover everybody properly".
So, yeah, my point still stands about "pushing all of the risks onto individuals". These companies are masters of the "$1 MEEEEELLLYON DOLLARS" while burying the important asterisk "*it doesn't actually apply to anything you'd need help for" in the quiet fine print.
I think its a simple numbers thing. Lets say one household in Kittanning is interested in working with AirBnB. For the sake of argument and easy numbers, let's say a household is the platonic 4 people, that's 0.1% of the population. In New York, assuming the same percentage of people that would be willing to be AirBnB rentals and the same household size, that's almost 8500 possible units available for rent.
>serfitude economy
Really? That's a fine description for the terrible 'contractor' jobs, but it doesn't fit renting a room at all. AirBnB makes their hosts less serf-y, with a completely different set of externalities.
Personally, I think AirBnB has not done a very good job helping communities figure out what the best situation should be. Many/most leases and HOAs forbid short-term leases for very good reason and yet AirBnB turns an eye. And for people who own their residences, many areas are zoned non-commercial, again for very good reasons, and AirBnB turns an eye. Prop F looks terrible but if it somehow manages to pass, AirBnB has no one to blame but itself for not participating constructively in a reasonable solution.
People who are either pro-airbnb because they feel it makes some kind of political or economic statement or places them into some kind of club they like, or are anti-airbnb because they are busybodies and like to find things to be outraged over or similarly feel that being so places them in a club they like, find it impossible to imagine having no opinion of airbnb. Personally, I find it impossible to imagine myself in either of those camps. To each of us the limits of our own imagination, I suppose.
Isn't it obvious that these situations are far more likely to happen with short term tenancies than people who rent for a year, or own? It's similar to a mob mentality. "I'll be gone tomorrow." vs "I'll have to deal with my neighbors for the next X years".
These situations have unequivocally become more frequent as a direct result of the existence of Airbnb.
Having an opinion about a company that has streamlined the process for your neighbors to create unsafe or otherwise undesirable conditions in your neighborhood is pretty rational behavior, and not the exclusive domain of your fringe strawmen.
How can I also blame this on AirBnB and possibly extort them for large amounts of money? /s
I don't think short-term tenants are any more likely than long-term tenants or owners to be terrible neighbors; I've seen some awful examples of both. Unfortunately, people who are inconsiderate jerks are going to be lousy neighbors regardless of how they came to occupy the premises. Laying blame for a tenant's inconsiderate behavior at the feet of a particular broker is absurd; you may as well ban truckers from entering your city because they might deliver lead-based paint. If airbnb went away, someone else would fill the niche; there's obviously plenty of demand for short-term rental broking. And you're always going to have to deal with bad neighbors -- often of the much more permanent variety. It would be a lot more constructive to think about the behavior you want to prohibit than tertiary factors like who arranged for a lease or how many days it was for. The whole point of inconsiderate jerks -- and if you'd ever had one for a neighbor you would know this -- is that they don't care what you think! They're not thinking "gee, I'd better not be such an asshole, because I'm going to be living next to this guy for years!". They're thinking "I like cranking my death metal to 11 at 3am and there's no law against it so they can suck it." That is, if they're even aware of your existence at all. Because that's the kind of people they are. What's the worst you're going to do, not lend them your lawnmower?
Seriously, I don't care if airbnb succeeds or fails. They don't pay me, I don't own their stock, and I don't pretend that they're making the world a better place or any of that tripe. They're just one more private corporation that wants to make a buck, and they seem to have found a much better way to serve a particular market than the dozens of other substantially indistinguishable competitors. Good for them. If it turns out that the only people who lease short-term rentals are inconsiderate jerks, then airbnb won't be doing much business once those inconsiderate jerks are sitting in jails. The anti-airbnb crowd seems to be shooting the messenger, while the pro-airbnb crowd seems to be elevating a glorified classified-ad publisher to sainthood for doing nothing more interesting than connecting willing buyers and sellers. Everyone needs to get over it and focus instead on what matters. This company just isn't interesting enough to justify having a strong opinion about it.
Yes. Do you even lift?
This article is about SF, which is a city. Most of the busybodies who get up in arms about airbnb are residents of cities as well. Cities are densely populated places with large numbers of tenants per unit area, high residential turnover rates, and lots of tourists. "New strangers roaming around" is just a fact of life, regardless of whether a particular rental broker is in business. If you don't like that, you would probably be better off living in a rural area where you could easily afford a large parcel of land from which others can be excluded. There are plenty of places where you could afford 160 acres of timberland and a very nice house for less than a 2-bedroom TIC in SF. You'd probably average one new neighbor per decade, none closer than half a mile away, and could easily go years without seeing another human if that's what you prefer. That's just not what cities are about.
In dense areas, the solution is pretty easy and widespread: HOAs and landlords forbid it. No one in multi-unit dwellings wants a steady stream of strangers.
It's the less dense neighborhoods where residents resent renters, much less short-term renters.
You asked if I've ever owned a residence. This sounded an awful lot to me like the classic trolly put-down "do you even lift?". See http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/do-you-even-lift. I don't care if you lift weights or if you've ever owned a residence; I just think your response to my comment was pointless and obnoxious. Try addressing the points in my argument instead of my (dubious?) credentials.