Different people want different things. Too much of a good thing isn't always still a good thing. It's not that hard to understand.
Even within the same city! 10% of the city might be tourist facing, 90% not-tourist-facing. So something that's great for that 10% and annoying for the 90% is naturally gonna get some resistance.
Lots of places already have this as a "hotel tax" .. which AirBnb doesn't pay.
There may be some places which haven't yet arranged for AirBnB to pay the tax, but it isn't because AirBnB refuses. In fact, it may be because hotels in that area are still holding out for the possibility of banning AirBnB. When AirBnB starts paying hotel taxes, it becomes nearly impossible to remove.
Outside of that list, the host may have to collect it themselves if the location is not supported yet: https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/654/what-is-occupancy-ta....
(Disclosure: I work at Airbnb)
Sure, there are solutions. There's a huge housing bubble right now (which will collapse whenever tourism dries up), for instance. Maybe if it keeps on this way some legislation will be passed to get it under control.
But both of those solutions are completely out of the hands of the people who actually can't afford to live in the city where they work.
There was a woman at a city council meeting a few years ago who lived in a building with around 10 units, and she said six of them were on AirBnB. When ever she checked, their (small) pool always had people in it she'd never seen before, and never would again. People buy places to live in and make a life in, and then half the building is party people.
For what it's worth, this has always made us extremely wary of AirBnB, and we do a lot of research for cities we visit before we rent an AirBnB somewhere. In Montreal they're regulated, so we had no problem there. In Reykjavik, we rented from a woman who was staying at her mother's place to take care of her pets while she (her mother) was out of the country, so our stay wasn't depriving anyone of housing.
Other places we go, where AirBnB isn't as well regulated, we're very particular and tend to go for hotels (e.g. Ottawa, Seattle) because we're very aware of how bad these kinds of systems can be for people.
This has to be repeated. There's no point in living without some level of quality of life. Having everyone trying to raise their family, do their school work, study, or just try to sleep, in what are essentially all becoming hotels, is just not something we should strive for.
One could even argue you're going to end up in a world where success in life is tied to wealth, not because of all the reasons commonly associated with it, but just because one group can actually sleep at night and one can't.
In cities such as Reykjavik and Vancouver, they could tax Airbnb and divert the funding to create more housing, but housing construction is a physical process that takes time. Meanwhile in the short term rents are spiking.
Step outside of theoretical economic thought experiments and try living in a formerly quiet neighborhood or building suddenly experiencing an influx of loud drunk littering assholes. Residential areas are desired as residential areas for a reason. I live in NYC and sure as hell don't want to live around Times Square. There are actual people living in these cities who want a decent quality of life where they live.
Echoing many others in the this thread, in a previous apartment in a residential area of Manhattan someone down the hall starting renting their unit to Airbnb visitors. It was a nightmare, but thankfully the landlord caught wind in a few weeks and kicked the person out.
That's awful. In the US we have misdemeanor noise violations that carry a fine (or jail time if you refuse to pay).
Neighbors will call the police if your party is too rowdy. They'll show up looking for underage drinkers. Usually if you are nice to the cops and promise to be quiet (and everyone they see is 21+) they'll just warn you and not write a ticket.
Don't convolute these two things in order to influence readers. One does not necessarily imply the other. Venice would not 'kill' for more tourists and most cities in the world would probably 'kill' for a certain amount of tourism but not for couch tourism which indirectly favors real estate speculators buying housing for short-term rent and driving the locals away.
It’s not so much the rise in tourism that’s the problem as it is the rise in tourists staying in residentially zoned areas. Hosts are renting apartments and then illegally subleasing them for profit, artificially inflating rental prices without a corresponding increase in income. This is an especially large problem in developing countries, where due to geographical arbitrage, tourists can afford to pay way more for an apartment than a resident can.
This is a problem that can't be solved by building more housing, because that housing is not going to be built in the historic city centers where the tourists want to stay. (Also, it takes a while to build more housing.)
Wouldn't the real market solution be to build more hotels?
In the city I live in (no NYC, but still one of the densest in the US and high demand), there's currently some big construction projects, and people are complaining its not big enough. Except its on a former landfill that could not support the larger structures. Let say we fix that...but the size of the project was also scaled according to capacity of the sewer infrastructure. Sure, we can fix that TOO, but then the people building the project have to wait a year, or two, or more, and they want money now.
You have to throttle things so that all the moving parts follow each other, to avoid making it hell for everyone.
Yes, starting with killing affordability for their citizens.
> build more housing for local residents
But where? 50 km out of town, so they, too, can experience tourism on a daily basis.
How about charging a very high tax (in the form of a voucher) for hotel/AirBnB stays, but make that voucher spendable in local restaurants/museums? This would have the bonus that you'd also kill the local black market economy, as tourists would insist on being able to pay for goods using their voucher.
I suspect any voucher system like you propose would just create a secondary gray market in slightly-discounted vouchers.
2. Anywhere popular with young tourists (Amsterdam, Berlin etc). This might be limited to Europe, with a €20 flight (or bus) to the city, a bed in a cheap hostel, a visit to all the free things etc. This isn't new, but Couchsurfing and cheap transport have probably increased it.
So while I'm interested to hear of those cases, this "they don't spend" concern still seems out-of-place if directed against AirBnBers.
Whether or not we regard one right as more important than the other (and to be fair, we absolutely should), that doesn't change that nobody else is obligated to assist you in pursuit of your rights.
In America, for example, the right to legal counsel is positively asserted. "If you do not have a lawyer, we will provide one for you." Most other rights, including those explicitly enumerated in the constitution, are negatively asserted. We have the right to keep and bear arms, but it is encumbent on no one to aid me in that right, only the government may not interfere.
What does Canada (or your province) do to ensure that all housing prices are kept to affordability?
As a simple example: if we have too many tourists, give a progressive daily tax that's charged to every visitor that automatically includes museum visits/etc. Use that revenue to build more housing for local residents (and if some dipshit points out that more housing ruins a neighboorhood's character, ask yourself if Paris or suburbia has more character) or to subsidize local transport infrastructure.