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Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by burlesona on Thursday August 30, 2018 @01:37PM (#17878793)
How have we gotten this far into the comments without anyone mentioning the root cause here is a general shortage of housing in places people want to live / work / visit?

It seems to me that AirBNB isn't to blame for the overall lack of housing (and temporary housing aka hostel/hotel) options, rather it's just the most visible brand name competing for the limited supply.

Cities can ban it if they want, but I'd rather they focused on allowing more housing to be built.

Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by ritchiea on Thursday August 30, 2018 @02:04PM (#17879085)
It's not just a lack of housing. Airbnb is changing neighborhoods by creating increased demand for vacation friendly activities and turning some areas into an effective full time weekend. It's taking popular neighborhoods like the Mission in SF or Williamsburg in Brooklyn or the Gothic quarter in Barcelona and turning them into 365 day a year tourist parties. Any neighborhood with a reputation for being hip, having art, music, bars etc. is now half populated by Airbnb guests at all times.
Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by istorical on Thursday August 30, 2018 @03:37PM (#17880011)
And for many of us - we like having exciting nightlife options in Williamsburg or the Mission during the week. The solution isn't to stop neighborhoods from becoming lively and fun, it's to once again build more housing so that those who don't want to live in lively neighborhoods can move to another neighborhood.
Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by nix0n on Thursday August 30, 2018 @02:14PM (#17879196)
> Any neighborhood with a reputation for being hip, having art, music, bars etc. is now half populated by Airbnb guests at all times

Why are there so few of these places?

Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by forgottenpass on Friday August 31, 2018 @09:26AM (#17885359)
They're generally unsustainable. Having a reputation means a deviation from the norm. Once their reputation is big enough, the number of newcomers to the culture will outstrips the ability for the culture to assimilate them.

Sustainability in the face of that requires whatever the culture is centered around to be the kind of thing that can both put up a facade that serve casuals and angry neighbors, while simultaneously maintaining an environment for the core that built it to retain momentum. And circumstance might just make that impossible.

Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by jdmichal on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @06:00PM (#17913215)
There's a piece that covers this pretty well:

https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

Last posted on HN 2 months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433487

Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by 0x4f3759df on Thursday August 30, 2018 @03:04PM (#17879711)
That's a bit of a reduction. More like 'Any neighborhood in a world class city with a reputation ...' Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Kansas City could develop cool areas, but probably won't be overrun by AirBnB tourists.
Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by bashmydotfiles on Thursday August 30, 2018 @03:48PM (#17880105)
That's right AirBNB isn't to blame for the overall lack of housing - but it is to blame for pushing people out of housing. Landlords can make much more money if they kick out all of their tenants and rent to people on AirBNB - effectively turning the property they own into a hotel.

The long term solution for this is to have more housing, but that isn't going to fix the problem that many face currently. I think the best course of action to take right now is to put laws in place that restrict AirBNB in some ways.

For example, this recently happened in Boston: https://boston.curbed.com/2018/6/13/17460760/boston-airbnb-r...

These new regulations makes it so that AirBNB "Hotels" would be impossible. Of course it /does/ screw over an individual that would possibly want to rent their apartment out while they're away, but I think the pros outweigh the cons. Namely, if you're able to afford a single person apartment in Boston - you're probably more well off than other people in Boston, so you probably don't need the extra income provided by AirBNB anyway.

Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by cortesoft on Thursday August 30, 2018 @01:56PM (#17878990)
Wait, how would this solve ANY of the problems mentioned in the article? Most of the issues they talked about were simply caused by having a bunch of tourists living with the people (in fact, 'over tourism' was one of the mentioned problems, along with harassment and loudness from guests).

Building more places for these tourists to stay isn't going to solve the problem of having too many tourists in a city.

Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by jeffbax on Thursday August 30, 2018 @02:18PM (#17879239)
AirBNB could not exist and all our cities would still have severe housing shortages. It's a scapegoat, the real problem is lack of supply, which is a zoning regulatory issue.

Zoning prevents building the stock needed (or things like making styles of homes like multi-family illegal), so AirBNB may be an irritation to it, but its far from the root problem.

https://www.dataforprogress.org/housing/

> Without abolishing apartment bans we are left with very little space in growing cities to place social housing. Let’s say we raise taxes on the rich as much as we dream, and set about to build social housing apartments. Right now, apartments – market rate or not – are illegal in much of the useable land in American cities (only 17% of Seattle’s buildable land allows apartments, for instance). Where will we put the new social housing if apartment bans remain? (And it will take years to build the social housing we need; in the meantime let’s at least build some places for middle class and working class people to live.)

Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by burlesona on Thursday August 30, 2018 @02:06PM (#17879102)
My impression reading the article was that the primary problem is affordability and AirBNB units competing for housing space. The remainder, about the problems of tourism in general, seem like a pro/con situation that has always been an issue in popular tourist destinations, and AirBNB is just the latest highly visible participant in it. It seems likely that AirBNB has helped make tourism more popular, but that trend was already going strong before AirBNB and probably would be without it as well.
Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by the_mitsuhiko on Thursday August 30, 2018 @03:25PM (#17879910)
> How have we gotten this far into the comments without anyone mentioning the root cause here is a general shortage of housing in places people want to live / work / visit?

There is plenty of housing in many cities where Airbnb is detrimental to the quality of life. We have an Airbnb flat in our building and we had one in the last one I was in. In both cases we had breakins, damage done to the house, garbage left etc.

We're in a residential, non-touristy area. Both those airbnb flats in question were not welcome by renders or owners in the house.

Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by nerdponx on Thursday August 30, 2018 @01:38PM (#17878807)
Unless there wasn't, and now there is because of Airbnb. Or an existing shortage was exacerbated by Airbnb.
Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by burlesona on Thursday August 30, 2018 @01:43PM (#17878857)
I understand what you're saying but that doesn't contradict my point. If the appearance of AirBNB suddenly causes a housing shortage than there was presumably a lot of pent up demand for hotel-type space in the market that was being artificially restricted by hotel regulations, and the regional housing supply was fragile in the face of increased demand.

Across the world right now most major cities are struggling in the face of growth, but it doesn't really make sense that they should be. I live in San Francisco where housing supply is critically low, but our annual growth rate is only around 1%. It's deeply concerning that our institutions crumble and in the face of a 1% annual growth rate.

Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by nerdponx on Thursday August 30, 2018 @02:43PM (#17879515)
hotel-type space in the market that was being artificially restricted by hotel regulations

is not the same as housing.

Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by dcosson on Thursday August 30, 2018 @02:05PM (#17879091)
For a quick order of magnitude comparison, taking SF as an example - as near I can find, there are somewhere between 5k and 10k airbnb listings in the whole bay area. But to be very conservative let's assume 10k and assume they're all in SF itself.

Well between 2010 and 2015 SF added 150k more jobs than housing units. Meaning to get back to 2010 levels of affodability SF would have to add on the order of 150k more housing units (and that has probably grown even worse in the past 3 years since 2015).

Airbnb is unfortunately just a drop in the bucket.

Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by pastor_elm on Thursday August 30, 2018 @01:43PM (#17878853)
The root cause is that in many ways, housing is subsidized and cheaper. Airbnb takes advantage of that to undercut the hotel industry.
Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by zip1234 on Thursday August 30, 2018 @02:03PM (#17879068)
People use AirBnB not just for the price. I've used it before to get a more authentic experience when traveling. The places generally vary a lot more in capacity (IE not just 2-4 per room). For a family with smaller children, renting out a small apartment for a weekend is much nicer than a tiny hotel room on the nth floor of some homogeneous building. I think many hotels can't compete because they cannot provide the variety of options that AirBnB provides.
Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by WalterSear on Thursday August 30, 2018 @03:11PM (#17879792)
I'm not alone in my dislike for hotels.
Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by eerwrq on Thursday August 30, 2018 @01:50PM (#17878926)
> Cities can ban it if they want, but I'd rather they focused on allowing more housing to be built.

Why not do both?

Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by jonny_eh on Thursday August 30, 2018 @01:52PM (#17878946)
One is mostly helpful (building housing) and one is mostly detrimental (banning airbnb).
Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by eerwrq on Thursday August 30, 2018 @02:10PM (#17879146)
How is banning AirBnB detrimental to the housing problem if it's also contributing to the lack of housing supply?
Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by neom on Thursday August 30, 2018 @02:50PM (#17879596)
Indirectly: AirBnB can make buying a house more affordable by providing passive income to the home owner that could in theory be used towards mortgage payments etc.
Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by jonny_eh on Thursday August 30, 2018 @03:25PM (#17879913)
Banning Airbnb can be detrimental to the local economy, as well as the freedom for residents to do what they want with their property.
Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by tropo on Thursday August 30, 2018 @02:22PM (#17879295)
Since we can not all fit in "places people want to live / work / visit", the only viable solution is to change that. Other places need to be made more desirable. (as needed, add: cell towers, an airport, a high school, and a hospital) People need to move.
Re:What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood by babesh on Thursday August 30, 2018 @03:27PM (#17879922)
The problem is a tragedy of the commons. If you build a giant box in the Las Ramblas, you reap the benefits but worsen the neighborhood for others. If everyone does that, you have destroyed Las Ramblas.