Digital nomads building some pointless SaaS products with inflated egos working remotely in far flung places of the globe, getting to sample the delights of the worlds great capital cities are not an important consideration in the impact of AirBnB globally. The ability to live a lifestyle like that already comes with so much opportunity and privilege which is either denied or impossible for so many people.
And so when AirBnB ravages communities by driving prices up and forcing people out through their carefree regard for local rules and regulations, then yes, I would say that part of the problem also lies with AirBnB, unless you simply believe that any company should be able to bulldoze whatever comes in its path with zero repercussions?
There is a reason that cities like Lisbon are desirable to visit and spend time in. It's not because its increasingly filled with tech-nerds who talk about "Ramen profitability" and play on slides in offices at lunchtime. Its because of the rich history of the place and the communities + people which make it up. And much like gentrification has done, this easy carefree tourism dilutes that and risks turning everything into more of the same playgrounds of the world.
Look we get it, you hate digital nomads and SaaS products. I couldn't really care less, and that has nothing to do with anything I said, which is that local governments are responsible for their citizens. Whether it's AirBnB or Craigslist or Couchsurfing or some other website, there will always be a demand for people to find housing and to rent out spare housing. Villainify digital nomads or AirBnB, that's never going to solve the problem. (though part of me thinks you're more interested in venting about how much you hate "digital nomads" then actually thinking about the problem of affordable housing and what would could realistically be done to fix it).
I don't think it's really useful to put the blame squarely on the local government in Lisbon for example, sure perhaps they should take a share of it, but that doesn't exonerate exonerate Airbnb - far from it in fact. We're not "villainifying" Airbnb with baseless accusations - I've seen you comment elsewhere that if it wasn't Airbnb it would be some other company, that is terrible way to justify things.
I do believe we should villainify them for circumventing and bending local laws (especially in a country which is in a different continent to where Airbnb is based...) to their advantage and to the detriment of the cities they're "disrupting". Just because something is not technically illegal or you can get away with it doesn't mean it's justified.
I don't hate Airbnb either, though I am inherently distrustful of fast growing, power hungry & greedy "tech" companies and in fact have personally had positive experiences with it. I just don't think its as black & white as you're suggesting. Airbnb should be (and thankfully is) being held accountable for the damage its wreaked around the world. Local laws & regulations were perhaps not well enough equipped to deal with this new kind of tech behemoth and have been slow to adapt, but Airbnb didn't have to play the bad guy in violating zoning & short term stay regulations that the rest of the hospitality industry have to follow. But they did... knowingly.
Someone else made the point that Airbnb was kind of like Trump, exposing & exploiting the existing weaknesses in a system to their own personal advantage. We don't point the finger squarely at the the system, yes it clearly failed under Trump and he is in some way just a symptom of more fundamental problems. But it doesn't let him off the hook. Neither should it for Airbnb
Of course the aims of any private company are to maximise profits through whatever means necessary. That's just the world we live in unfortunately. But even if we accept that as a fact of life, it doesn't mean that on an ethical & moral level we should overlook the harm caused.
Good for you but AirBnB has a proven impact in increasing rent prices for long-term rentals in any touristic city, be it Barcelona, Lisbon, Amsterdam, lots of cities in Europe have suffered from AirBnBs pushing units out of the long-term rental market and being available for people like you. And people like you aren't the majority of the inhabitants of a city, when people that are born and raised in a city are pushed out by pricing due to 10+% of the stock of possible rental units being used as short-term just so landlords can make a bigger buck it's sad and inhumane.
Great that from your perspective it's helped you, it's definitely impacted the lives of a lot of young people that were born in the cities you like to live, AirBnBs are eroding exactly what made them attractive: a good city neighbourhood.
People in the comments are acting like AirBnB is some villain, when in reality it's just a website that facilitates supply and demand of housing. If not AirBnB, it will be some other site (eg. many AirBnB listings are on other websites as well). So long as that market exists, platforms will come up to cater to those needs.
Everybody loves a good villain. But really the problem and solution are not as simple as AirBnB = bad. You guys sound like taxi drivers bashing Uber/Lyft.
But sure, tell every single young person that the solution for them on the next 5 years is to sit down and demand more housing built. What do people do while that's happening? Allow AirBnB to extract money and rent-seekers to gouge prices for the population?
That's not how the real world works, I'm sorry.
The real world is dictated by supply and demand. When demand is high and supply is low, prices rise as competition pushes them up. The increase in housing prices is a huge incentive for developers to build new housing. And it also increases the capital necessary to build more housing. Obviously the political situation will need to allows for new housing. Otherwise prices will just continue to increase.
Believing that the world is dictated by a reductionist model of supply-and-demand is either myopic or ignorant, the world doesn't work like that, that is a model that works well for a diverse set of markets, not all and not at all if you start to include the social aspects into it.
You can't just start building anywhere and anything, that will kill cities, it's a shallow analysis of a broader scope of issues such as: maintaining livable conditions (as defined by the society and culture of that city, not by some metric of "available units per inhabitant"), maintaining harmony of urban planning, maintaining the cityscape, and so on. Devising the master plan for building is exactly the kind of aspect that a simplified worldview of pure supply-and-demand does not take into account, it's simplistic and unempathetic.
Prices will continue to increase if building new units doesn't take place. AirBnB and greedy landlords shouldn't have the power to increase this damage for short-term profits. And worse: doing that in a rent-seeking way, with little to no benefit to the society of that city apart from some tourism money and "digital nomads" income passing by, rent-seeking behaviour is disgusting, it's pure extraction by virtue of you accumulating enough capital to be able to own a piece of land, that's all, there's no productivity increase for society through this form of extractivism.
The NIMBY'ism of preventing new housing is the very definition of rent seeking. By legally locking in, the existing owners prevent others from entering the market due to artificially constrained supply. Airbnb doesn't create the demand; they are just a marketplace and one of many.
What contribution to productivity do corporations or people who have enough spare cash to buy available land provide to a society?
AirBnB can be just a marketplace, that doesn't mean it isn't damaging to society at large. Excluding the moral aspects of that is an ideology based on capitalism, it doesn't mean it's right.
It's the same reason developer salaries are high. Demand is high and supply is (currently) low. My company is struggling to find people to hire right now and are offering cash incentives.
You don't get to evade responsibility for the your actions and the consequences of your lifestyle, while advertising "worker rights" and "anti-poverty" in your bio.
Again if you actually read my comment, the point is that governments are responsible AND the only entity capable of fixing affordable housing problems.
But sure feel free to villainify AirBnB and AirBnB guests/hosts if that makes you feel better. I was living off AirBnB and short-term rentals in NYC/SF too, I guess that means it's my fault that NYC/SF has expensive housing? Lol ok.
You should actually write a bio so I can anonymously insult your existence from the comfort of my keyboard. /s
Some people like myself (eg. digital nomads) prefer short term rentals, and AirBnB has changed our lives.