[1]: https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...
Instead your city is getting more tourism?
IDK if that is net positive or negative, but FWIW most areas try to boost tourism as much as possible. (Like, every U.S. state has a tourism dept/budget.)
They rent a house near downtown, spending all day at the lakes/beaches/attractions outside of the city, then maybe go downtown for dinner (assuming they don't cook out).
I'm sure the presence of tourists helps some shops stay open; but not the kind of shops that I use. Tourists don't use butchers, greengrocers, tool and hardware stores. They use tourist shops, which consequently multiply.
Today (as every day) I went to the shops. I got caught on the pavement/sidewalk behind a column of about 50 overseas visitors, following a tour guide. That column crashed into a similar column going in the opposite direction. This was the High Street, i.e. the main drag; it wasn't feasible to step into the carriageway, because there was traffic. In my view we have way too many tourists, and their guides don't extert enough control.
I regularly have my doorbell pressed by AirBnB guests who can't get in, and expect me to do something about it. This is frequently at night. There have been a few loud parties, including one with underage girls. I've been sworn at and threatened a few times.
The Council is trying to shut down this operator. They told the operator they were in violation of regulations (we're zoned as residential). They appealled. The Council won the appeal. I think they must have now appealled to the Secretary of State; they're still operating. This has taken over a year.
I would like it if my neighbour were the same person that was my neighbour yesterday. I have no "proper" neighbours.
My small town isn’t touristy and the CBD is walkable and real and has places I go (and visitors can go, too, of course) like groceries, banks, etc.
A friend lives in a nearby slightly larger small town that is a tourist destination and his “downtown” is a sea of gift shops and restaurants and nothing much else. To get groceries and supplies he has to go to the outskirts or the next town over.
But if Airbnb skirts those, you lose that financial advantage.
People who often do short stays don’t give a crap about noise, neighbors, or anything else.
Plus many got into airbnb to get rich. Have 0 business sense, 0 landlord experience and often don’t maintain the property.
Plus, every time I stayed at Airbnb I felt scammed. The pictures always lied. Some of the things were not as advertised. And before leaving I had a todo list. Absolutely pathetic way to spend vacations.
the sad thing is that from the very beginning, unlike many other startup businesses, they actually had a great value-prop and worked incredibly well as a product
Cities have put themselves in this position both because they don't allow enough new housing and because they don't allow enough new hotels and VRBO-like options in the places people want them.
A large number of smaller/basement airbnb units near me are within a very short walk of hotels or hotels offering suites. Generally speaking, the hotels are located closer to favorable amenities.
But hotels are tightly controlled and regulated and located (with the associated considerations about traffic, noise, etc). Airbnbs can be anywhere, unless regulations extend to them (and even then they often skirt the regs).
WFH is working out the same way. People are spreading out to towns that don't have jobs to offer but thanks to people who are WFH they're bringing in money from the outside that's helping to prop up the local economy. As those people move out of the cities that's freeing up housing to be available for those who want to live in the city or need to live in the city.
> They're not taking any jobs My understanding was that you couldn't really "take" jobs (in the long-term anyways). I would imagine that increasing the volume of our labor force would only grow our overall economy (so long as we can house everyone)
I doubt it. One of the reasons people choose AirBnB over hotels is that they want a kitchen so that they don't have to eat out. As to taxes, while the city is still getting the property tax, they're losing out on the hotel taxes that the people staying in the AirBnB would otherwise have paid. Plus the profits that are now going to AirBnB would otherwise have gone to the hotel owner/managers and thus been more likely to get spent in the city.
So on net I'd say people staying in AirBnBs generate quite a bit less money for the city than if they'd stayed in a hotel. The only places that this sort argument works is for places that are so out of the way or unpopular that they simply don't really have hotels for people to stay in.
Does your city not monitor and control the short term rental market to alleviate this? Many cities have strict controls on rentals less than 30 day.
One of the problems is owning a short term rental is seen/marketed at low-touch or passive income, but It takes a lot of work to run sort term rentals. We've ran into all sorts of crazy situations that take work to properly manage.