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If the neighbors are harmed, a landlord with means accepts responsibility for either stopping the harm or compensating them in exchange. That's way better than
by Canada 11y ago
If the neighbors are harmed, a landlord with means accepts responsibility for either stopping the harm or compensating them in exchange. That's way better than the current situation. What are the neighbors going to get from a tenant who sub leases in violation of the lease agreement?
It's the landlord who offers (within the limits of local law) the terms of the lease. I've never seen a lease agreement that allows subleasing without at least right of refusal on reasonable grounds by the landlord. The landlord is within its rights prohibit the tenant from entering into any kind of sub lease entirely. It could (again, within the limits of local law) evict the tenant for even advertising a possible sublease without its written permission.
But no, the landlord is very graciously offering to actively support subleasing via AirBnB. If the landlord executes properly, that's a win for the tenant, a win for the landlord, and a win for the neighbors.
- tptacek 11y agoYou've lost me. Exactly how do I benefit as the neighbor of someone who has turned their apartment into a small unregulated hotel?
- Canada 11y agoSaying the neighbor is ipso facto harmed by short term subleasing is like saying that the value of currency is ipso facto damaged by creating more or it so that the share value of a company is ipso facto damaged by issuing more shares. It's certainly true that if these things are done irresponsibly then bad things happen. And bad things do often happen, I'll give you that. But it's not necessarily true. How it's managed is what determines whether the outcome is good or bad and for whom. When short term renters well behaved, then the neighbors aren't harmed at all. If any lease holder has the ability to sublet easily with support of the landlord then that is something of value. A landlord that gets involved like this is going to create an environment with incentives for good short term tenants. I'd rather lease from a company that allows me to do that and also supports me in doing so. I'd rather lease from a company that actively manages subleases than one that sticks its head in the sand that pretends that isn't happening all the time. Short term subleases are here to stay. Trying to stop them is like trying to stop piracy or illicit drug use. It's just not going to happen. edit: also: To call what happens on airbnb an "unregulated hotel" is profoundly misguided. Have you ever lived for a significant period of time out of airbnb??
- tptacek 11y agoThere are restrictions on short-term rentals and on the places you can build hotels in virtually all cities precisely because the assumption you are making here about the impact of hotel tenants is faulty. I'm not sure why I'm meant to care that there are people that use Airbnb for long-term living arrangements. The modal Airbnb renter does not do that.
- Canada 11y agoThere are certain restrictions on illicit drugs too, but they don't work very well in practice. Everyone involved in such transactions has every incentive to do what they wanna do anyway. What this landlord is doing is the equivalent of saying, "People are going to do drugs. OK. You can sell drugs and you can consume drugs, I'm not going to stop you. I only demand to test their purity first. And if you hurt unrelated parties I'm going to hold the guilty party accountable." Now everyone has something to gain by playing by the rules. Sure, they have to give up something, but they get more than they give if they're honest. Once someone in a legal position of authority can get the parties to agree to play by the rules, that authority can do a lot to reduce, if not completely mitigate, the negative side effects.
- tptacek 11y agoSo what's an argument for this being a public policy win that would be persuasive to people who don't reject the whole concept of zoning as the real estate analog to the drug war?
- geebee 11y agoYou gain in that you previously didn't have the right to turn your apartment or house into a hotel, and now you do. Of course, you may not like that trade-off. You may, like me, have kids in those bedrooms, and enjoy having other families with kids around you who form lifelong friendships with your kids. You may not really want to see an investor buy the 3 bedroom apartment next to you and pay his or her own mortgage and profit by bringing a never ending stream of strangers into the house or apartment next door - even if these strangers are very well behaved. In short, you may wish to trade your right to turn your house into a hotel in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that your neighbors won't do this either. Or, alternatively, you may be ok with it in a more limited way, that perhaps you don't really mind people doing this occasionally, when they are on vacation, say for a limited number of days a year. If this is the case, then you would gain none of the benefits but experience all the negatives of disruption. As you can probably tell from the way I set this up, I feel it is immensely reasonable to zone certain sections of a city as residential with strong restrictions on short term rentals, as a way of protecting residents from the externalities of short term rentals, as well as a way of protecting long term housing stock.
- tptacek 11y agoNo, you've misread the thread. People who want to rent their places out on Airbnb clearly gain. I said, upthread, that this was a loss for those peoples neighbors, and it remains unclear to me how it could be otherwise.
- geebee 11y agoOh yes, I agree - I must have been unclear (probably because of the way I phrased things in my first sentence?).