4 ms·

That's one extreme view on this. Remember that zoning exists for a reason. Imagine if you owned a house and both of the neighboring houses turned into full-ti

That's one extreme view on this. Remember that zoning exists for a reason. Imagine if you owned a house and both of the neighboring houses turned into full-time AirBNB rentals. Sometimes the guests were nice, but sometimes they weren't and treated the place like somewhere to party and forget about.

ultramancool 10y ago
Seems like that's more an issue with the problematic guests infringing on your house. Perhaps this is simply a matter of noise fines, etc should be applying to the homeowner and the guests?
- brandonmenc 10y ago
  Good luck collecting - let alone having a complaint heard - in time to catch the current batch of guests next door.
  - ultramancool 10y ago
    So what you're saying is that this is actually an issue with not enforcing existing laws, but they're going to solve it with different, shittier laws that make less sense instead of enforcing the existing, perfectly reasonable laws? Seems like there's a better solution available here.
    - brandonmenc 10y ago
      No. I'm saying that existing residential zoning laws are only effective when you can apply them to actual residents. They fall flat if you have to chase people down (what, across state lines?) or if the fines aren't high enough to eat into an Airbnb revenue stream. Which, is one reason why we have zoning laws in the first place - because the penalties and proxies in a commercial zone are different than they are in a residential one. > but they're going to solve it with different, shittier laws that make less sense Not sure how residents voting to ban short-term residential rentals in their community is shitty or senseless.
      - ultramancool 10y ago
        Wouldn't it make more sense to use nuisance laws and actually enforce them to eliminate the problem rather than implementing arbitrary zoning restrictions? The zoning laws seem to be used only because cities are not even trying to properly police the already in place nuisance laws.
        brandonmenc 10y ago
        > Wouldn't it make more sense to use nuisance laws and actually enforce them It depends on the laws. Some municipalities could have laws that are able to handle short-term rentals while others could not. In a jurisdiction where the existing law doesn't address a problem caused by short-term rentals, a new law would not be arbitrary - in fact, it would be the exact opposite. > The zoning laws seem to be used only because cities are not even trying to properly police the already in place nuisance laws. If zoning laws are easier to enforce than nuisance laws, this could be an appropriate response.
JoshTriplett 10y ago
And it's really easy for AirBnB to know exactly who rented the property for a given period, so if they do anything illegal (which includes noise violations), they'd be easy to track down with a warrant. If you're not affecting your neighbors, it's nobody's business what you do on your property, including letting other people live there. If you want to regulate, add some additional regulations about behavior that affects neighboring properties but isn't currently covered.
- JonFish85 10y ago
  "And it's really easy for AirBnB to know exactly who rented the property for a given period, so if they do anything illegal (which includes noise violations), they'd be easy to track down with a warrant." You say that, but there are currently many, many cities trying to get Airbnb to deal with their illegal apartments, and yet Airbnb is stalling on that (presumably because if you shut down their illegal apartments, their valuation would implode). To your point, "affecting your neighbors" is a pretty tough thing to track down. Even if things seem to be going well, there's a difference between having stable neighbors who take care of the neighborhood and an unknown rolling of the dice every few days. If you have kids, it's an even bigger risk. It's very difficult to accurately judge just how much of an impact it has, which is why cities have set up zoning regulations.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    > You say that, but there are currently many, many cities trying to get Airbnb to deal with their illegal apartments Why should AirBnB want to help jurisdictions that are trying to shut it down completely under the guise of "illegal apartments/hotels"? It's an entirely different matter to help keep the residents of AirBnB rentals behaving well and not disturbing their neighbors, which seems completely reasonable. > there's a difference between having stable neighbors who take care of the neighborhood There's no guarantee that "stable" neighbors care either, and "take care of the neighborhood" would need to be a lot more precise to be either enforceable or appropriate. There's a reason we specifically looked for a house without a "neighborhood association", and several people I know who currently have such associations would like to get out from under them. Banning AirBnB does sound consistent with neighborhood-association-style politics, though. Saying you want to regulate tenancy duration rather than behavior seems a lot like choosing to reject browsers based on User-Agent rather than doing feature detection. All tenants should behave well regardless of tenancy duration; any well-behaved neighbor should be equivalently fine regardless of tenancy duration. > If you have kids, it's an even bigger risk. "Think of the children!" does not increase the weight of your argument. You're talking very nebulously about risk. The previous comments were specifically complaining about things like noise and late-night parties.

ultramancool 10y ago

Seems like that's more an issue with the problematic guests infringing on your house. Perhaps this is simply a matter of noise fines, etc should be applying to the homeowner and the guests?

brandonmenc 10y ago
Good luck collecting - let alone having a complaint heard - in time to catch the current batch of guests next door.
- ultramancool 10y ago
  So what you're saying is that this is actually an issue with not enforcing existing laws, but they're going to solve it with different, shittier laws that make less sense instead of enforcing the existing, perfectly reasonable laws? Seems like there's a better solution available here.
  - brandonmenc 10y ago
    No. I'm saying that existing residential zoning laws are only effective when you can apply them to actual residents. They fall flat if you have to chase people down (what, across state lines?) or if the fines aren't high enough to eat into an Airbnb revenue stream. Which, is one reason why we have zoning laws in the first place - because the penalties and proxies in a commercial zone are different than they are in a residential one. > but they're going to solve it with different, shittier laws that make less sense Not sure how residents voting to ban short-term residential rentals in their community is shitty or senseless.
    - ultramancool 10y ago
      Wouldn't it make more sense to use nuisance laws and actually enforce them to eliminate the problem rather than implementing arbitrary zoning restrictions? The zoning laws seem to be used only because cities are not even trying to properly police the already in place nuisance laws.
      - brandonmenc 10y ago
        > Wouldn't it make more sense to use nuisance laws and actually enforce them It depends on the laws. Some municipalities could have laws that are able to handle short-term rentals while others could not. In a jurisdiction where the existing law doesn't address a problem caused by short-term rentals, a new law would not be arbitrary - in fact, it would be the exact opposite. > The zoning laws seem to be used only because cities are not even trying to properly police the already in place nuisance laws. If zoning laws are easier to enforce than nuisance laws, this could be an appropriate response.

JoshTriplett 10y ago

And it's really easy for AirBnB to know exactly who rented the property for a given period, so if they do anything illegal (which includes noise violations), they'd be easy to track down with a warrant. If you're not affecting your neighbors, it's nobody's business what you do on your property, including letting other people live there. If you want to regulate, add some additional regulations about behavior that affects neighboring properties but isn't currently covered.

JonFish85 10y ago
"And it's really easy for AirBnB to know exactly who rented the property for a given period, so if they do anything illegal (which includes noise violations), they'd be easy to track down with a warrant." You say that, but there are currently many, many cities trying to get Airbnb to deal with their illegal apartments, and yet Airbnb is stalling on that (presumably because if you shut down their illegal apartments, their valuation would implode). To your point, "affecting your neighbors" is a pretty tough thing to track down. Even if things seem to be going well, there's a difference between having stable neighbors who take care of the neighborhood and an unknown rolling of the dice every few days. If you have kids, it's an even bigger risk. It's very difficult to accurately judge just how much of an impact it has, which is why cities have set up zoning regulations.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  > You say that, but there are currently many, many cities trying to get Airbnb to deal with their illegal apartments Why should AirBnB want to help jurisdictions that are trying to shut it down completely under the guise of "illegal apartments/hotels"? It's an entirely different matter to help keep the residents of AirBnB rentals behaving well and not disturbing their neighbors, which seems completely reasonable. > there's a difference between having stable neighbors who take care of the neighborhood There's no guarantee that "stable" neighbors care either, and "take care of the neighborhood" would need to be a lot more precise to be either enforceable or appropriate. There's a reason we specifically looked for a house without a "neighborhood association", and several people I know who currently have such associations would like to get out from under them. Banning AirBnB does sound consistent with neighborhood-association-style politics, though. Saying you want to regulate tenancy duration rather than behavior seems a lot like choosing to reject browsers based on User-Agent rather than doing feature detection. All tenants should behave well regardless of tenancy duration; any well-behaved neighbor should be equivalently fine regardless of tenancy duration. > If you have kids, it's an even bigger risk. "Think of the children!" does not increase the weight of your argument. You're talking very nebulously about risk. The previous comments were specifically complaining about things like noise and late-night parties.