3 ms·

If you can't evict, then fine the owners enough to make them care.

• emodendroket 10y ago
  Theoretically maybe it's possible but look at what happened to Boston neighborhoods where a lot of homes started being rented to college kids. Especially the way the landlords don't really give a damn because they make enough profit that any fines they incur are just the cost of doing business. Much easier to have a simple, no exceptions rule than a complex schedule of fines and enforcement for violations.
  • xapata 10y ago
    That's a good comparison. My take is that writing "simple, no exceptions" laws is very difficult. It's incredibly hard to draw what lawyers call a "bright line" between good neighborly behavior and bad behavior. Further, I suspect the hotel lobby will try to sneak in some far overreaching wording as part of stopping some bad AirBnB hosts. I don't trust them to write something truly clear. For example, will their laws make renting your spare bedroom on Craigslist illegal? Quite likely they'll try to. In contrast, a schedule of fines for things like noise violations already exists! It's just time to update the fines and start enforcing them. One major problem with misdemeanor laws is they tend to hardcode the dollar amounts and forget to update them with inflation.
    • emodendroket 10y ago
      I don't think it's really that hard to ban short-term rentals. If you want to still allow long-term rentals you can set a minimum length of any such agreement. Certainly it's less complicated than addressing every single undesirable thing that could result from having them.