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A lot of this issue seems to be people operating in bad faith. Airbnb wants the narrative to be that most of their business is regular people renting out a spa

A lot of this issue seems to be people operating in bad faith. Airbnb wants the narrative to be that most of their business is regular people renting out a spare room to make some extra money. Certainly that's a component of their business and one I think, and think most people would agree should be encouraged. Airbnb unfairly plays up this angle while ignoring the fact that many hosts are larger businesses that are taking up housing stock to run an unregulated hotel. There are also plenty of people holding multiple leases (especially in NYC) to rent one place out on Airbnb where you can easily make more than the rent per month. This has some socialized costs in that it reduces the housing supply which drives up rent for everyone else which cities may want to avoid. Hotels and some city people want to focus on the fact that there is unfair competition going on but also seem to recognize that the model is a threat to their bottom line. They seem to want defensive regulation to block all of it rather than just the part that is truly unfair to them some of which is fixed now that Airbnb collects and pays taxes. Not sure if they're at full parity with the hotels in terms of taxes and feels like they should be. Of course a city always has the option of removing these fees for everyone if they think it's unfair. There's plenty of hypocrisy to go around here.

chimeracoder 9y ago
> Airbnb unfairly plays up this angle while ignoring the fact that many hosts are larger businesses that are taking up housing stock to run an unregulated hotel. There are also plenty of people holding multiple leases (especially in NYC) to rent one place out on Airbnb where you can easily make more than the rent per month. Not just "many". In New York specifically, it's literally over 50% that are illegal, by virtue of being whole-apartment rentals. Whole-apartment rentals of less than 30 days are not legal. Ironically, many of the people that AirBNB used to use in their PR campaign as the faces of the "little guy" using AirBNB to "make their rent" were actually people who lived in rent-controlled apartments, which is (almost always) illegal in practice, even if the whole apartment is not being rented.
CaptainZapp 9y ago
Airbnb wants the narrative to be that most of their business is regular people renting out a spare room to make some extra money. Certainly that's a component of their business and one I think, and think most people would agree should be encouraged. No, it should absolutely not be encouraged. As a neighbor I do not appreciate a steady stream of different faces waltzing through the place where I live. I do not appreciate the pressure on resources, like the communal wash kitchen, which gets far more use since it suddenly has to serve commercial purposes, for which it's not intended. I don't appreciate the garbage lying around, the noise, the doors not locked and generally transient folks who don't give a shit about the place in which they live for a couple of days. Hotels and some city people want to focus on the fact that there is unfair competition going on but also seem to recognize that the model is a threat to their bottom line. It has nothing to do with that. It's a massive assault on the quality of life of the residents that actually live in such a house. Unless you never experienced that you really don't know how shitty such a situation can be.

chimeracoder 9y ago

> Airbnb unfairly plays up this angle while ignoring the fact that many hosts are larger businesses that are taking up housing stock to run an unregulated hotel. There are also plenty of people holding multiple leases (especially in NYC) to rent one place out on Airbnb where you can easily make more than the rent per month. Not just "many". In New York specifically, it's literally over 50% that are illegal, by virtue of being whole-apartment rentals. Whole-apartment rentals of less than 30 days are not legal. Ironically, many of the people that AirBNB used to use in their PR campaign as the faces of the "little guy" using AirBNB to "make their rent" were actually people who lived in rent-controlled apartments, which is (almost always) illegal in practice, even if the whole apartment is not being rented.

CaptainZapp 9y ago

Airbnb wants the narrative to be that most of their business is regular people renting out a spare room to make some extra money. Certainly that's a component of their business and one I think, and think most people would agree should be encouraged. No, it should absolutely not be encouraged. As a neighbor I do not appreciate a steady stream of different faces waltzing through the place where I live. I do not appreciate the pressure on resources, like the communal wash kitchen, which gets far more use since it suddenly has to serve commercial purposes, for which it's not intended. I don't appreciate the garbage lying around, the noise, the doors not locked and generally transient folks who don't give a shit about the place in which they live for a couple of days. Hotels and some city people want to focus on the fact that there is unfair competition going on but also seem to recognize that the model is a threat to their bottom line. It has nothing to do with that. It's a massive assault on the quality of life of the residents that actually live in such a house. Unless you never experienced that you really don't know how shitty such a situation can be.