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Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

214 points by Bhilai 8y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
The more I look at AirBnb, it reality it seems like a conspiracy to enable illegal activity (illegal listings, not collecting taxes). I wonder if in the future, a US Attorney or State Attorney General will attempt to bring criminal charges against the principals of the company. The threat of real jail time would do wonders to get their attention.
- noer 8y ago
  It's the same kind of regulations arbitrage that powered Uber (& Lyft, though to a lesser extent because at first they tried to make it look like riders/drivers knew each other). The difference here is that the only people who really complained about Uber/Lyft was the taxi industry, which mostly was viewed in a neutral light at best. AirBnb seems to have managed to cause disruption both to the hotel industry as well as people who live near listed properties, both of whom are seen in a more sympathetic light than taxis.
  - protomyth 8y ago
    We have a lot of laws built up over the years because of safety concerns with hotels. Hotels have had scary things go on and legislatures have had to deal with the public safety problems quite often. The main problem with taxis is they are often an artificially scarce resource because of government rationing (e.g. medallions). Also, messing around near people's homes tends to illicit a primal response.
- frontloadpro 8y ago
  The illegal listings is crony capitalism. Hotels don't want to compete. And tax evasion is a completely different topic, that is not why Airbnbs are shut down. Every industry has tax problems.
  - matchbok 8y ago
    This has nothing to do with hotels. That's a cop out.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
    The illegal listing is not just about hotels, it is about neighbors who don't want to deal with vacationers and parties and disruption.
    - visarga 8y ago
      It seems they want to enjoy travelling to other cities while blocking other travellers from coming to their city. Same with Waze traffic being routed on previously less known streets.
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        No, they just want travelers to sleep in places designated for travelers. This wouldn't even be an issue if it wasn't a real problem - a well-behaved group of transients is near-unnoticeable in a neighbourhood and by definition doesn't disturb anybody. Another problem is that the proliferation of this practice seems to be disturbing the already tense situation on the housing market. Meeting an odd couple from the other side of the world is fun. Realizing that you can't find affordable flat to buy in a city because a significant portion of it is scooped up for renting and short-term leases - that drives up societal discontent.
        jimmaswell 8y ago
        Why is this crowd suddenly all for restrictive zoning when it comes to AirBnB, yet zoning is evil NIMBYism otherwise?
        TeMPOraL 8y ago
        Being for AirBnB not driving illegal behaviour != being in favour of zoning. Those two concerns are orthogonal. Empathizing with other people's legitimate issues doesn't imply being pro-zoning either.
- openbasic 8y ago
  Yeah, let's force citizens to bow to their government masters and pay their "fair" share, while Big Hotel lobbies away, competes unfairly and gets huge tax benefits.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
    Yeah, let's force community residents to deal with noise and parties and the increased cost of housing brought by AirBnb while allowing AirBnb and their billionaire investors to make a lot of money while pushing off all the externalities on the communities.
    - openbasic 8y ago
      Oh, so you're in favor of housing segregation by the government?
      - linedash 8y ago
        What; you meaning zoning?
    - ifiri90pokn 8y ago
      I mean let’s be real: you described dozens of industries. From sports teams to manufacturing, our industries are fueled by externalizing the costs (cleanup, infrastructure, social services, etc). Locals need to collectively take back their agency in order for things to change. Stop manning their front desks, occupying their cubicles, leaving neighbors and families behind for long commutes on crumbling roads in tin cans. Stay home and work together as neighbors.
  - fifnir 8y ago
    Let's allow richer-than-us foreigners to come to our city, buy all the houses, and then keep them empty to make tax-free money through air-bnb. Fuck the locals, there's tourists that want to enjoy the sun in the summer and arabs that need to invest their petrol dollars.
- emtel 8y ago
  What? How in the hell did we get to the point where building a service that lets people rent their living space to short term guests is "a conspiracy to enable illegal activity"? If airbnb hosts aren't paying taxes properly, then the hosts are committing a crime, not airbnb. Cities may want airbnb to collect taxes on behalf of hosts, because it makes enforcement much easier. That's a reasonable thing to want. However I don't see what conceivable jurisdiction Palm Beach county has over Airbnb that would enable it to coerce airbnb to collect said taxes. Accordingly, I can't imagine why anyone in airbnb's position wouldn't sue, in order to avoid the formation of precedent that allows every municipality in the country to impose whatever requirements they want on airbnb. You may think airbnb is a net negative for many communities, and you're entitled to your opinion, but that's not evidence that crimes have been committed. As for why US Attorneys and State AGs aren't bringing criminal charges, probably because they are actual lawyers who understand that you would have to provide evidence that a law has been broken.
frontloadpro 8y ago
Edit, it was shut down because my local area has a rule against bed and breakfasts that aren't located on a main road. Our Airbnb got shut down after a year by the local government. It wasn't a safety thing, it was a competition thing. Our Red Roof Inn charges 60 a night, but we charged 80 a night. Our reviews could make me tear up. People saying they had the best stay of their life. Asking them what they wanted for breakfast, hot tub temp, Nerf guns, and chatting. People loved it. But we stopped. Government....
- volkl48 8y ago
  Perhaps you should try stating the reason it was shut down.
  - openbasic 8y ago
    Corrupt government.
    - sctb 8y ago
      Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- pjc50 8y ago
  There are a lot of cities where apartments have become AirBnBs, caused great disruption to their neighbours, and driven up rents. This has resulted in people demanding that Something Be Done.
  - keanebean86 8y ago
    Are people using airbnbs as apartments? I don't see how it drives rent up. There's a finite amount of tourism/visitors so they should only be competing with hotels. What am I missing here? Edit: downvoted for asking a question you disagree with? What is this reddit?
jak92 8y ago
Just look at the havoc being reigned on some neighborhoods in Miami Beach during spring break. Specifically the low-scale, residential flamingo park neighborhood of south beach.
- travbrack 8y ago
  Can you elaborate?
  - nemild 8y ago
    Here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/travel/airbnb-miami-beach-war.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/travel/airbnb-miami-beach... > Airbnb and Miami Beach Are at War. Travelers Are Caught in the Crossfire. > The Florida city, like others around the country, is trying to control the home sharing market. Renters often find out their weekend home is illegal when they get a knock on the door.
    - jak92 8y ago
      Airbnb is legal in most of Miami Beach. However, there are pockets of residential areas where short term rentals are prohibited. Flamingo Park being one of them.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mbostleman 8y ago
  First, Miami Beach is a heavily tourist influenced market similar to where I live near Jackson Hole, WY. If you live or invest in a market like that you are doing so with full knowledge of the pros and cons of such an environment. The differences in your environment there don't start and stop with short term rentals. Second, whatever the problem is (I assume rowdy, drunken college students?), it's a human behavior problem, not a problem with a service that enables value exchange like Airbnb.
- jseliger 8y ago
  I would say that one should look at the hovoc that reigns in neighborhoods with draconian zoning that prevents sufficient supply from coming online to meet demand for housing and hotels. We have the technologies necessary to build housing demanded by humans; we just make deploying that tech illegal.
stcredzero 8y ago
To be sure, these aren’t Airbnb’s taxes, any more than Hilton “pays” taxes for its guests’ hotel stays. Rather, the officials sparring with Airbnb want the company to collect and forward the taxes from guests, much as hotels do. So this is local governments trying to railroad an online information/marketplace/intermediation firm into becoming a tax collector. The local governments can't practically collect the taxes, so they're extra-legally trying to bully AirBNB into doing it. Business models are changing along with the societal changes in communications technology. Governments are pretending to themselves that this isn't a society-level change they should adapt to. (How would collecting such taxes be much different from collecting sales taxes?)
- drugme 8y ago
  So this is local governments trying to railroad an online information/marketplace/intermediation firm into becoming a tax collector. It's not "railroading", it's called "the regulated collection of reasonable usage fees." It's how cities are run, and have always been run. If Airbnb doesn't like it -- they don't need to go into the hospitality business in these places.
  - jak92 8y ago
    > the hospitality business but they're a technology company!
    - organsnyder 8y ago
      They offer a hotel booking platform. Their value is the network of renters and rooms—the tech stack is fairly trivial by comparison.
    - evilotto 8y ago
      McDonald's is a real estate company. That doesn't mean they don't sell burgers.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    If Airbnb doesn't like it -- they don't need to go into the hospitality business in these places. That's a dangerous precedent there. Any company that acts as online information/marketplace/intermediation is automatically "in the business?" That's a dangerous precedent to set. Does that mean that reddit is the defacto author & publisher of everything on reddit? Amazon is culpable as the manufacturer of everything it sells? (Not just Amazon Basics.) Something about that strikes me as not quite right and very dangerous.
matchbok 8y ago
AirBnb is a terrible, terrible company. Most of their money comes from corporate-owned mini-hotels yet they advertise as a mom and pop shop. At every turn their solution is to sue small towns and cities so they can continue to extract wealth from our neighborhoods. Disgusting.
- frontloadpro 8y ago
  Why is your profile littered with anti Airbnb comments?
  - matchbok 8y ago
    Because my neighborhood is littered with mini-hotels and AirBnb encourages this behavior.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      Are they bothering you more than non-registered cars in people's yards bothers the HOA type of people? On some level people have the right to do whatever they please with their property. That's kind of the point of ownership to begin with.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > On some level people have the right to do whatever they please with their property. That's kind of the point of ownership to begin with. And on some level they don't (or, perhaps more precisely, on some level it's never entirely their property if they aren't the sovereign—even if they are a member of a group which collectively constitutes the sovereign), that's kind of the point of sovereignty.
      - drinkzima 8y ago
        Right - it's the level dictated by the zoning laws we all agreed to when we built a governmental framework for property ownership and the management of it's externalities. Ownership literally doesn't mean you can do whatever you please, that's the point of the top-level comment here.
Simulacra 8y ago
I think AirBnb is a wonderful, wonderful company. I don't want to stay in a hotel, and I don't want all of the hotel problems, including price. I value Airbnb's competition and think they are trying to do the best they can. Looking back at my history, 39 interactions across the country and not a single problem.
- ifiri90pokn 8y ago
  My beef is that it’s yet another case of outsiders pressuring local politics. The McDonaldization of our neighborhoods continues. Outsiders feeling owed a “piece of the action” makes it harder for people to live and work in these communities. They demand more and more concessions to keep their profits going up, sapping attention and resources, and most importantly, time for discussing the needs of the locals.
duxup 8y ago
I lived a few doors down to someone who basically ran an ad hoc AirBnB ... before Airbnb. It was pretty terrible. Parties all the time, trash, they parked anywhere (in other people's driveways...) because there were likely no long term consequences for doing so, the folks staying there didn't care because why should they? I was on the association board, it's kinda thankless job as we had to deal with this house. We got the usual riot act / pushback from the folks operating that short term rental about how the association was terrible and oh man the government and how we just were protecting hotels (like man, I don't have any connection to hotels...). They tried to organize the other folks who rented out their places (traditional long term rentals) to push us off the board, they actually got several to go along with it, but they failed (it wasn't even close, we had a limit on how many units could rent out at once anyway so they never were going to have enough numbers). In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association / neighborhood. Fortunately the law was on our side and they eventually sold the unit and left. Local governments are run by the locals and they should get to decide where businesses like that operate and zone and so forth. The idea that Airbnb should just get to be the almighty "disruptor" and land on your neighborhood with no recourse is pretty absurd at face value, especially when the argument is usually about how folks should have some freedom, but what they mean is their freedom, not the communities.
- koboll 8y ago
  >In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association / neighborhood. By joining a HOA, you've delegated away to the collective the right to dictate to your neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property. In your case, the system worked - because you are in a HOA. If people want to exert that kind of collectivist control over their neighbors, that's the kind of organization they should be buying homes in. But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property? All kinds of small businesses are routinely run out of residential zoned properties. "Renting a room" seems like the kind of small business that's ideal for this situation - it takes no more infrastructure to house a vacation rental than it does to house a longer-term resident. "Hotels" require employees and elevators and truckloads of supplies delivered weekly; vacation rentals have none of that, and so the comparison makes little sense beyond "they are noisy". Leaseholders can also throw parties and be disruptive; there is an existing legal process to deal with noise complaints. This category of complaint seems like a thin veneer around the core of truth that people who sink a colossal chunk of their nest egg and future earnings into one asset are knee-jerk averse to anything perceived as a threat to it.
iandanforth 8y ago
This seems like an overly critical article. Zoning laws and NIMBY impulses should be fought tooth-and-nail and I'm glad Airbnb is doing so. The platform has allowed me to actually enjoy travel in ways I never could before. What I feel like is missing is a communication path from the community to the platform. Because people start by calling the police to complain it immediately becomes a legal and local ordinance issue. If it were easy to report abuses to Airbnb directly, or if local police were instructed to contact them, the platform could better regulate itself.
- duxup 8y ago
  >If it were easy to report abuses to Airbnb directly, or if local police were instructed to contact them, the platform could better regulate itself. I don't think Airbnb really cares to do that... and that kinda is where the problems start in terms of what Airbnb is really all about.
  - iandanforth 8y ago
    Hrm ... ok here's a specific change I'd like to see they have a "neighbors" portal. But if you try to input a complaint it's hard to find a listing nearby and they say "If you can’t find the listing’s web address, enter the street address and we’ll try to locate the listing. In order to protect our hosts’ privacy, we won’t be able to confirm the existence of any Airbnb listings or follow up with you." This supports your point and should be changed.
    - duxup 8y ago
      Kind of amusing they hide it that way, seems like a good way to get AROUND any local zoning or anyone to identify folks who are buying up units wholesale to rent them out.
  - braythwayt 8y ago
    I'm the absolute last person to think that tech can be trusted to regulate itself for anything. We've seen how companies like Amazon and eBay cater to their power sellers, how social media caters to its advertisers, &c. &c. It would be delightful if AirBnB were to be the exception, but as Reagan(?) said, "Trust, but verify." Who does the verifying if we remove local government from oversight?
hannob 8y ago
I find it really unfortunate that the airbnb debate is always so polarized. AirBNB has often provided me a better alternative to a largely terrible hotel market that often takes racket prices and makes me pay for services I don't need. On the other hand I completely understand when people are annoyed about party folk living in the flat above them or when they lack safety regulations or don't pay the same taxes hotels do. But none of that justifies an outright ban, there should be solutions to regulate the bad while allowing the good. Make them pay hefty fees that they may pass on to their customers if they violate night rest times. Make them follow safety regulations and pay takes. (Yeah, that will make it more expensive, but I can still avoid paying for daily room service I want to opt out and sometimes even can't and 24/7 reception staff I don't need.)
- munk-a 8y ago
  Airbnb has the ability to enforce these policies internally, which would come with the bonus of not needing to lose money to local governments. It's simply that they don't. In much the same way that Uber skirts the laws of background checks, Airbnb responds to complaints and attempts to introduce regulation with lawsuits. I wish the Hotel and Cab markets were disrupted by companies that wanted to optimize within the rules of the game, but they, either through lawsuits or just ignoring laws, don't play in an even setting, these traditional companies end up being burdened with more regulations than the "disrupters" adhere to.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    To optimize within the cab rules, you’d need to have drivers purchase a medallion and only be able to make pickups in the city which issued the medallion... To optimize within the hotel rules, you’d need hosts to get a hotel/rooming house license...
    - munk-a 8y ago
      Cab medallions are currently transferable, so you would need to purchase enough medallions to operate the fleet you would hit at peak usage, but otherwise you'd just need to ensure that all of the driver can qualify for a medallion. Hotel/rooming house licenses aren't un-affordable, there are regulations around them but both motel6 and mom&pop B&Bs can acquire them, so the bar is generally pretty low. For instance in Cambridge, MA it looks like it'd cost about 200$[1] to file for the license, Airbnb could probably offer legal services to help people properly apply if they cared to. [1] https://www.cambridgema.gov/iwantto/applyforahotellodgingorinnholderlicense https://www.cambridgema.gov/iwantto/applyforahotellodgingori...
ThJ 8y ago
I feel there is a difference between putting your home up for short term rent while you're away versus buying multiple homes that you never stay in and operating them as a self-service hotel. There's nothing wrong with this, but if you run a business, you must file the appropriate paperwork and follow the same rules as other businesses.
- bduerst 8y ago
  You could gate it on primary residence, but some people have family-owned cabins or lake homes that AirBnB would still be a good way to optimize use of the asset. It seems like zoning regulations are still a good way to regulate this.
- madaxe_again 8y ago
  I moved to my second home, as I left my business and had no particular reason to stay put, and put my main home on the market as an Airbnb. A residential let wasn’t an option as a) I need to stay there from time to time and b) it wouldn’t cover the mortgage. I’m a by-the-book guy when it comes to business, so registered the place as a guest-house business premises with the council. They even remarked that I was the first Airbnb operator to do this in over a year - and there are over a thousand Airbnbs in town. Because the place is under a certain rateable value, which is based on location and size, it is eligible for a 100% rebate on business rates. I’d gladly pay them were anything due, but nothing is. So, not only am I in the clear with local government, but being so saves me several thousand pounds a year.
nate_meurer 8y ago
I run a vacation rental in a small town in the mountains of Colorado. I'm quite happy to pay the taxes the town demands. Our place is busy, and our guests make a significant impact on the town, spending a lot of money in local shops and restaurants. On the other hand, there is increased wear on city and county roads (many of which are gravel), and increased load on water, sewer, and sanitation services. Cities and counties need money to provide us with the services we depend on to run our little business. Reasonable taxes and fees are a fair, expected, and necessary price. The little town we're in has struck a decent balance price-wise, and they also have a decent regulatory system set up that's designed to ensure that neighbors' complaints about parking, noise, and trash are addressed. We're very by-the-book operators. I want the city to see money from me because I want them to have an interest in protecting my business. There are a couple of hotels under construction in town, which makes me nervous. Hotels hate vacation rentals. I'm not fond of AirBNB as a corporate citizen, but the Hoteliers cartel is dirtier. I wouldn't be surprised if the new hotels lobby the town to ban vacation rentals outright, or craft lethal regulations like those in Tennessee recently that require all vacation rentals to install fire-suppression sprinklers [https://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2015/jan/3/cities-acro... https://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2015/jan/3/cities-acro...].
- cbsks 8y ago
  >On the other hand, there is increased wear on city and county roads (many of which are gravel), and increased load on water, sewer, and sanitation services. Why would renters cause more wear on those resources than full time occupants?
  - nate_meurer 8y ago
    Great question. In my case, the home is consistently occupied by more people than would otherwise be living there full time, and they're much more active than a family of permanent residents would be. They eat out a lot, drive around the town and up mountain roads, and if they're skiiers or outdoor sports-people, they're in and out of town every day. Guests are usually groups of blended family and friends, so there are more cars. This is true for us when we visit our own place; we often bring family or friends, and they bring more cars. The dirt road leading to our house definitely notices the traffic. And then there's the water and trash. Bloody fucking hell vacation rental guests generate a lot of trash. I'm working on some ways to encourage reduced consumption, and I stock only recycled paper products -- toilet tissue particularly is a sore point with me. I con't believe how much toilet paper people use. It pisses me off enough that I'm playing with the idea of charging for it. Otherwise, we've had mostly good luck with our guests. Mostly. I won't rent to anyone under 25, and I'm really strict about that. I also completely banned smoking of any kind anywhere on the property, inside or outside. These things have helped.
paulcnichols 8y ago
I love that hostcompliance.com exists. Capitalism at work.
turc1656 8y ago
Any time anyone says they "want to pay taxes", you know they are lying. No one anywhere wants to pay - no one looks forward to it. Not that I'm a fan of big government, but I don't understand why, if they really are just ignoring the law in most jurisdictions (which they are), none of these states just issue arrest warrants for the people in charge of these decisions? Why isn't there an outstanding warrant for the CEO of AirBnB from any one of the 50 US states for flagrant tax evasion? Or even going further to actually request the state where that CEO is present in to be arrested and extradited to that state? The CEO can't possibly claim they didn't know this was an issue. So then the battle will be forced in court for them to prove that they weren't responsible for collecting the tax and that if instead the property owners were in fact responsible, that AirBnB wasn't guilty of facilitating criminal tax evasion. I'm sick and tired of these Silicon Valley companies deciding that their big idea is to decentralize so that they can ignore regulations and licensing requirements by saying "we're just a platform, the users need to do that". Same bullshit with Uber claiming their drivers aren't employees but rather "independent contractors", even though Uber sets all the rules, prices, etc. I've never heard of an independent contractor who can't determine how much they charge. Similarly, these AirBnB places aren't legally zoned for the activity they are engaging in, nor are virtually any of the property owners licensed to do business as a lodging facility or registered and authorized to collect the occupancy taxes. AirBnB knows this and the grand scale of the illegal activity, at bare minimum, proves that the purpose of the platform is to circumvent the laws/regulations but not with an actual loophole, just by ignoring them and hoping they can grow fast enough so that they aren't just shut down hard.
- Xylakant 8y ago
  I, as an individual want to lay taxes and I want them to be put to good use. I also think my income bracket pays too little taxes. I want a thriving, stable society and I’m well aware on an intellectual level that if faced with the constant decision whether I should donate here or donate there or pay more for child-care so that they can subsidize people with less income, I’ll become overwhelmed and fail. I already fail at deciding if and where to direct an end of year donation. A thriving society needs money to serve all the needs that a thriving society has: infrastructure, education, governance, just to name a few. I don’t always agree how and where tax money is spent. I also sometimes feel cheated when paying taxes, but more often than not it’s because I see someone else, possibly a large Corp such as AirBnB actively avoid paying their due share. So please, make me pay taxes, but make everyone else pay theirs.
curiousjorge 8y ago
So this is the new neo-liberal globalism, same game, just younger millenials doing it to each other. Airbnb is detrimental and harmful to the local socioeconomic dynamics. Another classic YC production, so it seems, on top of the other 'questionable' startup investments.
unknownkadath 8y ago
Nashville resident here. A drunk airbnb user tried to break into a neighbor's house around 11 pm last week while the residents were inside. He was lost and thought he was at his rental, but that wasn't apparent to anyone else in the beginning, so my wife gets a call for help from another neighbor and we go to check it out. When we get there, we discover the assailant has been treed on a shed roof by the woman whose door he had beaten on. She was home alone with her baby at the time. She was (understandably) waving a ball-peen hammer at him and shouting. Let's call him Trey. Trey is around 6' 3" and a bit on the husky side. He is maybe 25 and he is wearing a worn out Auburn hat and a nice polo shirt. Trey is crying and refusing to speak to any of the small crowd that has gathered, some of whom who are darkly muttering about burglars and drugs. Trey is talking into his phone, quietly, holding it like a slice of pizza. Trey has called his mom. My SO and I figure out what has happened about the same time. "Hey buddy, are you looking for your airbnb?" I called. Luckily, we were able to de-escalate before Metro PD arrived or Trey was beaten to death with a hammer by a 5' tall woman. It turns out that Trey had given his Uber driver the wrong adress on the way home from Broadway; he was supposed to be about one street over. We get a hold of the groom whose bachelor party Trey was a part of, and the police give Trey a ride home. So, that can happen.
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  This could have happened in any number of scenarios.
- bargl 8y ago
  This is the USA, I'm surprised he wasn't shot. Not joking at all, your story is actually kinda funny but it could have gone so much worse at so many points. Is that AirBnB's fault? Is it the hosts fault? Is it the cities fault for not regulating this? Is it our society's fault for allowing drinking to the point of forgetting your address? I think in the end it's just a series of unfortunate events, that give you a really great anecdote, which might have turned out much worse. I wouldn't claim this as evidence for or against AirBnB but man did it make me laugh. Good on you for de-escalating the situation and keeping your head! Hopefully, Trey had the decorum to apologize later on and try to make things right.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
I think hotel zoning should be loosened and maybe some of the regs. There's clearly demand. I don't buy the idea hotels are disruptive, in my urban community there are zero, but tons of commercial space there'd be no problem at all with one across the street. In fact, it'd be good for business. Tons of offices, zero hotel space. Not good. Some innovation in management i.e. no checkin, cleaner only come when you've gone, etc. etc. and we might get some material efficiencies.
Obsnold 8y ago
I used to live in a flat where I was the only permanent resident on the floor and the rest were Airbnbs. My life was hell while I lived there. I don't think most people realise what a massive negative impact these places have on the people living near by. Even if you are a good guest you may not think you are having a negative impact but you are. I think tourists have to understand that when they use Airbnb they are giving a massive middle finger to the locals. You do not have a right to a cheap holiday and it should not come at the expense of those just trying to live their lives. This was in Hong Kong if anyone was wondering so all the America specific issues don't apply.
- RankingMember 8y ago
  Can you elaborate on what made it so bad?
Giorgi 8y ago
Meh, Anti-Airbnb people are just bunch of crybabies, jealous of some regular mom and pop shops making ends meet.
- spwmoni 8y ago
  HN should have a feature that hides any comments from users who haven't actually clicked on the link.
spwmoni 8y ago
> A different Airbnb page[0] instructs hosts to tell guests to bring extra money when checking in so the host can collect taxes in person. Ludicrous. [0] https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2496/how-does-manual-occupancy-tax-collection-and-payment-work https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2496/how-does-manual-occ...
nkingsy 8y ago
The reporting on New Orleans is frustrating. They quote city officials complaining about the registration system being shut down and losing years of work, and they quote Airbnb saying that the system was shut down because the city changed the law and made it ineffective. Seems like the journalist could've figure out what really happened here and just reported it rather than printing two conflicting accounts and wiping their hands of it.
temp23894 8y ago
Airbnb is such a racket, and it annoys me that they haven't historically been given the same critical treatment that Uber has. In many ways, it's way more discriminatory and more damaging to residents of a city and almost the complete opposite of Uber/Lyft (which benefits residents and visitors alike). The only people Airbnb benefits in a given city are the landlords/hosts. It's not a "neutral" effect on other residents - it either crowds out supply that could otherwise go to a full-time resident or creates a safety/quality of life issue for neighbors who live adjacent to these properties that are being constantly filled with strangers.

214 points by Bhilai 8y ago

The more I look at AirBnb, it reality it seems like a conspiracy to enable illegal activity (illegal listings, not collecting taxes). I wonder if in the future, a US Attorney or State Attorney General will attempt to bring criminal charges against the principals of the company. The threat of real jail time would do wonders to get their attention.

noer 8y ago
It's the same kind of regulations arbitrage that powered Uber (& Lyft, though to a lesser extent because at first they tried to make it look like riders/drivers knew each other). The difference here is that the only people who really complained about Uber/Lyft was the taxi industry, which mostly was viewed in a neutral light at best. AirBnb seems to have managed to cause disruption both to the hotel industry as well as people who live near listed properties, both of whom are seen in a more sympathetic light than taxis.
- protomyth 8y ago
  We have a lot of laws built up over the years because of safety concerns with hotels. Hotels have had scary things go on and legislatures have had to deal with the public safety problems quite often. The main problem with taxis is they are often an artificially scarce resource because of government rationing (e.g. medallions). Also, messing around near people's homes tends to illicit a primal response.
frontloadpro 8y ago
The illegal listings is crony capitalism. Hotels don't want to compete. And tax evasion is a completely different topic, that is not why Airbnbs are shut down. Every industry has tax problems.
- matchbok 8y ago
  This has nothing to do with hotels. That's a cop out.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
  The illegal listing is not just about hotels, it is about neighbors who don't want to deal with vacationers and parties and disruption.
  - visarga 8y ago
    It seems they want to enjoy travelling to other cities while blocking other travellers from coming to their city. Same with Waze traffic being routed on previously less known streets.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      No, they just want travelers to sleep in places designated for travelers. This wouldn't even be an issue if it wasn't a real problem - a well-behaved group of transients is near-unnoticeable in a neighbourhood and by definition doesn't disturb anybody. Another problem is that the proliferation of this practice seems to be disturbing the already tense situation on the housing market. Meeting an odd couple from the other side of the world is fun. Realizing that you can't find affordable flat to buy in a city because a significant portion of it is scooped up for renting and short-term leases - that drives up societal discontent.
      - jimmaswell 8y ago
        Why is this crowd suddenly all for restrictive zoning when it comes to AirBnB, yet zoning is evil NIMBYism otherwise?
        TeMPOraL 8y ago
        Being for AirBnB not driving illegal behaviour != being in favour of zoning. Those two concerns are orthogonal. Empathizing with other people's legitimate issues doesn't imply being pro-zoning either.
openbasic 8y ago
Yeah, let's force citizens to bow to their government masters and pay their "fair" share, while Big Hotel lobbies away, competes unfairly and gets huge tax benefits.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
  Yeah, let's force community residents to deal with noise and parties and the increased cost of housing brought by AirBnb while allowing AirBnb and their billionaire investors to make a lot of money while pushing off all the externalities on the communities.
  - openbasic 8y ago
    Oh, so you're in favor of housing segregation by the government?
    - linedash 8y ago
      What; you meaning zoning?
  - ifiri90pokn 8y ago
    I mean let’s be real: you described dozens of industries. From sports teams to manufacturing, our industries are fueled by externalizing the costs (cleanup, infrastructure, social services, etc). Locals need to collectively take back their agency in order for things to change. Stop manning their front desks, occupying their cubicles, leaving neighbors and families behind for long commutes on crumbling roads in tin cans. Stay home and work together as neighbors.
- fifnir 8y ago
  Let's allow richer-than-us foreigners to come to our city, buy all the houses, and then keep them empty to make tax-free money through air-bnb. Fuck the locals, there's tourists that want to enjoy the sun in the summer and arabs that need to invest their petrol dollars.
emtel 8y ago
What? How in the hell did we get to the point where building a service that lets people rent their living space to short term guests is "a conspiracy to enable illegal activity"? If airbnb hosts aren't paying taxes properly, then the hosts are committing a crime, not airbnb. Cities may want airbnb to collect taxes on behalf of hosts, because it makes enforcement much easier. That's a reasonable thing to want. However I don't see what conceivable jurisdiction Palm Beach county has over Airbnb that would enable it to coerce airbnb to collect said taxes. Accordingly, I can't imagine why anyone in airbnb's position wouldn't sue, in order to avoid the formation of precedent that allows every municipality in the country to impose whatever requirements they want on airbnb. You may think airbnb is a net negative for many communities, and you're entitled to your opinion, but that's not evidence that crimes have been committed. As for why US Attorneys and State AGs aren't bringing criminal charges, probably because they are actual lawyers who understand that you would have to provide evidence that a law has been broken.

frontloadpro 8y ago

Edit, it was shut down because my local area has a rule against bed and breakfasts that aren't located on a main road. Our Airbnb got shut down after a year by the local government. It wasn't a safety thing, it was a competition thing. Our Red Roof Inn charges 60 a night, but we charged 80 a night. Our reviews could make me tear up. People saying they had the best stay of their life. Asking them what they wanted for breakfast, hot tub temp, Nerf guns, and chatting. People loved it. But we stopped. Government....

volkl48 8y ago
Perhaps you should try stating the reason it was shut down.
- openbasic 8y ago
  Corrupt government.
  - sctb 8y ago
    Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
pjc50 8y ago
There are a lot of cities where apartments have become AirBnBs, caused great disruption to their neighbours, and driven up rents. This has resulted in people demanding that Something Be Done.
- keanebean86 8y ago
  Are people using airbnbs as apartments? I don't see how it drives rent up. There's a finite amount of tourism/visitors so they should only be competing with hotels. What am I missing here? Edit: downvoted for asking a question you disagree with? What is this reddit?

jak92 8y ago

Just look at the havoc being reigned on some neighborhoods in Miami Beach during spring break. Specifically the low-scale, residential flamingo park neighborhood of south beach.

travbrack 8y ago
Can you elaborate?
- nemild 8y ago
  Here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/travel/airbnb-miami-beach-war.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/travel/airbnb-miami-beach... > Airbnb and Miami Beach Are at War. Travelers Are Caught in the Crossfire. > The Florida city, like others around the country, is trying to control the home sharing market. Renters often find out their weekend home is illegal when they get a knock on the door.
  - jak92 8y ago
    Airbnb is legal in most of Miami Beach. However, there are pockets of residential areas where short term rentals are prohibited. Flamingo Park being one of them.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mbostleman 8y ago
First, Miami Beach is a heavily tourist influenced market similar to where I live near Jackson Hole, WY. If you live or invest in a market like that you are doing so with full knowledge of the pros and cons of such an environment. The differences in your environment there don't start and stop with short term rentals. Second, whatever the problem is (I assume rowdy, drunken college students?), it's a human behavior problem, not a problem with a service that enables value exchange like Airbnb.
jseliger 8y ago
I would say that one should look at the hovoc that reigns in neighborhoods with draconian zoning that prevents sufficient supply from coming online to meet demand for housing and hotels. We have the technologies necessary to build housing demanded by humans; we just make deploying that tech illegal.

stcredzero 8y ago

To be sure, these aren’t Airbnb’s taxes, any more than Hilton “pays” taxes for its guests’ hotel stays. Rather, the officials sparring with Airbnb want the company to collect and forward the taxes from guests, much as hotels do. So this is local governments trying to railroad an online information/marketplace/intermediation firm into becoming a tax collector. The local governments can't practically collect the taxes, so they're extra-legally trying to bully AirBNB into doing it. Business models are changing along with the societal changes in communications technology. Governments are pretending to themselves that this isn't a society-level change they should adapt to. (How would collecting such taxes be much different from collecting sales taxes?)

drugme 8y ago
So this is local governments trying to railroad an online information/marketplace/intermediation firm into becoming a tax collector. It's not "railroading", it's called "the regulated collection of reasonable usage fees." It's how cities are run, and have always been run. If Airbnb doesn't like it -- they don't need to go into the hospitality business in these places.
- jak92 8y ago
  > the hospitality business but they're a technology company!
  - organsnyder 8y ago
    They offer a hotel booking platform. Their value is the network of renters and rooms—the tech stack is fairly trivial by comparison.
  - evilotto 8y ago
    McDonald's is a real estate company. That doesn't mean they don't sell burgers.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  If Airbnb doesn't like it -- they don't need to go into the hospitality business in these places. That's a dangerous precedent there. Any company that acts as online information/marketplace/intermediation is automatically "in the business?" That's a dangerous precedent to set. Does that mean that reddit is the defacto author & publisher of everything on reddit? Amazon is culpable as the manufacturer of everything it sells? (Not just Amazon Basics.) Something about that strikes me as not quite right and very dangerous.

matchbok 8y ago

AirBnb is a terrible, terrible company. Most of their money comes from corporate-owned mini-hotels yet they advertise as a mom and pop shop. At every turn their solution is to sue small towns and cities so they can continue to extract wealth from our neighborhoods. Disgusting.

frontloadpro 8y ago
Why is your profile littered with anti Airbnb comments?
- matchbok 8y ago
  Because my neighborhood is littered with mini-hotels and AirBnb encourages this behavior.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Are they bothering you more than non-registered cars in people's yards bothers the HOA type of people? On some level people have the right to do whatever they please with their property. That's kind of the point of ownership to begin with.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > On some level people have the right to do whatever they please with their property. That's kind of the point of ownership to begin with. And on some level they don't (or, perhaps more precisely, on some level it's never entirely their property if they aren't the sovereign—even if they are a member of a group which collectively constitutes the sovereign), that's kind of the point of sovereignty.
    - drinkzima 8y ago
      Right - it's the level dictated by the zoning laws we all agreed to when we built a governmental framework for property ownership and the management of it's externalities. Ownership literally doesn't mean you can do whatever you please, that's the point of the top-level comment here.

Simulacra 8y ago

I think AirBnb is a wonderful, wonderful company. I don't want to stay in a hotel, and I don't want all of the hotel problems, including price. I value Airbnb's competition and think they are trying to do the best they can. Looking back at my history, 39 interactions across the country and not a single problem.

ifiri90pokn 8y ago
My beef is that it’s yet another case of outsiders pressuring local politics. The McDonaldization of our neighborhoods continues. Outsiders feeling owed a “piece of the action” makes it harder for people to live and work in these communities. They demand more and more concessions to keep their profits going up, sapping attention and resources, and most importantly, time for discussing the needs of the locals.

duxup 8y ago

I lived a few doors down to someone who basically ran an ad hoc AirBnB ... before Airbnb. It was pretty terrible. Parties all the time, trash, they parked anywhere (in other people's driveways...) because there were likely no long term consequences for doing so, the folks staying there didn't care because why should they? I was on the association board, it's kinda thankless job as we had to deal with this house. We got the usual riot act / pushback from the folks operating that short term rental about how the association was terrible and oh man the government and how we just were protecting hotels (like man, I don't have any connection to hotels...). They tried to organize the other folks who rented out their places (traditional long term rentals) to push us off the board, they actually got several to go along with it, but they failed (it wasn't even close, we had a limit on how many units could rent out at once anyway so they never were going to have enough numbers). In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association / neighborhood. Fortunately the law was on our side and they eventually sold the unit and left. Local governments are run by the locals and they should get to decide where businesses like that operate and zone and so forth. The idea that Airbnb should just get to be the almighty "disruptor" and land on your neighborhood with no recourse is pretty absurd at face value, especially when the argument is usually about how folks should have some freedom, but what they mean is their freedom, not the communities.

koboll 8y ago
>In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association / neighborhood. By joining a HOA, you've delegated away to the collective the right to dictate to your neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property. In your case, the system worked - because you are in a HOA. If people want to exert that kind of collectivist control over their neighbors, that's the kind of organization they should be buying homes in. But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property? All kinds of small businesses are routinely run out of residential zoned properties. "Renting a room" seems like the kind of small business that's ideal for this situation - it takes no more infrastructure to house a vacation rental than it does to house a longer-term resident. "Hotels" require employees and elevators and truckloads of supplies delivered weekly; vacation rentals have none of that, and so the comparison makes little sense beyond "they are noisy". Leaseholders can also throw parties and be disruptive; there is an existing legal process to deal with noise complaints. This category of complaint seems like a thin veneer around the core of truth that people who sink a colossal chunk of their nest egg and future earnings into one asset are knee-jerk averse to anything perceived as a threat to it.

iandanforth 8y ago

This seems like an overly critical article. Zoning laws and NIMBY impulses should be fought tooth-and-nail and I'm glad Airbnb is doing so. The platform has allowed me to actually enjoy travel in ways I never could before. What I feel like is missing is a communication path from the community to the platform. Because people start by calling the police to complain it immediately becomes a legal and local ordinance issue. If it were easy to report abuses to Airbnb directly, or if local police were instructed to contact them, the platform could better regulate itself.

duxup 8y ago
>If it were easy to report abuses to Airbnb directly, or if local police were instructed to contact them, the platform could better regulate itself. I don't think Airbnb really cares to do that... and that kinda is where the problems start in terms of what Airbnb is really all about.
- iandanforth 8y ago
  Hrm ... ok here's a specific change I'd like to see they have a "neighbors" portal. But if you try to input a complaint it's hard to find a listing nearby and they say "If you can’t find the listing’s web address, enter the street address and we’ll try to locate the listing. In order to protect our hosts’ privacy, we won’t be able to confirm the existence of any Airbnb listings or follow up with you." This supports your point and should be changed.
  - duxup 8y ago
    Kind of amusing they hide it that way, seems like a good way to get AROUND any local zoning or anyone to identify folks who are buying up units wholesale to rent them out.
- braythwayt 8y ago
  I'm the absolute last person to think that tech can be trusted to regulate itself for anything. We've seen how companies like Amazon and eBay cater to their power sellers, how social media caters to its advertisers, &c. &c. It would be delightful if AirBnB were to be the exception, but as Reagan(?) said, "Trust, but verify." Who does the verifying if we remove local government from oversight?

hannob 8y ago

I find it really unfortunate that the airbnb debate is always so polarized. AirBNB has often provided me a better alternative to a largely terrible hotel market that often takes racket prices and makes me pay for services I don't need. On the other hand I completely understand when people are annoyed about party folk living in the flat above them or when they lack safety regulations or don't pay the same taxes hotels do. But none of that justifies an outright ban, there should be solutions to regulate the bad while allowing the good. Make them pay hefty fees that they may pass on to their customers if they violate night rest times. Make them follow safety regulations and pay takes. (Yeah, that will make it more expensive, but I can still avoid paying for daily room service I want to opt out and sometimes even can't and 24/7 reception staff I don't need.)

munk-a 8y ago
Airbnb has the ability to enforce these policies internally, which would come with the bonus of not needing to lose money to local governments. It's simply that they don't. In much the same way that Uber skirts the laws of background checks, Airbnb responds to complaints and attempts to introduce regulation with lawsuits. I wish the Hotel and Cab markets were disrupted by companies that wanted to optimize within the rules of the game, but they, either through lawsuits or just ignoring laws, don't play in an even setting, these traditional companies end up being burdened with more regulations than the "disrupters" adhere to.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  To optimize within the cab rules, you’d need to have drivers purchase a medallion and only be able to make pickups in the city which issued the medallion... To optimize within the hotel rules, you’d need hosts to get a hotel/rooming house license...
  - munk-a 8y ago
    Cab medallions are currently transferable, so you would need to purchase enough medallions to operate the fleet you would hit at peak usage, but otherwise you'd just need to ensure that all of the driver can qualify for a medallion. Hotel/rooming house licenses aren't un-affordable, there are regulations around them but both motel6 and mom&pop B&Bs can acquire them, so the bar is generally pretty low. For instance in Cambridge, MA it looks like it'd cost about 200$[1] to file for the license, Airbnb could probably offer legal services to help people properly apply if they cared to. [1] https://www.cambridgema.gov/iwantto/applyforahotellodgingorinnholderlicense https://www.cambridgema.gov/iwantto/applyforahotellodgingori...

ThJ 8y ago

I feel there is a difference between putting your home up for short term rent while you're away versus buying multiple homes that you never stay in and operating them as a self-service hotel. There's nothing wrong with this, but if you run a business, you must file the appropriate paperwork and follow the same rules as other businesses.

bduerst 8y ago
You could gate it on primary residence, but some people have family-owned cabins or lake homes that AirBnB would still be a good way to optimize use of the asset. It seems like zoning regulations are still a good way to regulate this.
madaxe_again 8y ago
I moved to my second home, as I left my business and had no particular reason to stay put, and put my main home on the market as an Airbnb. A residential let wasn’t an option as a) I need to stay there from time to time and b) it wouldn’t cover the mortgage. I’m a by-the-book guy when it comes to business, so registered the place as a guest-house business premises with the council. They even remarked that I was the first Airbnb operator to do this in over a year - and there are over a thousand Airbnbs in town. Because the place is under a certain rateable value, which is based on location and size, it is eligible for a 100% rebate on business rates. I’d gladly pay them were anything due, but nothing is. So, not only am I in the clear with local government, but being so saves me several thousand pounds a year.

nate_meurer 8y ago

I run a vacation rental in a small town in the mountains of Colorado. I'm quite happy to pay the taxes the town demands. Our place is busy, and our guests make a significant impact on the town, spending a lot of money in local shops and restaurants. On the other hand, there is increased wear on city and county roads (many of which are gravel), and increased load on water, sewer, and sanitation services. Cities and counties need money to provide us with the services we depend on to run our little business. Reasonable taxes and fees are a fair, expected, and necessary price. The little town we're in has struck a decent balance price-wise, and they also have a decent regulatory system set up that's designed to ensure that neighbors' complaints about parking, noise, and trash are addressed. We're very by-the-book operators. I want the city to see money from me because I want them to have an interest in protecting my business. There are a couple of hotels under construction in town, which makes me nervous. Hotels hate vacation rentals. I'm not fond of AirBNB as a corporate citizen, but the Hoteliers cartel is dirtier. I wouldn't be surprised if the new hotels lobby the town to ban vacation rentals outright, or craft lethal regulations like those in Tennessee recently that require all vacation rentals to install fire-suppression sprinklers [https://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2015/jan/3/cities-acro... https://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2015/jan/3/cities-acro...].

cbsks 8y ago
>On the other hand, there is increased wear on city and county roads (many of which are gravel), and increased load on water, sewer, and sanitation services. Why would renters cause more wear on those resources than full time occupants?
- nate_meurer 8y ago
  Great question. In my case, the home is consistently occupied by more people than would otherwise be living there full time, and they're much more active than a family of permanent residents would be. They eat out a lot, drive around the town and up mountain roads, and if they're skiiers or outdoor sports-people, they're in and out of town every day. Guests are usually groups of blended family and friends, so there are more cars. This is true for us when we visit our own place; we often bring family or friends, and they bring more cars. The dirt road leading to our house definitely notices the traffic. And then there's the water and trash. Bloody fucking hell vacation rental guests generate a lot of trash. I'm working on some ways to encourage reduced consumption, and I stock only recycled paper products -- toilet tissue particularly is a sore point with me. I con't believe how much toilet paper people use. It pisses me off enough that I'm playing with the idea of charging for it. Otherwise, we've had mostly good luck with our guests. Mostly. I won't rent to anyone under 25, and I'm really strict about that. I also completely banned smoking of any kind anywhere on the property, inside or outside. These things have helped.

paulcnichols 8y ago

I love that hostcompliance.com exists. Capitalism at work.

turc1656 8y ago

Any time anyone says they "want to pay taxes", you know they are lying. No one anywhere wants to pay - no one looks forward to it. Not that I'm a fan of big government, but I don't understand why, if they really are just ignoring the law in most jurisdictions (which they are), none of these states just issue arrest warrants for the people in charge of these decisions? Why isn't there an outstanding warrant for the CEO of AirBnB from any one of the 50 US states for flagrant tax evasion? Or even going further to actually request the state where that CEO is present in to be arrested and extradited to that state? The CEO can't possibly claim they didn't know this was an issue. So then the battle will be forced in court for them to prove that they weren't responsible for collecting the tax and that if instead the property owners were in fact responsible, that AirBnB wasn't guilty of facilitating criminal tax evasion. I'm sick and tired of these Silicon Valley companies deciding that their big idea is to decentralize so that they can ignore regulations and licensing requirements by saying "we're just a platform, the users need to do that". Same bullshit with Uber claiming their drivers aren't employees but rather "independent contractors", even though Uber sets all the rules, prices, etc. I've never heard of an independent contractor who can't determine how much they charge. Similarly, these AirBnB places aren't legally zoned for the activity they are engaging in, nor are virtually any of the property owners licensed to do business as a lodging facility or registered and authorized to collect the occupancy taxes. AirBnB knows this and the grand scale of the illegal activity, at bare minimum, proves that the purpose of the platform is to circumvent the laws/regulations but not with an actual loophole, just by ignoring them and hoping they can grow fast enough so that they aren't just shut down hard.

Xylakant 8y ago
I, as an individual want to lay taxes and I want them to be put to good use. I also think my income bracket pays too little taxes. I want a thriving, stable society and I’m well aware on an intellectual level that if faced with the constant decision whether I should donate here or donate there or pay more for child-care so that they can subsidize people with less income, I’ll become overwhelmed and fail. I already fail at deciding if and where to direct an end of year donation. A thriving society needs money to serve all the needs that a thriving society has: infrastructure, education, governance, just to name a few. I don’t always agree how and where tax money is spent. I also sometimes feel cheated when paying taxes, but more often than not it’s because I see someone else, possibly a large Corp such as AirBnB actively avoid paying their due share. So please, make me pay taxes, but make everyone else pay theirs.

curiousjorge 8y ago

So this is the new neo-liberal globalism, same game, just younger millenials doing it to each other. Airbnb is detrimental and harmful to the local socioeconomic dynamics. Another classic YC production, so it seems, on top of the other 'questionable' startup investments.

unknownkadath 8y ago

Nashville resident here. A drunk airbnb user tried to break into a neighbor's house around 11 pm last week while the residents were inside. He was lost and thought he was at his rental, but that wasn't apparent to anyone else in the beginning, so my wife gets a call for help from another neighbor and we go to check it out. When we get there, we discover the assailant has been treed on a shed roof by the woman whose door he had beaten on. She was home alone with her baby at the time. She was (understandably) waving a ball-peen hammer at him and shouting. Let's call him Trey. Trey is around 6' 3" and a bit on the husky side. He is maybe 25 and he is wearing a worn out Auburn hat and a nice polo shirt. Trey is crying and refusing to speak to any of the small crowd that has gathered, some of whom who are darkly muttering about burglars and drugs. Trey is talking into his phone, quietly, holding it like a slice of pizza. Trey has called his mom. My SO and I figure out what has happened about the same time. "Hey buddy, are you looking for your airbnb?" I called. Luckily, we were able to de-escalate before Metro PD arrived or Trey was beaten to death with a hammer by a 5' tall woman. It turns out that Trey had given his Uber driver the wrong adress on the way home from Broadway; he was supposed to be about one street over. We get a hold of the groom whose bachelor party Trey was a part of, and the police give Trey a ride home. So, that can happen.

jimmaswell 8y ago
This could have happened in any number of scenarios.
bargl 8y ago
This is the USA, I'm surprised he wasn't shot. Not joking at all, your story is actually kinda funny but it could have gone so much worse at so many points. Is that AirBnB's fault? Is it the hosts fault? Is it the cities fault for not regulating this? Is it our society's fault for allowing drinking to the point of forgetting your address? I think in the end it's just a series of unfortunate events, that give you a really great anecdote, which might have turned out much worse. I wouldn't claim this as evidence for or against AirBnB but man did it make me laugh. Good on you for de-escalating the situation and keeping your head! Hopefully, Trey had the decorum to apologize later on and try to make things right.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

I think hotel zoning should be loosened and maybe some of the regs. There's clearly demand. I don't buy the idea hotels are disruptive, in my urban community there are zero, but tons of commercial space there'd be no problem at all with one across the street. In fact, it'd be good for business. Tons of offices, zero hotel space. Not good. Some innovation in management i.e. no checkin, cleaner only come when you've gone, etc. etc. and we might get some material efficiencies.

Obsnold 8y ago

I used to live in a flat where I was the only permanent resident on the floor and the rest were Airbnbs. My life was hell while I lived there. I don't think most people realise what a massive negative impact these places have on the people living near by. Even if you are a good guest you may not think you are having a negative impact but you are. I think tourists have to understand that when they use Airbnb they are giving a massive middle finger to the locals. You do not have a right to a cheap holiday and it should not come at the expense of those just trying to live their lives. This was in Hong Kong if anyone was wondering so all the America specific issues don't apply.

RankingMember 8y ago
Can you elaborate on what made it so bad?

Giorgi 8y ago

Meh, Anti-Airbnb people are just bunch of crybabies, jealous of some regular mom and pop shops making ends meet.

spwmoni 8y ago
HN should have a feature that hides any comments from users who haven't actually clicked on the link.

spwmoni 8y ago

> A different Airbnb page[0] instructs hosts to tell guests to bring extra money when checking in so the host can collect taxes in person. Ludicrous. [0] https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2496/how-does-manual-occupancy-tax-collection-and-payment-work https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2496/how-does-manual-occ...

nkingsy 8y ago

The reporting on New Orleans is frustrating. They quote city officials complaining about the registration system being shut down and losing years of work, and they quote Airbnb saying that the system was shut down because the city changed the law and made it ineffective. Seems like the journalist could've figure out what really happened here and just reported it rather than printing two conflicting accounts and wiping their hands of it.

temp23894 8y ago

Airbnb is such a racket, and it annoys me that they haven't historically been given the same critical treatment that Uber has. In many ways, it's way more discriminatory and more damaging to residents of a city and almost the complete opposite of Uber/Lyft (which benefits residents and visitors alike). The only people Airbnb benefits in a given city are the landlords/hosts. It's not a "neutral" effect on other residents - it either crowds out supply that could otherwise go to a full-time resident or creates a safety/quality of life issue for neighbors who live adjacent to these properties that are being constantly filled with strangers.