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Intermediary platforms such as Airbnb and Uber exacerbate cities’ housing problems and weaken worker protections. Its interesting that this line has no support

Intermediary platforms such as Airbnb and Uber exacerbate cities’ housing problems and weaken worker protections. Its interesting that this line has no support and just treated as fact for this article. Is there a source to explain the reasoning?

sokoloff 7y ago
Full time AirBnB rentals almost certainly exacerbate any housing shortages that might exist. A tourist in general is willing to pay far more (maybe 5-10x) per night of temporary lodging than a resident is willing/able to pay for 365 days per year. This is especially true in beautiful but inexpensive, tourist magnet cities like Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and the like. Taking otherwise available rentals off the full-time rental market and moving the "up" the economic return ladder to AirBnB rentals makes the housing situation tighter for residents and would-be residents. (I'm a happy user of AirBnB platform and am "OK" with the conversion of real estate to its highest and best use, but I understand the opposition argument and think it has some merit.)
- ShorsHammer 7y ago
  Airbnb is highlighting a zoning problem that governments are unwilling to admit to themselves. Sublets and short term rentals existed long before before and most cities on Earth didn't care, but once a frictionless platform came along it suddenly was a problem. My landlord kicked us out to run an airbnb fulltime after seeing how much a neighbour was earning. (Around New Years /Christmas you could easily bring in 2 months rent). Despite all this I hold no illwill towards Airbnb. If any other basic need was chronically undersupplied due to government inaction people tend to riot, yet somehow housing gets a free pass.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    People say "zoning problem", but should we really solve the problem that 1 in 6 residences in Edinburgh is an airbnb by building skyscrapers in a World Heritage Site? I suppose it would repel the tourists.
    - hapless 7y ago
      You could try _enforcing_ zoning laws and arresting the people running illegal flophouses. That would be a start.
      - megous 7y ago
        Not arresting, yet, but Czech Tax Office is getting data from AirBnB on the hosts, and performing checks based on that, so those that avoid taxes may end up in trouble. https://emerging-europe.com/news/central-prague-does-battle-with-airbnb/ https://emerging-europe.com/news/central-prague-does-battle-...
    - peteretep 7y ago
      Skyscrapers on the royal mile? No. Sky scrapers in shitty nearby suburbs? Absolutely. In London, the whole Isle of Dogs is being slowly eaten up by high rises, and nothing of value will be lost.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    You comment reminds me of what a friend said about Venice. Venice is as real a city as the Magic Kingdom. Because tourists ate it completely. There have always been tourists going to Venice, but since the jet age so many that all the old families that used to make it their home have been kicked out. Probably the future is everyone not wealthy gets kicked out and put on the equivalent of an Indian Reservation. Enforced by rents, toll roads and congestion pricing.
    - CaptainZapp 7y ago
      I think massive cruise ships are more of a problem for Venice than cheap flights. Venice airport is comparatively small with 11'000'000 flights a year.
  - crazypyro 7y ago
    People with residential property often don't want the supply of such property in nearby area to increase. Property owners, who are also voters, have incentives for keeping zoning a problem.
  - hapless 7y ago
    It's not a "zoning problem." It's much simpler than that. * Airbnb flophouses are not obliged to conform to fire, health, or safety codes, and they don't pay taxes. Right off the bat, they're scads cheaper than hotels because they don't bear those costs. * Visitors and residents have very different incentives. Tourists may wish to stay in cute residential areas, but they are not necessarily interested in being neighborly -- they're not particularly invested in the comfort and safety of the people around them, because they'll be leaving soon. * People do a lot of gross stuff in a hotel that you probably don't want to encounter in your apartment building. Drugs, prostitution, loud parties. No amount of "zoning" is going to make the commingling of apartments and hotels attractive to full-time residents, nor will any change in "zoning" make flophouses less profitable.
    - graeme 7y ago
      >No amount of "zoning" is going to make the commingling of apartments and hotels attractive to full-time residents, nor will any change in "zoning" make flophouses less profitable. In most old cities, hotels, bed and breakfasts, hostels etc all exist in residential areas. And boarding houses used to be common in these same areas too.
    - manfredo 7y ago
      > Airbnb flophouses are not obliged to conform to fire, health, or safety codes, and they don't pay taxes. Right off the bat, they're scads cheaper than hotels because they don't bear those costs. Because Airbnbs aren't flophouses. They're holding usually just a couple or family, maybe a dozen people tops unless the place being rented is a really big detached house. Expecting them to be held to the same standards as hotels is not necessary. If this lack of compliance is so dangerous, then why are letting people live in these places full time? > Visitors and residents have very different incentives. Tourists may wish to stay in cute residential areas, but they are not necessarily interested in being neighborly -- they're not particularly invested in the comfort and safety of the people around them, because they'll be leaving soon. Tourists also spend more money while on vacation, especially on small businesses like restaurants and bars. More importantly, they bring this money in externally. More tourism attracts the ire of residents that now have to deal with out-of-town people walking around their neighborhood, but I have rarely seen someone complain about negative economic impact of tourism let alone make a coherent argument about why it's bad. > People do a lot of gross stuff in a hotel that you probably don't want to encounter in your apartment building. Drugs, prostitution, loud parties. Plenty of people do these things in their apartments, condos, and houses, too. > No amount of "zoning" is going to make the commingling of apartments and hotels attractive to full-time residents, nor will any change in "zoning" make flophouses less profitable. Tourists generally don't want to visit residential areas. Airbnb-ing instead of renting a hotel is usually less convenient because the former are further from the city center. When I used an Airbnb in Iceland it was more of a hassle because I effectively needed to rent a car (and then subsequently park a car) to get to the center of the city. It was worth it because of cost. If there were hotel rooms available at the same cost of Airbnb then I would have used that. However, the number of hotels is usually kept artificially limited. This drives up the cost of renting hotel rooms, which benefits hoteliers. This is the main reason why Airbnb is so much cheaper than hotels. Hoteliers don't want to build more hotels because that would drive their costs down and their expenses up.
  - temp-dude-87844 7y ago
    AirBnB isn't highlighting a zoning problem; rather, it enables ordinary people to engage in frictionless regulation-skirting commerce. Incidentally, Uber does the same thing. The problem with this is that it makes masses of lawbreakers out of normal people. When suddenly lots of people are breaking the law, and they're not easily treated as an outgroup, the incentives about enforcing the law get complicated.
    - hapless 7y ago
      Only a very small fraction of the people involved actually break the law, but those bad actors are a surprisingly large fraction of the total nights booked through AirBnB, so the company wishes to conceal and defend them. For instance, renting a room inside your home to visitors, while you continue to occupy the home, is perfectly legal almost everywhere. Often, there is little or no regulation to comply with. (For example, actual BnBs.) But many, many, many of AirBnB's rentals are illegal flophouses. Entire-apartment rentals inside established buildings, or flophouses with 2-4-6-8 bedrooms rented to unrelated strangers, with a maintenance service that comes by to turn down the beds. Those are where the money are at.
  - lugg 7y ago
    Zoning problem is a bit of a reach. A lot of these places are lacking hotels because we don't want them there. These are residential areas because we want them to be. We want the tourists, the traffic, and the mess on the other side of town. You're sort of acting like just because the market wants something it is right to do so and it's a failing of central planning if it differs in opinion about needs.
- chungleong 7y ago
  AirBnb also makes real estate investments more liquid. You can sell a property on short notice. No need to wait for tenants to move out. That drives speculation and influx of foreign capital.
Shivetya 7y ago
the uber one is certainly a lie. the simple fact is these companies have money, can very easily be portrayed as the bogeyman, bonus points because they are not companies to country that will tax them, and simply because most of the populace won't care because its not them. talk to any of the uber drivers where I work, so take it as you will, and many will tell you of passengers who use uber/lyft because the drivers are friendlier, arrive on time, and tend to drive nicer cars. the arrive on time and don't just drive off because you need to go where the taxi won't is very important. and it is people of all income levels using them
- nerdponx 7y ago
  There are plenty of articles and literature (including here on HN) to support the hypothesis that "gig economy" jobs subvert worker protections.
- blub 7y ago
  "drivers are friendlier, arrive on time, and tend to drive nicer cars", but they also have zero worker protections and dance to whatever tune Uber is playing. I'm not selfish enough to only think about my comfort, I want those drivers to be able to have some damn job security, because we're in the 21st century, not the dark ages.
bitL 7y ago
I've heard that in Prague due to explosion of AirBnB rentals it's difficult even for software developers to rent reasonably priced apartments. I guess this is a counter reaction meant for a city that hosts >10% of country's population.
- megous 7y ago
  The rise in prices for new rentals is real. ~70-100% over last few years. How much of that is caused by AirBnB is debatable.
  - tmefq 7y ago
    Not sure about the situation in Czechia but in Spain (where I live) I'd say most of it is caused by the fact that jobs have moved to the big cities to the point where there's nothing left to do in small/mid-sized towns. Personally I blame shopping centres (which have destroyed most small stores in every town they've settled in, and don't require as many active people) and cheap production in Eastern Europe and China (which has destroyed the secondary sector).
    - 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
      Out of curiosity, what does Eastern Europe produce that Spain needs or buys?
      - finchisko 7y ago
        I would like to hear that too. Where do you feel strong competition from eastern eu countries?
  - chungleong 7y ago
    I live in Krakow and I definitely see AirBnb as the culprit. Students are having a much harder finding housing than before. The situation in Europe is somewhat unique in that there's both a large disparity in nominal income and a large disparity in taxation of alcohol. The cost of a beer at a bar varies from €1 to €10. That creates incentive for people to fly out to places like Prague or Tallinn on the weekend just to get plastered. AirBnb, of course, caters specifically to these "tourists". Quality of the accommodation is unimportant when one's completely shitfaced.
save_ferris 7y ago
The New Yorker had an interesting piece on the effect that Airbnb had in Barcelona[0] recently. tldr: residential population in the more attractive parts of town have decreased as much as 45% in the last 12 years. Activists staged protests of illegal Airbnb's by renting them, occupying them, and refusing to leave, all while filming their interactions. 0: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/29/the-airbnb-invasion-of-barcelona https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/29/the-airbnb-inv...

sokoloff 7y ago

Full time AirBnB rentals almost certainly exacerbate any housing shortages that might exist. A tourist in general is willing to pay far more (maybe 5-10x) per night of temporary lodging than a resident is willing/able to pay for 365 days per year. This is especially true in beautiful but inexpensive, tourist magnet cities like Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and the like. Taking otherwise available rentals off the full-time rental market and moving the "up" the economic return ladder to AirBnB rentals makes the housing situation tighter for residents and would-be residents. (I'm a happy user of AirBnB platform and am "OK" with the conversion of real estate to its highest and best use, but I understand the opposition argument and think it has some merit.)

ShorsHammer 7y ago
Airbnb is highlighting a zoning problem that governments are unwilling to admit to themselves. Sublets and short term rentals existed long before before and most cities on Earth didn't care, but once a frictionless platform came along it suddenly was a problem. My landlord kicked us out to run an airbnb fulltime after seeing how much a neighbour was earning. (Around New Years /Christmas you could easily bring in 2 months rent). Despite all this I hold no illwill towards Airbnb. If any other basic need was chronically undersupplied due to government inaction people tend to riot, yet somehow housing gets a free pass.
- pjc50 7y ago
  People say "zoning problem", but should we really solve the problem that 1 in 6 residences in Edinburgh is an airbnb by building skyscrapers in a World Heritage Site? I suppose it would repel the tourists.
  - hapless 7y ago
    You could try _enforcing_ zoning laws and arresting the people running illegal flophouses. That would be a start.
    - megous 7y ago
      Not arresting, yet, but Czech Tax Office is getting data from AirBnB on the hosts, and performing checks based on that, so those that avoid taxes may end up in trouble. https://emerging-europe.com/news/central-prague-does-battle-with-airbnb/ https://emerging-europe.com/news/central-prague-does-battle-...
  - peteretep 7y ago
    Skyscrapers on the royal mile? No. Sky scrapers in shitty nearby suburbs? Absolutely. In London, the whole Isle of Dogs is being slowly eaten up by high rises, and nothing of value will be lost.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  You comment reminds me of what a friend said about Venice. Venice is as real a city as the Magic Kingdom. Because tourists ate it completely. There have always been tourists going to Venice, but since the jet age so many that all the old families that used to make it their home have been kicked out. Probably the future is everyone not wealthy gets kicked out and put on the equivalent of an Indian Reservation. Enforced by rents, toll roads and congestion pricing.
  - CaptainZapp 7y ago
    I think massive cruise ships are more of a problem for Venice than cheap flights. Venice airport is comparatively small with 11'000'000 flights a year.
- crazypyro 7y ago
  People with residential property often don't want the supply of such property in nearby area to increase. Property owners, who are also voters, have incentives for keeping zoning a problem.
- hapless 7y ago
  It's not a "zoning problem." It's much simpler than that. * Airbnb flophouses are not obliged to conform to fire, health, or safety codes, and they don't pay taxes. Right off the bat, they're scads cheaper than hotels because they don't bear those costs. * Visitors and residents have very different incentives. Tourists may wish to stay in cute residential areas, but they are not necessarily interested in being neighborly -- they're not particularly invested in the comfort and safety of the people around them, because they'll be leaving soon. * People do a lot of gross stuff in a hotel that you probably don't want to encounter in your apartment building. Drugs, prostitution, loud parties. No amount of "zoning" is going to make the commingling of apartments and hotels attractive to full-time residents, nor will any change in "zoning" make flophouses less profitable.
  - graeme 7y ago
    >No amount of "zoning" is going to make the commingling of apartments and hotels attractive to full-time residents, nor will any change in "zoning" make flophouses less profitable. In most old cities, hotels, bed and breakfasts, hostels etc all exist in residential areas. And boarding houses used to be common in these same areas too.
  - manfredo 7y ago
    > Airbnb flophouses are not obliged to conform to fire, health, or safety codes, and they don't pay taxes. Right off the bat, they're scads cheaper than hotels because they don't bear those costs. Because Airbnbs aren't flophouses. They're holding usually just a couple or family, maybe a dozen people tops unless the place being rented is a really big detached house. Expecting them to be held to the same standards as hotels is not necessary. If this lack of compliance is so dangerous, then why are letting people live in these places full time? > Visitors and residents have very different incentives. Tourists may wish to stay in cute residential areas, but they are not necessarily interested in being neighborly -- they're not particularly invested in the comfort and safety of the people around them, because they'll be leaving soon. Tourists also spend more money while on vacation, especially on small businesses like restaurants and bars. More importantly, they bring this money in externally. More tourism attracts the ire of residents that now have to deal with out-of-town people walking around their neighborhood, but I have rarely seen someone complain about negative economic impact of tourism let alone make a coherent argument about why it's bad. > People do a lot of gross stuff in a hotel that you probably don't want to encounter in your apartment building. Drugs, prostitution, loud parties. Plenty of people do these things in their apartments, condos, and houses, too. > No amount of "zoning" is going to make the commingling of apartments and hotels attractive to full-time residents, nor will any change in "zoning" make flophouses less profitable. Tourists generally don't want to visit residential areas. Airbnb-ing instead of renting a hotel is usually less convenient because the former are further from the city center. When I used an Airbnb in Iceland it was more of a hassle because I effectively needed to rent a car (and then subsequently park a car) to get to the center of the city. It was worth it because of cost. If there were hotel rooms available at the same cost of Airbnb then I would have used that. However, the number of hotels is usually kept artificially limited. This drives up the cost of renting hotel rooms, which benefits hoteliers. This is the main reason why Airbnb is so much cheaper than hotels. Hoteliers don't want to build more hotels because that would drive their costs down and their expenses up.
- temp-dude-87844 7y ago
  AirBnB isn't highlighting a zoning problem; rather, it enables ordinary people to engage in frictionless regulation-skirting commerce. Incidentally, Uber does the same thing. The problem with this is that it makes masses of lawbreakers out of normal people. When suddenly lots of people are breaking the law, and they're not easily treated as an outgroup, the incentives about enforcing the law get complicated.
  - hapless 7y ago
    Only a very small fraction of the people involved actually break the law, but those bad actors are a surprisingly large fraction of the total nights booked through AirBnB, so the company wishes to conceal and defend them. For instance, renting a room inside your home to visitors, while you continue to occupy the home, is perfectly legal almost everywhere. Often, there is little or no regulation to comply with. (For example, actual BnBs.) But many, many, many of AirBnB's rentals are illegal flophouses. Entire-apartment rentals inside established buildings, or flophouses with 2-4-6-8 bedrooms rented to unrelated strangers, with a maintenance service that comes by to turn down the beds. Those are where the money are at.
- lugg 7y ago
  Zoning problem is a bit of a reach. A lot of these places are lacking hotels because we don't want them there. These are residential areas because we want them to be. We want the tourists, the traffic, and the mess on the other side of town. You're sort of acting like just because the market wants something it is right to do so and it's a failing of central planning if it differs in opinion about needs.
chungleong 7y ago
AirBnb also makes real estate investments more liquid. You can sell a property on short notice. No need to wait for tenants to move out. That drives speculation and influx of foreign capital.

Shivetya 7y ago

the uber one is certainly a lie. the simple fact is these companies have money, can very easily be portrayed as the bogeyman, bonus points because they are not companies to country that will tax them, and simply because most of the populace won't care because its not them. talk to any of the uber drivers where I work, so take it as you will, and many will tell you of passengers who use uber/lyft because the drivers are friendlier, arrive on time, and tend to drive nicer cars. the arrive on time and don't just drive off because you need to go where the taxi won't is very important. and it is people of all income levels using them

nerdponx 7y ago
There are plenty of articles and literature (including here on HN) to support the hypothesis that "gig economy" jobs subvert worker protections.
blub 7y ago
"drivers are friendlier, arrive on time, and tend to drive nicer cars", but they also have zero worker protections and dance to whatever tune Uber is playing. I'm not selfish enough to only think about my comfort, I want those drivers to be able to have some damn job security, because we're in the 21st century, not the dark ages.

bitL 7y ago

I've heard that in Prague due to explosion of AirBnB rentals it's difficult even for software developers to rent reasonably priced apartments. I guess this is a counter reaction meant for a city that hosts >10% of country's population.

megous 7y ago
The rise in prices for new rentals is real. ~70-100% over last few years. How much of that is caused by AirBnB is debatable.
- tmefq 7y ago
  Not sure about the situation in Czechia but in Spain (where I live) I'd say most of it is caused by the fact that jobs have moved to the big cities to the point where there's nothing left to do in small/mid-sized towns. Personally I blame shopping centres (which have destroyed most small stores in every town they've settled in, and don't require as many active people) and cheap production in Eastern Europe and China (which has destroyed the secondary sector).
  - 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
    Out of curiosity, what does Eastern Europe produce that Spain needs or buys?
    - finchisko 7y ago
      I would like to hear that too. Where do you feel strong competition from eastern eu countries?
- chungleong 7y ago
  I live in Krakow and I definitely see AirBnb as the culprit. Students are having a much harder finding housing than before. The situation in Europe is somewhat unique in that there's both a large disparity in nominal income and a large disparity in taxation of alcohol. The cost of a beer at a bar varies from €1 to €10. That creates incentive for people to fly out to places like Prague or Tallinn on the weekend just to get plastered. AirBnb, of course, caters specifically to these "tourists". Quality of the accommodation is unimportant when one's completely shitfaced.

save_ferris 7y ago

The New Yorker had an interesting piece on the effect that Airbnb had in Barcelona[0] recently. tldr: residential population in the more attractive parts of town have decreased as much as 45% in the last 12 years. Activists staged protests of illegal Airbnb's by renting them, occupying them, and refusing to leave, all while filming their interactions. 0: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/29/the-airbnb-invasion-of-barcelona https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/29/the-airbnb-inv...