5 ms·

AirBnB is the reason the short term rental problem exists. It exacerbates it. Short term rentals were nowhere near as popular as they are before AirBnB. If AirB

AirBnB is the reason the short term rental problem exists. It exacerbates it. Short term rentals were nowhere near as popular as they are before AirBnB. If AirBnB doesn't exist, they won't be anywhere near as popular as they currently are. And the issue is these aren't short term rentals. They're long term rentals that are being used for short term. That's the whole issue. These were never short term until AirBnB made it super easy to make them so. Without AirBnB, or some other similar service, this isn't as big of an issue. Also, in several cities AirBnB allows owners to operate short term rentals illegally because they don't enforce anything or aid in much enforcement at all.

zamfi 5y ago
> Without AirBnB, or some other similar service, this isn't as big of an issue. Emphasis mine — this is my point. The barn door is open; the horses are gone. Get rid of Airbnb and others will follow. Music piracy didn’t magically stop with the end of Napster.
- dorchadas 5y ago
  Yes, but if AirBnB were to shut down tomorrow, it would take a while for any of them to get back to the same critical mass. Yes, AirBnB is only a symptom, but if it's gone it does get better, at least for a little while.
  - zamfi 5y ago
    Sure, but why would you rather play whack-a-mole than get lasting change? If you want an actual lasting change in how housing is created and allocated, you need regulation with teeth around the behavior you want to actually alter. Or incentives that do the same thing (often regulatory). Shutting down large public companies with many stakeholders who benefit is both harder and only gets what you want a little bit and only for a little while.
    - dorchadas 5y ago
      It's not an either-or thing, that's the thing. You can get more regulations (the 'with teeth' being the key part as in many major cities AirBnB hosts short term rentals that are illegally on the short term market) and want the company shut down too. It also doesn't help that AirBnB doesn't do anything to help countries in terms of finding these illegal letters, or in taxes (this might have changed, but I know it used to be an issue in Ireland where AirBnB didn't collect the taxes and it was up to the owner to pay, with expected results), yet loves to take advantage of them.

zamfi 5y ago

> Without AirBnB, or some other similar service, this isn't as big of an issue. Emphasis mine — this is my point. The barn door is open; the horses are gone. Get rid of Airbnb and others will follow. Music piracy didn’t magically stop with the end of Napster.

dorchadas 5y ago
Yes, but if AirBnB were to shut down tomorrow, it would take a while for any of them to get back to the same critical mass. Yes, AirBnB is only a symptom, but if it's gone it does get better, at least for a little while.
- zamfi 5y ago
  Sure, but why would you rather play whack-a-mole than get lasting change? If you want an actual lasting change in how housing is created and allocated, you need regulation with teeth around the behavior you want to actually alter. Or incentives that do the same thing (often regulatory). Shutting down large public companies with many stakeholders who benefit is both harder and only gets what you want a little bit and only for a little while.
  - dorchadas 5y ago
    It's not an either-or thing, that's the thing. You can get more regulations (the 'with teeth' being the key part as in many major cities AirBnB hosts short term rentals that are illegally on the short term market) and want the company shut down too. It also doesn't help that AirBnB doesn't do anything to help countries in terms of finding these illegal letters, or in taxes (this might have changed, but I know it used to be an issue in Ireland where AirBnB didn't collect the taxes and it was up to the owner to pay, with expected results), yet loves to take advantage of them.