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Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out

375 points by privateprofile 5y ago

tptacek 5y ago
We're considering an Airbnb ordinance where I live. A major motivating factor is that Airbnbs are used frequently here to stage parties. It's difficult for homeowners to effectively police their properties for these (part of the reason they're Airbnb'ing them is that they're not living in the immediate vicinity).
- zain 5y ago
  Did you know Airbnb has a full ban on parties? If you're a neighbor and you find a party, you can call Airbnb and have it dealt with: https://www.airbnb.com/neighbors https://www.airbnb.com/neighbors
  - tptacek 5y ago
    I'm sure they have full bans on all sorts of abuse. I'm glad they have a web page for people to find, but that's obviously not a solution to the problem. The municipality I live in does not give a single fuck about Airbnb's "Neighborhood Support Team". They're simply going to license Airbnb rentals, and permanently revoke the licenses of any resident who doesn't meet an onerous (and likely to become more onerous) set of criteria set out in the ordinance. Neighbors hate Airbnbs, and usually with good reason. It doesn't help Airbnb that they have irritated basically every faction of our board. The more conservative board members are responsive to resident complaints about nuisances and safety. The lefty board members are responsive to concerns about Airbnb displacing housing stock. Restrictions make everyone on the board happy. I don't have a dog in the fight (I've enjoyed several Airbnb stays) but I'm not going to be sad when this happens in the next couple months. Abuses stemming from people (and companies) turning single-family houses into unlicensed hotels aren't tech company tech support problems.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
In the book "Evicted" by Matthew Desmond he discusses how high turnover in residents negatively affects a neighborhood's sense of community. The book is insightful. Depressing but still insightful. https://www.evictedbook.com/ https://www.evictedbook.com/ Editorial: This is one of things that led me to conclude that poverty is more than a financial condition. In fact, more and more I believe that poverty is a symptom of other "conditions." Conditions that aggregate to manifest and perpetuate poverty.
LatteLazy 5y ago
Researchers find correlation assume causation...
- agallant 5y ago
  We use difference-in-difference models (Eq (1)) to test whether a rise in the prevalence of Airbnb in a census tract in one year predicts increases in crime and disorder in the following year. ... The models control for tract-level and year fixed effects. In order to make the parameter estimates that follow more interpretable, we note that the average census tract in the average year experienced 11.32 events of private conflict, 7.68 events of public social disorder, and 28.58 events of public violence per 1,000 residents. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0253315#sec004 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourn... I've not dug into the study enough to vouch for its quality as a whole - but it's clear the researchers are plenty aware of the differences between correlation and causation and are at least attempting to address them. This is actually often the case with scientific papers, even if it's lost in the media coverage of them.
  - gowld 5y ago
    Not really. The article cites wild speculation made by the study authors: "The large-scale conversion of housing units into short-term rentals undermines a neighborhood’s social organization, and in turn its natural ability...to counteract and discourage crime," and the research reeks of p-hacking and non-reproducibility: Spain: >"It encourages the concentration of tourists who, due to their characteristics, are suitable targets for victimisation," Maldonado-Guzmán said. but in Boston: > The researchers found that there was a positive correlation between higher penetration of Airbnb properties in an area – for example buildings containing multiple Airbnb lets – and a rise in violence. However, crime types associated with rowdy visitors, like drunkenness and noise complaints, as well as private conflicts, did not increase. > "It's not the number of Airbnb tourists who stay in a neighborhood that causes an increase in criminal activities," said Professor Babak Heydari from Northeastern University.
    - 5y ago
handmodel 5y ago
The article doesn't mention it - and I can't find it anywhere - but in any neighborhood what is the highest proportion of units that are short-term rentals. Five percent? Ten percent in the super touristy areas? I have no idea and even before the other flaws in the study I am skeptical than anything short of 20% would make an impact on any major attribute of an area. I see one stat in the paper that "40% of buildings had airbnb listings in some tracts" but if the buildings had 10 units in them each this still may mean a relatively small number of total listings were from Airbnbs. In fact, even in Boston there are some tracts where I suppose that the average building must have 30+ units which would meant that if 60% of buildings had no listing the total percentage of listings that are Airbnbs is relatively small. >higher levels of violent crime did not appear immediately after Airbnb listings became available to tourists, but rather developed over the course of several years, the researchers said. Alternative theory. Every area had some Airbnbs. In neighborhoods that were being wealthier/more popular/had more jobs decided it was easier to just do long-term rentals. In areas where landlords had trouble renting them out to anyone long-term (because locals know if a neighborhood is nice or not) they turned more units into Airbnbs because outsiders don't know/don't care.
- TroisM 5y ago
  > but in any neighborhood what is the highest proportion of units that are short-term rentals. I have seen areas close to 100%... in Hollywood, FL (not Airbnb though...)
- tcoff91 5y ago
  My neighborhood has got to be at least 33% vacation rentals, with a few streets being above 50%.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  Preface: this is just my opinion at this moment. I feel like trying to attribute specific numbers to the article's phenomenon is sort of a waste. It really only takes one individual who is significantly disruptive to change the perception of trust and safety in any given region. The only limit (where percentages and such start creeping in) is in the physical reach that individual has. Anybody who has lived in the same neighborhood as "that guy" knows this to be true. When "that guy" becomes more, the physical area may not change, but the level of trust and safety might, and that itself can propagate to other areas through gossip, news coverage, etc. I don't have much of a point, I just wanted to say that the upper limit of "number of people required to make a place feel unsafe" is exactly one.
timwaagh 5y ago
Maybe criminals like staying at Airbnb. They have the cash after all and Airbnb can easily be used to hide ones identity.
- dntrkv 5y ago
  They specifically point out the increase in crime is not from the Airbnb tourists.
  - timwaagh 5y ago
    I read that a bit differently. They noted that typical tourism related crimes did not usually increase but other crime did.
- NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
  Have you ever used AirBnb? It is not possible to be anonymous in AirBnB, to rent a flat they will ask you for multiple ID documents so they could confirm who you are, furthermore there is scoring system so anything fishy about guest or host will stay in the permanent record. I have used AirBnb a lot across the world, and overall I have not had any significantly bad experience.
  - timwaagh 5y ago
    I used to host on there. A lot of guests did not use their own account. Of one such person I later found out he sold stolen watches. But I suppose uploading a fake id wouldn't be impossible either. Airbnb primarily relies on its review system to ban people. this unfortunately has nothing to do with what you do for a living (instead it's determined by the level of luxury you provide as host and/or whether you damage the place as a guest).
user3939382 5y ago
Sounds like good material for this website: https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
11thEarlOfMar 5y ago
This was recently discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27859115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27859115
DoubleDerper 5y ago
The AirBnb "effect" has directly led to increased home prices. A home turning a profit thus becomes more important than how its guests impact a neighborhood and community. Ignoring or spinning the social costs is a primary goal of Airbnb's PR machine. It has made many neighborhoods more transitory (i.e. less homesteading, more short term rentals). Acknowledge the social costs to community and it's not surprising to read that violent crime rates are trending up where AirBnbs thrive.
- trident5000 5y ago
  We had anti-hoarding measures on masks but dont seem to have them on homes. Every additional income property you own (and used as such) should have an escalating hoarding penalty.
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    These penalties are never high enough to actually discourage the behavior. It's better to just ban accumulating more than X homes, where X could be as low as 1.
    - trident5000 5y ago
      Im good with that idea on investment properties. Though I have no issue with people having vacation homes. Theres a natural limit to how many vacation homes someone can have without a revenue source on the asset.
      - vetinari 5y ago
        And that limit is enforced by upkeep costs. Owning homes isn't free, you know. It is a physically depreciating asset, that you have to take care of, whether you use it actively or not. Doing so costs money, so depth of your wallet puts a firm limit on the amount of properties you are capable to take care of.
        5y ago
hamburgerwah 5y ago
This is similar to how most murders in the US were caused by Internet Explorer usage: https://i.redd.it/4h8emlr5z3c41.jpg https://i.redd.it/4h8emlr5z3c41.jpg
cletus 5y ago
A common quote on HN (and one that I firmly believe in) is: > It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. This so applies to AirBnB. It's not salary per se but those that benefit by renting out units or those for whom this has saved them money I've found typically get so defensive about AirBnB to the point of calling detractors NIMBYists and the like. I've long thought that AirBnB allows people to profit off something that others around them bear the negative externalities from but I think it's even worse than I would've pegged it. Clear negatives: 1. Reduces housing supply; 2. Creates safety problems; 3. Creates nuisance problems; and 4. Brings temporary residents into neighbourhoods that have no tie to that neighbourhood. To be clear, I don't have a problem with people renting out rooms or an ADU on their property. Most cities don't either. But AirBnB is clearly used to create illegal hotels and that's the problem.
- virtue3 5y ago
  I have 100% issue with people turning their properties in SF into airbnb hotels. You're just skirting the fucking law at that point. The area was zoned for -HOUSING- not a hotel. I've used airbnb a lot in the past, but now that regulators have gotten a hold of it; it's basically a barely cheaper hotel with a lot more ??? on whether or not the place is good and the hosts live up to their reviews.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  I agree with all of your points, at least at some point. This doesn’t mean I should call treat this “study” as science, as it is not.
- random314 5y ago
  I have neither rented or rented out an Airbnb. However, I see no problem with a homeowner renting out his home for short periods. Everything we do has negative externalities, including driving a car. I don't see how Airbnb's are considered so bad. Moreover this is a correlation study in one city. The title implies a causal analysis which this is not. Pretty easy to phack your way to whatever conclusion you want using correlations. Moreover what is the magnitude of increase? From 0.0001% to 0.001% . The article should show some absolute counts.
sobellian 5y ago
This paper has some big flaws. See https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/olwous https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/olwous for an in-depth critique.
- millimeterman 5y ago
  /r/badeconomics is a shockingly sane place considering the sad state of most of Reddit (and HN for that matter). It always disappoints me to see how many people have extremely strong opinions on topics they know nothing about.
  - alex_smart 5y ago
    On the other hand, this thread was for me suprisingly "reddit-like". A poor quality article with a provocative title with heavily upvotes followed by a bunch of comments simply talking about the title based on their own personal experiences rather than anything in the article. True to form, this was even a repost.
analyst74 5y ago
From micro economic levels, it makes sense, short term rental in many cases are more lucrative, thus prevalence of AirBnB can push out long term residents. But from a macro level, that would mean the city is getting more tourists, more business and job opportunities for its residents, ultimately leading to a more prosperous populace, right? Or are there other forces at play preventing locals from benefiting from more tourism?
- colechristensen 5y ago
  People earning money by collecting rent on real estate really aren’t contributing much of anything to anybody, more of a tax on the rest of us by directly taking our income or raising prices on the real estate which will do so otherwise.
  - dionidium 5y ago
    I’ve rented many apartments and I perceive the transaction to have been mutually beneficial in every case.
    - colechristensen 5y ago
      Did you believe it was a fair price? As though the amount of work you were doing and the quality of it matched the amount of "work" you were paying for?
      - Spivak 5y ago
        Not the parent but yes? I mean I basically don't even bother with hotels anymore when I travel. My experience with Airbnb's and the like has been consistently better. You get a whole apartment or house, it's cheaper, the person renting actually gives a shit about the experience, you get appliances, a real kitchen, not shitty Wi-Fi, drinks and snacks that aren't $7 charged to the room. Like it's hard to argue it's not a fair price when it's better and cheaper than the alternatives.
      - deleted 5y ago
jwilber 5y ago
As this topic becomes more and more mainstream, I look forward to the numerous Twitter posts sure to come from Airbnb employees about the taxing social implications that come with working at Airbnb, how it weighs on their conscious, and and their ultimate decision to follow what’s right and leave. But only after their RSU’s have vested, of course. More seriously, I’ve been very disappointed with Airbnb recently. I spent the last two weeks in Manhattan. Every night at the radio city apartments/hotel (a nice, if average, hotel right near Times Square, 49th x 7th) was cheaper than all surrounding Airbnb’s, with the exception of one, which for several days listed cheaper at $90/night. As luck would have it, that Airbnb was infested with bedbugs, and I got a full refund from Airbnb after documenting the photos with proof. Years ago, it used to be both cheaper and often higher quality to book stays via Airbnb. Nowadays, the majority that are priced reasonably (ie within $100 of local hotels) feel like high-priced hostels. Another issue: each listing will almost always include an exorbitant cleaning fee, to the tune of 20-X% of the actual listing (I saw multiple rooms advertised around $150-200 with cleaning fees of $100). In my opinion, Airbnb came to disrupt the hotel market, but hotels have caught up, and now they’re just disrupting communities.
- js2 5y ago
  > how it weighs on their conscious conscience.
  - yCombLinks 5y ago
    Couscous
- wwweston 5y ago
  I’m not surprised that cleaning fees are $100 — that’s on the order of something I might expect for the travel+labor time involved. I am surprised that the market bears it for short stays.
- ardit33 5y ago
  Cleaning a 1bdr. apt, is about 80-100 in NYC. Hotels have dedicated staff, that makes it economically cheap/feasible. AirBnb cleaning makes sense if you stay for a whole week, or more, and that fee gets amortized, otherwise, for short term stays, Airbnb is not cost effective.
renewiltord 5y ago
Non-stationary correlation in https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0253315#sec012 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourn... It's probably spurious.
nell 5y ago
Communities - especially urban, should only allow short-term rentals if hosts stay onsite.
toptal 5y ago
So says the PR companies that the hotel industry hired to write this story.
ojosilva 5y ago
As a user I love renting on these platforms, specially big city rentals. I'm sure airbnb style rentals contribute positively to the host city besides the sheer number of tourists. That includes the services economy surrounding rentals, which produce jobs in otherwise run-down places. Also newer tourist profiles, including long-haulers that engage differently with the city, from educational, to remote workers to health services patients. The whole change of dynamics has had a positive impact on tourism never seen before in places like Madrid, Oslo or Buenos Aires. It brings a fresh appeal to the old "life in the city" that is ephemeral yet profound and exciting. As a resident I despise rentals. I want them away from my neighborhood. I'm glad cities like Barcelona limit them, but I believe they should be, instead, completely eradicated from central or dense neighborhoods and be taken, if anywhere, to specific, well researched into, suburbs that could actually get a boost from the rental economy. That is, given such "suburban rental benefit" concept even exists... Otherwise, this fantastic hack into the hotel industry just rips too deep too fast into the delicate, slowly threaded fabric of our tightly knit neighborhoods.
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mupuff1234 5y ago
I'm really hoping that at some point a "conscientious" airbnb competitor would appear. Maybe something implementing a few basic (naive?) rules: 1. A property cannot be listed for more than 120 days a year.' 2. One cannot list more than 2 properties. So limiting to people that aren't actually making a business out of bnb's.
- paxys 5y ago
  This won't happen because the natural evolution of every such company is to facilitate professionals and businesses, since that is where the money is. Uber & Lyft started off by saying they aren't meant for professional drivers, just folks looking to "rideshare" in their free time. Etsy was for creative people sitting at home making some crafts as a hobby. Airbnb was for people who wanted to make some extra money by renting out a couch or spare room in their house for the night.
  - prawn 5y ago
    Best example to me was eBay going from people selling used things to being almost entirely made up of storefronts. In Australia, Gumtree became popular as people actually selling used things, and then eBay bought them (I think they've sold it since). Another example is Facebook. All about people and communities, and now a huge portion of it is business page management and advertising.
- dorchadas 5y ago
  Hell, to satisfy me all they'd have to do is prove it's an actual BnB-type experience. Basically, prove the host lives on the property and it's either extra bedroom(s) or an ADU.
- jareklupinski 5y ago
  couchsurfing was fun for a while turns out the problem was money all along
peanut_worm 5y ago
I understand the hate for AirBnB but when I didn’t have money it was really the only affordable way to travel. I don’t think I would’ve been able to afford my best vacations without it.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Airbnb was always going to exist post internet (in some name or other). People like renting their flats, people like not staying in motels, etc. There will always be abusers in any system that substantially relies on good will. Go after the abuses.
dontbeabill 5y ago
shocking: airbnb says study was flawed. fuck airbnb.
dontbeabill 5y ago
in hawaii, 30 day minimum are REQUIRED. my friend has a unit and asked airbnb how to “enforce the 30 day minimum which is law”. Airbnb support said there is no way for them to enforce this and just ignore it and rent anyway. Ie, they KNOW the local laws and either ignore them, or sue the small cities with no legal budget. Airbnb/VRBO ruin every good neighborhood that exists.
m1117 5y ago
I blame Airbnb in everything. Crime rates, sure. Homeless people, sure. Corruption in the government, def airbnb. Opioids, airbnb. (not really, I think that even though crime rates are correlated, they also should be handled by local government, culture, police and airbnb can't take the whole burden of blame. There're criminals, dumb people etc etc, and as a society we need to improve it)
porknubbins 5y ago
This is kind of sad but very true from my experience. We knew most or all our neighbors but then my street got an Airbnb house and all sorts of people come by including a family reunion, parties, equipment dealer with trailer etc. Maybe unrelated but crime has increased (car breaking and catalytic converter thefts are all I know) and its hard to tell who lives on the street just due to the traffic.
diognesofsinope 5y ago
First, getting into really major concerns, this paper suffers from some serious potential for omitted variable bias. The goal of this study is to find the causal effect or treatment effect of Airbnb on violent crime: "This study tested the hypothesis that the arrival and growth of Airbnb, or home-sharing platforms in general, may increase crime and disorder in neighborhoods..." In other words, we want to know what would happen to violence if we could push a lever and increase or decrease Airbnb directly. A regression of violence on Airbnb tells us how violence tends to change with changes in Airbnb in the data. If there's some other factor that affects both Airbnb and violence (or affects one and is affected by the other), then the regression is going to find the mismash of the causal effect of Airbnb and the causal effect of that other factor and put it all on Airbnb. This is especially problematic because the authors find changes in Airbnb penetration are correlated with census tract characteristics: For Airbnb density (Fig 3a), we see that census tracts in the urban center (northeast on the map) show relatively high Airbnb presence from the beginning, but that in recent years the tracts with the highest level of Airbnb penetration emanate further out into surrounding, more residential neighborhoods. This can be addressed by controlling for the confounding factor. Alternatively, we can look at a specific scenario where Airbnb penetration changed for reasons that almost certainly couldn't affect violence, and use that variation to find out how violence responds to Airbnb penetration. Unfortunately, the paper only controlled for median income in the primary specification and percentage of black/Hispanic residents and homeownership rates in the robustness check (these additional controls are not in the database). This paper simply does not do enough to eliminate potential other explanations for why Airbnb penetration may be correlated with violence in a census tract without causing it. I'm not that familiar with the crime literature, but from a very brief look at the abstract of one random paper, factors like economic inequality, poverty rates, population density, and divorce rates could predict violent crime. All of these could affect Airbnb penetration, such as through property prices (another potential confounding variable) or through amenities for tourists. For example, increases in population density could both increase crime and increase Airbnb penetration (more amenities or maybe it's easier to buy new houses than existing houses). Or maybe Airbnb penetration increases more in areas with higher income inequality because there are cheap units near areas with rich amenities, and it's higher income inequality driving crime and Airbnb penetration. It could even be something unrelated to Airbnb that just so happened to affect urban and residential areas differently over these years. For example, maybe these regions had different changes in police presence during that time. Second, another major concern is the potential nonstationarity in violent crime and Airbnb penetration. Airbnb has a very clear trend of increasing over time, as shown in Figure 1 of the paper. You can imagine violent crime also having a very clear time trend where this year's value depends heavily on last year's value. Controlling for year and neighborhood fixed effects, both a regression of violence and Airbnb penetration on its lagged (prior-year) value finds a coefficient of roughly 1, which indicates the presence of a time trend (technically you need a coefficient greater than or equal to 1, but coefficients close to 1 also produce similar problems with short time series like this one). When you regress any non-stationary data series on another, you will always find a strong relationship between the two. That's true even with non-sensical relationships like GDP in the US and total recorded rainfall in Cambodia since Jan 1, 1900. You can think of time as the confounder which affects both series. Here, time is increasing both Airbnb penetration and violence. Even if they have nothing to do with each other, a regression will find a strong correlation between the two. To avoid spurious correlations due to time trends, the most common way is to remove the time trend by looking at the change in the variables rather than their absolute values. That cancels out the time trend and allows for proper inference. This is why studies in finance usually look at returns (changes in values) rather than asset values. If we do that for this data, we again find the coefficient on Airbnb penetration becomes insignificant. To conclude, the very least we can say about the results of this paper is that it is incomplete. Plenty of standard controls for crime are not included, which weakens the ability of the paper to argue Airbnb causally leads to more violence. Further, the authors did not properly handle the presence of non-stationary data.
lhorie 5y ago
Sigh. This appears to be one of those cases of media exaggeration for eyeballs. The study says: > the effect on violence was only consistent visible for the measure of Airbnb penetration–or the extent to which buildings in the neighborhood have one or more listings (and for the measure of density, or the listings per household in the two-year lags). It was never present for overall usage, or the estimated quantity of Airbnb guests And > A second and related concern could be the potential bias due to omitted variables. Though the DID models control for the initial conditions of neighborhoods, they do not necessarily control for trends in these variables that parallel the increases in both Airbnb presence and crime. For example, there is some evidence that gentrifying neighborhoods experience increases in certain types of crime And > we have tested this hypothesis in a single city So there's apparently a correlation between a single metric and a single class of crime in a single city, and there's a multi-year delay in the effect. The author speculates that erosion of social fabric is the culprit, but doesn't actually back this theory up with either data or references. One would at least expect some references to some other study about the correlations on emigration and violence (my two cents here is that it feels more likely that the former is caused by the latter, if a correlation exists at all). They even acknowledge that the correlation could be due to a factor that isn't being accounted for. But then the article writer drops all nuance and blasts a title pegging blame squarely on AirBnB, even though it isn't even established that correlation is consistently true everywhere, let alone causation. I mean, yeah, I get that people don't like predatory real estate renting, and want to hear that there's a neatly convenient evil entity to blame, but come on now.
- deleted 5y ago
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- poormathskills 5y ago
  I agree that it seems to be a pretty poor paper. >They even acknowledge that the correlation could be due to a factor that isn't being accounted for. Related to this, they're performing a regression between Airbnb prevalence and crime, but they only control for a single variable: income[0]. They look at others in a robustness check, but a single control variable practically screams p-hacking. They also don't address the fact that both Airbnb prevalence and crime are nonstationary[1]. Regressing two nonstationary time series results in a nonsense coefficient[2]. Two totally unrelated time series will have a high coefficient if both exhibit consistent trends. [0] "We report the results based on using income as the main tract-level control variable" [1] They are consistent trends over time, see https://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/07/stationary.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/07/stationary.... [2] https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/94723/using-non-stationary-time-series-data-in-ols-regression https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/94723/using-non-st...
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NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
As AirBnB has impact on well establish Hotel business what is likelihood that this study and later laws are sponsored by loosing party? It is not uncommon for them to lobby to pass additional laws so they can prevent further loses/increase revenue.
adminscoffee 5y ago
i can believe it because anxiety can do some strange things to people, stranger danger can put people in fight mode

We're considering an Airbnb ordinance where I live. A major motivating factor is that Airbnbs are used frequently here to stage parties. It's difficult for homeowners to effectively police their properties for these (part of the reason they're Airbnb'ing them is that they're not living in the immediate vicinity).

zain 5y ago
Did you know Airbnb has a full ban on parties? If you're a neighbor and you find a party, you can call Airbnb and have it dealt with: https://www.airbnb.com/neighbors https://www.airbnb.com/neighbors
- tptacek 5y ago
  I'm sure they have full bans on all sorts of abuse. I'm glad they have a web page for people to find, but that's obviously not a solution to the problem. The municipality I live in does not give a single fuck about Airbnb's "Neighborhood Support Team". They're simply going to license Airbnb rentals, and permanently revoke the licenses of any resident who doesn't meet an onerous (and likely to become more onerous) set of criteria set out in the ordinance. Neighbors hate Airbnbs, and usually with good reason. It doesn't help Airbnb that they have irritated basically every faction of our board. The more conservative board members are responsive to resident complaints about nuisances and safety. The lefty board members are responsive to concerns about Airbnb displacing housing stock. Restrictions make everyone on the board happy. I don't have a dog in the fight (I've enjoyed several Airbnb stays) but I'm not going to be sad when this happens in the next couple months. Abuses stemming from people (and companies) turning single-family houses into unlicensed hotels aren't tech company tech support problems.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

In the book "Evicted" by Matthew Desmond he discusses how high turnover in residents negatively affects a neighborhood's sense of community. The book is insightful. Depressing but still insightful. https://www.evictedbook.com/ https://www.evictedbook.com/ Editorial: This is one of things that led me to conclude that poverty is more than a financial condition. In fact, more and more I believe that poverty is a symptom of other "conditions." Conditions that aggregate to manifest and perpetuate poverty.

LatteLazy 5y ago

Researchers find correlation assume causation...

agallant 5y ago
We use difference-in-difference models (Eq (1)) to test whether a rise in the prevalence of Airbnb in a census tract in one year predicts increases in crime and disorder in the following year. ... The models control for tract-level and year fixed effects. In order to make the parameter estimates that follow more interpretable, we note that the average census tract in the average year experienced 11.32 events of private conflict, 7.68 events of public social disorder, and 28.58 events of public violence per 1,000 residents. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0253315#sec004 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourn... I've not dug into the study enough to vouch for its quality as a whole - but it's clear the researchers are plenty aware of the differences between correlation and causation and are at least attempting to address them. This is actually often the case with scientific papers, even if it's lost in the media coverage of them.
- gowld 5y ago
  Not really. The article cites wild speculation made by the study authors: "The large-scale conversion of housing units into short-term rentals undermines a neighborhood’s social organization, and in turn its natural ability...to counteract and discourage crime," and the research reeks of p-hacking and non-reproducibility: Spain: >"It encourages the concentration of tourists who, due to their characteristics, are suitable targets for victimisation," Maldonado-Guzmán said. but in Boston: > The researchers found that there was a positive correlation between higher penetration of Airbnb properties in an area – for example buildings containing multiple Airbnb lets – and a rise in violence. However, crime types associated with rowdy visitors, like drunkenness and noise complaints, as well as private conflicts, did not increase. > "It's not the number of Airbnb tourists who stay in a neighborhood that causes an increase in criminal activities," said Professor Babak Heydari from Northeastern University.
  - 5y ago

handmodel 5y ago

The article doesn't mention it - and I can't find it anywhere - but in any neighborhood what is the highest proportion of units that are short-term rentals. Five percent? Ten percent in the super touristy areas? I have no idea and even before the other flaws in the study I am skeptical than anything short of 20% would make an impact on any major attribute of an area. I see one stat in the paper that "40% of buildings had airbnb listings in some tracts" but if the buildings had 10 units in them each this still may mean a relatively small number of total listings were from Airbnbs. In fact, even in Boston there are some tracts where I suppose that the average building must have 30+ units which would meant that if 60% of buildings had no listing the total percentage of listings that are Airbnbs is relatively small. >higher levels of violent crime did not appear immediately after Airbnb listings became available to tourists, but rather developed over the course of several years, the researchers said. Alternative theory. Every area had some Airbnbs. In neighborhoods that were being wealthier/more popular/had more jobs decided it was easier to just do long-term rentals. In areas where landlords had trouble renting them out to anyone long-term (because locals know if a neighborhood is nice or not) they turned more units into Airbnbs because outsiders don't know/don't care.

TroisM 5y ago
> but in any neighborhood what is the highest proportion of units that are short-term rentals. I have seen areas close to 100%... in Hollywood, FL (not Airbnb though...)
tcoff91 5y ago
My neighborhood has got to be at least 33% vacation rentals, with a few streets being above 50%.
jimmygrapes 5y ago
Preface: this is just my opinion at this moment. I feel like trying to attribute specific numbers to the article's phenomenon is sort of a waste. It really only takes one individual who is significantly disruptive to change the perception of trust and safety in any given region. The only limit (where percentages and such start creeping in) is in the physical reach that individual has. Anybody who has lived in the same neighborhood as "that guy" knows this to be true. When "that guy" becomes more, the physical area may not change, but the level of trust and safety might, and that itself can propagate to other areas through gossip, news coverage, etc. I don't have much of a point, I just wanted to say that the upper limit of "number of people required to make a place feel unsafe" is exactly one.

timwaagh 5y ago

Maybe criminals like staying at Airbnb. They have the cash after all and Airbnb can easily be used to hide ones identity.

dntrkv 5y ago
They specifically point out the increase in crime is not from the Airbnb tourists.
- timwaagh 5y ago
  I read that a bit differently. They noted that typical tourism related crimes did not usually increase but other crime did.
NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
Have you ever used AirBnb? It is not possible to be anonymous in AirBnB, to rent a flat they will ask you for multiple ID documents so they could confirm who you are, furthermore there is scoring system so anything fishy about guest or host will stay in the permanent record. I have used AirBnb a lot across the world, and overall I have not had any significantly bad experience.
- timwaagh 5y ago
  I used to host on there. A lot of guests did not use their own account. Of one such person I later found out he sold stolen watches. But I suppose uploading a fake id wouldn't be impossible either. Airbnb primarily relies on its review system to ban people. this unfortunately has nothing to do with what you do for a living (instead it's determined by the level of luxury you provide as host and/or whether you damage the place as a guest).

user3939382 5y ago

Sounds like good material for this website: https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

11thEarlOfMar 5y ago

This was recently discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27859115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27859115

DoubleDerper 5y ago

The AirBnb "effect" has directly led to increased home prices. A home turning a profit thus becomes more important than how its guests impact a neighborhood and community. Ignoring or spinning the social costs is a primary goal of Airbnb's PR machine. It has made many neighborhoods more transitory (i.e. less homesteading, more short term rentals). Acknowledge the social costs to community and it's not surprising to read that violent crime rates are trending up where AirBnbs thrive.

trident5000 5y ago
We had anti-hoarding measures on masks but dont seem to have them on homes. Every additional income property you own (and used as such) should have an escalating hoarding penalty.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  These penalties are never high enough to actually discourage the behavior. It's better to just ban accumulating more than X homes, where X could be as low as 1.
  - trident5000 5y ago
    Im good with that idea on investment properties. Though I have no issue with people having vacation homes. Theres a natural limit to how many vacation homes someone can have without a revenue source on the asset.
    - vetinari 5y ago
      And that limit is enforced by upkeep costs. Owning homes isn't free, you know. It is a physically depreciating asset, that you have to take care of, whether you use it actively or not. Doing so costs money, so depth of your wallet puts a firm limit on the amount of properties you are capable to take care of.
      - 5y ago

hamburgerwah 5y ago

This is similar to how most murders in the US were caused by Internet Explorer usage: https://i.redd.it/4h8emlr5z3c41.jpg https://i.redd.it/4h8emlr5z3c41.jpg

cletus 5y ago

A common quote on HN (and one that I firmly believe in) is: > It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. This so applies to AirBnB. It's not salary per se but those that benefit by renting out units or those for whom this has saved them money I've found typically get so defensive about AirBnB to the point of calling detractors NIMBYists and the like. I've long thought that AirBnB allows people to profit off something that others around them bear the negative externalities from but I think it's even worse than I would've pegged it. Clear negatives: 1. Reduces housing supply; 2. Creates safety problems; 3. Creates nuisance problems; and 4. Brings temporary residents into neighbourhoods that have no tie to that neighbourhood. To be clear, I don't have a problem with people renting out rooms or an ADU on their property. Most cities don't either. But AirBnB is clearly used to create illegal hotels and that's the problem.

virtue3 5y ago
I have 100% issue with people turning their properties in SF into airbnb hotels. You're just skirting the fucking law at that point. The area was zoned for -HOUSING- not a hotel. I've used airbnb a lot in the past, but now that regulators have gotten a hold of it; it's basically a barely cheaper hotel with a lot more ??? on whether or not the place is good and the hosts live up to their reviews.
elzbardico 5y ago
I agree with all of your points, at least at some point. This doesn’t mean I should call treat this “study” as science, as it is not.
random314 5y ago
I have neither rented or rented out an Airbnb. However, I see no problem with a homeowner renting out his home for short periods. Everything we do has negative externalities, including driving a car. I don't see how Airbnb's are considered so bad. Moreover this is a correlation study in one city. The title implies a causal analysis which this is not. Pretty easy to phack your way to whatever conclusion you want using correlations. Moreover what is the magnitude of increase? From 0.0001% to 0.001% . The article should show some absolute counts.

sobellian 5y ago

This paper has some big flaws. See https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/olwous https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/olwous for an in-depth critique.

millimeterman 5y ago
/r/badeconomics is a shockingly sane place considering the sad state of most of Reddit (and HN for that matter). It always disappoints me to see how many people have extremely strong opinions on topics they know nothing about.
- alex_smart 5y ago
  On the other hand, this thread was for me suprisingly "reddit-like". A poor quality article with a provocative title with heavily upvotes followed by a bunch of comments simply talking about the title based on their own personal experiences rather than anything in the article. True to form, this was even a repost.

analyst74 5y ago

From micro economic levels, it makes sense, short term rental in many cases are more lucrative, thus prevalence of AirBnB can push out long term residents. But from a macro level, that would mean the city is getting more tourists, more business and job opportunities for its residents, ultimately leading to a more prosperous populace, right? Or are there other forces at play preventing locals from benefiting from more tourism?

colechristensen 5y ago
People earning money by collecting rent on real estate really aren’t contributing much of anything to anybody, more of a tax on the rest of us by directly taking our income or raising prices on the real estate which will do so otherwise.
- dionidium 5y ago
  I’ve rented many apartments and I perceive the transaction to have been mutually beneficial in every case.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Did you believe it was a fair price? As though the amount of work you were doing and the quality of it matched the amount of "work" you were paying for?
    - Spivak 5y ago
      Not the parent but yes? I mean I basically don't even bother with hotels anymore when I travel. My experience with Airbnb's and the like has been consistently better. You get a whole apartment or house, it's cheaper, the person renting actually gives a shit about the experience, you get appliances, a real kitchen, not shitty Wi-Fi, drinks and snacks that aren't $7 charged to the room. Like it's hard to argue it's not a fair price when it's better and cheaper than the alternatives.
    - deleted 5y ago

jwilber 5y ago

As this topic becomes more and more mainstream, I look forward to the numerous Twitter posts sure to come from Airbnb employees about the taxing social implications that come with working at Airbnb, how it weighs on their conscious, and and their ultimate decision to follow what’s right and leave. But only after their RSU’s have vested, of course. More seriously, I’ve been very disappointed with Airbnb recently. I spent the last two weeks in Manhattan. Every night at the radio city apartments/hotel (a nice, if average, hotel right near Times Square, 49th x 7th) was cheaper than all surrounding Airbnb’s, with the exception of one, which for several days listed cheaper at $90/night. As luck would have it, that Airbnb was infested with bedbugs, and I got a full refund from Airbnb after documenting the photos with proof. Years ago, it used to be both cheaper and often higher quality to book stays via Airbnb. Nowadays, the majority that are priced reasonably (ie within $100 of local hotels) feel like high-priced hostels. Another issue: each listing will almost always include an exorbitant cleaning fee, to the tune of 20-X% of the actual listing (I saw multiple rooms advertised around $150-200 with cleaning fees of $100). In my opinion, Airbnb came to disrupt the hotel market, but hotels have caught up, and now they’re just disrupting communities.

js2 5y ago
> how it weighs on their conscious conscience.
- yCombLinks 5y ago
  Couscous
wwweston 5y ago
I’m not surprised that cleaning fees are $100 — that’s on the order of something I might expect for the travel+labor time involved. I am surprised that the market bears it for short stays.
ardit33 5y ago
Cleaning a 1bdr. apt, is about 80-100 in NYC. Hotels have dedicated staff, that makes it economically cheap/feasible. AirBnb cleaning makes sense if you stay for a whole week, or more, and that fee gets amortized, otherwise, for short term stays, Airbnb is not cost effective.

renewiltord 5y ago

Non-stationary correlation in https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0253315#sec012 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourn... It's probably spurious.

nell 5y ago

Communities - especially urban, should only allow short-term rentals if hosts stay onsite.

toptal 5y ago

So says the PR companies that the hotel industry hired to write this story.

ojosilva 5y ago

As a user I love renting on these platforms, specially big city rentals. I'm sure airbnb style rentals contribute positively to the host city besides the sheer number of tourists. That includes the services economy surrounding rentals, which produce jobs in otherwise run-down places. Also newer tourist profiles, including long-haulers that engage differently with the city, from educational, to remote workers to health services patients. The whole change of dynamics has had a positive impact on tourism never seen before in places like Madrid, Oslo or Buenos Aires. It brings a fresh appeal to the old "life in the city" that is ephemeral yet profound and exciting. As a resident I despise rentals. I want them away from my neighborhood. I'm glad cities like Barcelona limit them, but I believe they should be, instead, completely eradicated from central or dense neighborhoods and be taken, if anywhere, to specific, well researched into, suburbs that could actually get a boost from the rental economy. That is, given such "suburban rental benefit" concept even exists... Otherwise, this fantastic hack into the hotel industry just rips too deep too fast into the delicate, slowly threaded fabric of our tightly knit neighborhoods.

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mupuff1234 5y ago

I'm really hoping that at some point a "conscientious" airbnb competitor would appear. Maybe something implementing a few basic (naive?) rules: 1. A property cannot be listed for more than 120 days a year.' 2. One cannot list more than 2 properties. So limiting to people that aren't actually making a business out of bnb's.

paxys 5y ago
This won't happen because the natural evolution of every such company is to facilitate professionals and businesses, since that is where the money is. Uber & Lyft started off by saying they aren't meant for professional drivers, just folks looking to "rideshare" in their free time. Etsy was for creative people sitting at home making some crafts as a hobby. Airbnb was for people who wanted to make some extra money by renting out a couch or spare room in their house for the night.
- prawn 5y ago
  Best example to me was eBay going from people selling used things to being almost entirely made up of storefronts. In Australia, Gumtree became popular as people actually selling used things, and then eBay bought them (I think they've sold it since). Another example is Facebook. All about people and communities, and now a huge portion of it is business page management and advertising.
dorchadas 5y ago
Hell, to satisfy me all they'd have to do is prove it's an actual BnB-type experience. Basically, prove the host lives on the property and it's either extra bedroom(s) or an ADU.
jareklupinski 5y ago
couchsurfing was fun for a while turns out the problem was money all along

peanut_worm 5y ago

I understand the hate for AirBnB but when I didn’t have money it was really the only affordable way to travel. I don’t think I would’ve been able to afford my best vacations without it.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Airbnb was always going to exist post internet (in some name or other). People like renting their flats, people like not staying in motels, etc. There will always be abusers in any system that substantially relies on good will. Go after the abuses.

dontbeabill 5y ago

shocking: airbnb says study was flawed. fuck airbnb.

dontbeabill 5y ago

in hawaii, 30 day minimum are REQUIRED. my friend has a unit and asked airbnb how to “enforce the 30 day minimum which is law”. Airbnb support said there is no way for them to enforce this and just ignore it and rent anyway. Ie, they KNOW the local laws and either ignore them, or sue the small cities with no legal budget. Airbnb/VRBO ruin every good neighborhood that exists.

m1117 5y ago

I blame Airbnb in everything. Crime rates, sure. Homeless people, sure. Corruption in the government, def airbnb. Opioids, airbnb. (not really, I think that even though crime rates are correlated, they also should be handled by local government, culture, police and airbnb can't take the whole burden of blame. There're criminals, dumb people etc etc, and as a society we need to improve it)

porknubbins 5y ago

This is kind of sad but very true from my experience. We knew most or all our neighbors but then my street got an Airbnb house and all sorts of people come by including a family reunion, parties, equipment dealer with trailer etc. Maybe unrelated but crime has increased (car breaking and catalytic converter thefts are all I know) and its hard to tell who lives on the street just due to the traffic.

diognesofsinope 5y ago

First, getting into really major concerns, this paper suffers from some serious potential for omitted variable bias. The goal of this study is to find the causal effect or treatment effect of Airbnb on violent crime: "This study tested the hypothesis that the arrival and growth of Airbnb, or home-sharing platforms in general, may increase crime and disorder in neighborhoods..." In other words, we want to know what would happen to violence if we could push a lever and increase or decrease Airbnb directly. A regression of violence on Airbnb tells us how violence tends to change with changes in Airbnb in the data. If there's some other factor that affects both Airbnb and violence (or affects one and is affected by the other), then the regression is going to find the mismash of the causal effect of Airbnb and the causal effect of that other factor and put it all on Airbnb. This is especially problematic because the authors find changes in Airbnb penetration are correlated with census tract characteristics: For Airbnb density (Fig 3a), we see that census tracts in the urban center (northeast on the map) show relatively high Airbnb presence from the beginning, but that in recent years the tracts with the highest level of Airbnb penetration emanate further out into surrounding, more residential neighborhoods. This can be addressed by controlling for the confounding factor. Alternatively, we can look at a specific scenario where Airbnb penetration changed for reasons that almost certainly couldn't affect violence, and use that variation to find out how violence responds to Airbnb penetration. Unfortunately, the paper only controlled for median income in the primary specification and percentage of black/Hispanic residents and homeownership rates in the robustness check (these additional controls are not in the database). This paper simply does not do enough to eliminate potential other explanations for why Airbnb penetration may be correlated with violence in a census tract without causing it. I'm not that familiar with the crime literature, but from a very brief look at the abstract of one random paper, factors like economic inequality, poverty rates, population density, and divorce rates could predict violent crime. All of these could affect Airbnb penetration, such as through property prices (another potential confounding variable) or through amenities for tourists. For example, increases in population density could both increase crime and increase Airbnb penetration (more amenities or maybe it's easier to buy new houses than existing houses). Or maybe Airbnb penetration increases more in areas with higher income inequality because there are cheap units near areas with rich amenities, and it's higher income inequality driving crime and Airbnb penetration. It could even be something unrelated to Airbnb that just so happened to affect urban and residential areas differently over these years. For example, maybe these regions had different changes in police presence during that time. Second, another major concern is the potential nonstationarity in violent crime and Airbnb penetration. Airbnb has a very clear trend of increasing over time, as shown in Figure 1 of the paper. You can imagine violent crime also having a very clear time trend where this year's value depends heavily on last year's value. Controlling for year and neighborhood fixed effects, both a regression of violence and Airbnb penetration on its lagged (prior-year) value finds a coefficient of roughly 1, which indicates the presence of a time trend (technically you need a coefficient greater than or equal to 1, but coefficients close to 1 also produce similar problems with short time series like this one). When you regress any non-stationary data series on another, you will always find a strong relationship between the two. That's true even with non-sensical relationships like GDP in the US and total recorded rainfall in Cambodia since Jan 1, 1900. You can think of time as the confounder which affects both series. Here, time is increasing both Airbnb penetration and violence. Even if they have nothing to do with each other, a regression will find a strong correlation between the two. To avoid spurious correlations due to time trends, the most common way is to remove the time trend by looking at the change in the variables rather than their absolute values. That cancels out the time trend and allows for proper inference. This is why studies in finance usually look at returns (changes in values) rather than asset values. If we do that for this data, we again find the coefficient on Airbnb penetration becomes insignificant. To conclude, the very least we can say about the results of this paper is that it is incomplete. Plenty of standard controls for crime are not included, which weakens the ability of the paper to argue Airbnb causally leads to more violence. Further, the authors did not properly handle the presence of non-stationary data.

lhorie 5y ago

Sigh. This appears to be one of those cases of media exaggeration for eyeballs. The study says: > the effect on violence was only consistent visible for the measure of Airbnb penetration–or the extent to which buildings in the neighborhood have one or more listings (and for the measure of density, or the listings per household in the two-year lags). It was never present for overall usage, or the estimated quantity of Airbnb guests And > A second and related concern could be the potential bias due to omitted variables. Though the DID models control for the initial conditions of neighborhoods, they do not necessarily control for trends in these variables that parallel the increases in both Airbnb presence and crime. For example, there is some evidence that gentrifying neighborhoods experience increases in certain types of crime And > we have tested this hypothesis in a single city So there's apparently a correlation between a single metric and a single class of crime in a single city, and there's a multi-year delay in the effect. The author speculates that erosion of social fabric is the culprit, but doesn't actually back this theory up with either data or references. One would at least expect some references to some other study about the correlations on emigration and violence (my two cents here is that it feels more likely that the former is caused by the latter, if a correlation exists at all). They even acknowledge that the correlation could be due to a factor that isn't being accounted for. But then the article writer drops all nuance and blasts a title pegging blame squarely on AirBnB, even though it isn't even established that correlation is consistently true everywhere, let alone causation. I mean, yeah, I get that people don't like predatory real estate renting, and want to hear that there's a neatly convenient evil entity to blame, but come on now.

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poormathskills 5y ago
I agree that it seems to be a pretty poor paper. >They even acknowledge that the correlation could be due to a factor that isn't being accounted for. Related to this, they're performing a regression between Airbnb prevalence and crime, but they only control for a single variable: income[0]. They look at others in a robustness check, but a single control variable practically screams p-hacking. They also don't address the fact that both Airbnb prevalence and crime are nonstationary[1]. Regressing two nonstationary time series results in a nonsense coefficient[2]. Two totally unrelated time series will have a high coefficient if both exhibit consistent trends. [0] "We report the results based on using income as the main tract-level control variable" [1] They are consistent trends over time, see https://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/07/stationary.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/07/stationary.... [2] https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/94723/using-non-stationary-time-series-data-in-ols-regression https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/94723/using-non-st...

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NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago

As AirBnB has impact on well establish Hotel business what is likelihood that this study and later laws are sponsored by loosing party? It is not uncommon for them to lobby to pass additional laws so they can prevent further loses/increase revenue.

adminscoffee 5y ago

i can believe it because anxiety can do some strange things to people, stranger danger can put people in fight mode