5 ms·

> Prohibition never works, and piracy is a reflection of an unmet need. Banning things merely airs out open wounds, and leads to grey-markets such as shady uber

> Prohibition never works, and piracy is a reflection of an unmet need. Banning things merely airs out open wounds, and leads to grey-markets such as shady uber/airbnb equivalents within the city. What do you mean by "works"? Yes, grey markets will pop up, but if Portugal banned AirBnB style renting that the market for that housing wouldn't shrink? It seems to me that prohibition might be a useful tool in a more comprehensive set of policies to address the problem.

pjmlp 4y ago
Nowadays people offering AirBnB rentals have to register themselves or they will be fined. How much control is happening, no idea, probably none as usual.
- jhugo 4y ago
  This is the type of thing that controlling is very difficult and thus expensive. As a result it's done at a pretty minimal level everywhere.
  - intothemild 4y ago
    The thing is... it's not actually. If you made a law to force AirBnB to share data on who is making the listing with the government, you have your register of who to tax/etc. You could also make laws to limit the number of properties per person, and if you're even smarter, you could use that in conjunction with a map of relationships between people, so you could limit the number of people putting listings in their family members names to get around any limitations. AirBnB has the data to assist governments.
    - jhugo 4y ago
      > If you made a law to force AirBnB to share data on who is making the listing with the government, you have your register of who to tax/etc. Airbnb will probably follow your law, but other platforms that do not will flourish. They will be difficult to regulate, given that they won't be in your jurisdiction. > You could also make laws to limit the number of properties per person. Many laws already exist that give unfavourable tax treatment to second and subsequent properties. They are widely avoided through family members and legal entity structures and a hand-wavy "map of relationships between people" isn't going to magically fix that. This would also have a fairly obvious negative effect: it would artificially limit supply in the rental market, driving up prices. A person who could have invested in multiple properties and supplied them to the rental market will instead supply at most one, and invest the rest of their money elsewhere. There isn't some nefarious conspiracy preventing effective regulation in this area. It's just a legitimately hard problem.
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        Well, it doesn't help that many inspectors actually have to use public transports and be paid later from their travel expenses, so their control area is anyway minimal. At least that is how remember how bad it used to be.
    - zo1 4y ago
      As much as your ideas would work, I don't want to live in the world that you are envisioning in your brain.
intothemild 4y ago
I wish more cities would ban or limit AirBnB. Take Amsterdam for example. A good decade ago, it was crowded in the tourism months (summer), but not too bad. Now it's crowded in the off season too, and during the summer months even more so, to the point where walking around is really hard. The mayor seems to constantly want to get rid of cannabis, which won't solve the problem, the issue isn't the weed tourism... it's the unfettered tourism. These things can be controlled, you can control how much tourists you have by limiting the amount of hotels you have in your city. But with AirBnB you lose all control on how many tourists.
- tbdenney 4y ago
  AirBnB already is limited in Amsterdam: "According to Dutch regulations, you can only rent out your entire home in Amsterdam for a maximum of 30 nights per year, unless you have a specific permit that allows you to rent out your home for more nights, such as a short term stay license." https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/860/amsterdam https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/860/amsterdam
  - Yaa101 4y ago
    But still the problems are not solved, it is not only airbnb, like many places we are in the endgame of neoliberalism which is the wholesale of other peoples property to rich people by the corrupt political class.
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    Lived in Amsterdam a few years back, the AirBNBs made it freaking torture during summer. The old wooden buildings where one could hear everything, people arriving and talking loudly in the stairwells then banging their suitcases up the stairs etc. We left, couldn't deal wit it.
    - ricardobayes 4y ago
      I feel your pain, it's definitely a big problem in many places in Europe. Bad construction + overcrowded = Noisy. That said I grew up in a concrete high-rise 'high density' building in Eastern Europe, and I can't recall that I ever heard any neighbor.

pjmlp 4y ago

Nowadays people offering AirBnB rentals have to register themselves or they will be fined. How much control is happening, no idea, probably none as usual.

jhugo 4y ago
This is the type of thing that controlling is very difficult and thus expensive. As a result it's done at a pretty minimal level everywhere.
- intothemild 4y ago
  The thing is... it's not actually. If you made a law to force AirBnB to share data on who is making the listing with the government, you have your register of who to tax/etc. You could also make laws to limit the number of properties per person, and if you're even smarter, you could use that in conjunction with a map of relationships between people, so you could limit the number of people putting listings in their family members names to get around any limitations. AirBnB has the data to assist governments.
  - jhugo 4y ago
    > If you made a law to force AirBnB to share data on who is making the listing with the government, you have your register of who to tax/etc. Airbnb will probably follow your law, but other platforms that do not will flourish. They will be difficult to regulate, given that they won't be in your jurisdiction. > You could also make laws to limit the number of properties per person. Many laws already exist that give unfavourable tax treatment to second and subsequent properties. They are widely avoided through family members and legal entity structures and a hand-wavy "map of relationships between people" isn't going to magically fix that. This would also have a fairly obvious negative effect: it would artificially limit supply in the rental market, driving up prices. A person who could have invested in multiple properties and supplied them to the rental market will instead supply at most one, and invest the rest of their money elsewhere. There isn't some nefarious conspiracy preventing effective regulation in this area. It's just a legitimately hard problem.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Well, it doesn't help that many inspectors actually have to use public transports and be paid later from their travel expenses, so their control area is anyway minimal. At least that is how remember how bad it used to be.
  - zo1 4y ago
    As much as your ideas would work, I don't want to live in the world that you are envisioning in your brain.

intothemild 4y ago

I wish more cities would ban or limit AirBnB. Take Amsterdam for example. A good decade ago, it was crowded in the tourism months (summer), but not too bad. Now it's crowded in the off season too, and during the summer months even more so, to the point where walking around is really hard. The mayor seems to constantly want to get rid of cannabis, which won't solve the problem, the issue isn't the weed tourism... it's the unfettered tourism. These things can be controlled, you can control how much tourists you have by limiting the amount of hotels you have in your city. But with AirBnB you lose all control on how many tourists.

tbdenney 4y ago
AirBnB already is limited in Amsterdam: "According to Dutch regulations, you can only rent out your entire home in Amsterdam for a maximum of 30 nights per year, unless you have a specific permit that allows you to rent out your home for more nights, such as a short term stay license." https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/860/amsterdam https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/860/amsterdam
- Yaa101 4y ago
  But still the problems are not solved, it is not only airbnb, like many places we are in the endgame of neoliberalism which is the wholesale of other peoples property to rich people by the corrupt political class.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  Lived in Amsterdam a few years back, the AirBNBs made it freaking torture during summer. The old wooden buildings where one could hear everything, people arriving and talking loudly in the stairwells then banging their suitcases up the stairs etc. We left, couldn't deal wit it.
  - ricardobayes 4y ago
    I feel your pain, it's definitely a big problem in many places in Europe. Bad construction + overcrowded = Noisy. That said I grew up in a concrete high-rise 'high density' building in Eastern Europe, and I can't recall that I ever heard any neighbor.