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There is an old joke, how do you know that someone is a vegan or does crossfit? You'll know because they'll make sure you know minutes after meeting them. In
by chollida1 4y ago
There is an old joke, how do you know that someone is a vegan or does crossfit? You'll know because they'll make sure you know minutes after meeting them.
In 2008-2011 on HN if someone worked at facebook you knew because they mentioned it so often.
Now you never hear anyone saying they work for Facebook because of all the negative externalities that Facebook and Instagram have had on the world that no one wants to be associated with them.
AirBnB is now in a similar situation.
When tehy first came out you would get lots of positive feedback from people about their service.
now that they allow whole home rentals and people are getting squeezed for living space and rising rents partially due to AirBnb taking those rentals off the market people have a far different opinion of the company.
Couple that with hosts are squeezing people with 100's of dollars in cleaning and other fees that dwarf the nightly rental costs.
Its hard to think of another company outside of Facebook that has blown all their good will so quickly and so completely.
You never hear someone claim to work at AirBnB anymore due to what the company has done to help ruin housing and rental markets.
Charitably I guess you could say that every company falls victim to the saying "You Either Die A Hero Or Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain."
- jabbany 4y agoTo be fair, housing and rental markets in some places are kind of pre-ruined. There have been plenty of (and doubtless will be plenty more) scammy landlords for short-term rentals. AirBnB really just provided a modern online interface with some customer service stuff that papered over the bad stuff for a while. But like with actual bad construction, you can't hide the stuff forever so sooner or later the magic disappears.
- rcpt 4y agoWell, they're ruined because of zoning (and tax law but that's a whole other story) In theory zoning is supposed be in residents interest to stop things like fracking from happening next to playgrounds (it doesn't but again that's another story). Cities follow zoning law to the letter when it comes to new apartments. Airbnb repurposes residential zoned property as commerical hotels. If we're going to take zoning seriously this shouldn't be allowed.
- jtc331 4y agoComparing it to a commercial hotel isn’t really accurate. It’s more like a bed and breakfast. Size of the property matters a lot.
- Arainach 4y agoIn every city there are multiple hosts who buy/rent out entire apartment complexes and turn them into AirBnBs. That's a hotel, not a bed and breakfast.
- tw98521358 4y agoYeah but at that point it’s just plain old tax fraud.
- greggman3 4y agoAirBnB sux but zoning has arguably been a net negative on most societies in many ways https://youtu.be/bnKIVX968PQ https://youtu.be/bnKIVX968PQ https://youtu.be/CCOdQsZa15o https://youtu.be/CCOdQsZa15o for me what I noticed lately is that in California it's impossible to have a quiet modern apartment because nearly 100% of modern apartment buildings are only allowed to be built on busy noisy high traffic streets. If you want a quiet street you're forced to buy/rent a house
- bosie 4y agowhy is california not allowing apartment buildings being built in low traffic streets?
- CamelCaseName 4y agoBecause then they won't be low traffic streets anymore
- bosie 4y ago
- blululu 4y agoA lot of the macrolevel complaints about Airbnb are trotted out because customers had shitty experiences. I still bring up their douchey bus ads in sf bragging about finally paying their taxes after years of dodging then not because that campaign directly effected me but because I have been personally burned by the company a few times and this anecdote helps communicate the global nature of the problem with the company culture that a few bad stays doesn’t always convey.
- cycrutchfield 4y agoCitation needed for the magnitude of Airbnb’s contribution to “ruining housing and rental markets”
- seattle_spring 4y agoYou won't find one. The most cited article I've found shows that the most significant effect Airbnb has on rentals is a 0.5% rise in rental rates in Manhattan. It's not 0, but it's pretty damn close.
- cycrutchfield 4y agoYet my comment gets downvoted to oblivion because it questions the conclusion that everybody has jumped to
- tekknik 4y agohttp://insideairbnb.com/reports/platform-failures-how-short-term-rental-platforms-like-airbnb-fail-cities-en.pdf http://insideairbnb.com/reports/platform-failures-how-short-... This is an interesting read about the market effects Airbnb has caused. They’re definitely moving prices and removing units from the market.
- seattle_spring 4y ago“Inside Airbnb” doesn’t sound impartial or unbiased at all.
- pitaj 4y ago> people are getting squeezed for living space and rising rents partially due to AirBnb taking those rentals off the market From what I've seen, short term rentals have negligible effects on the housing market. And restrictions on short term rentals have little to no effect on housing prices. It's just another scapegoat (like foreign owned housing) that people like to use because they can't accept the fact that the solution is to BUILD MORE HOUSING. (Reduce restrictions like exclusionary zoning and environmental/community reviews)
- chollida1 4y agoWell I did hedge my wording because AirBnB has different effects in different places, so there is no global effect that can be measured. If you live in a ski town or beach town then it probably has had far more effect than the locals looking to buy or rent would want. if you live in a small town with very little tourism then people may feel like you do that its a non factor. New York city seems to think that 10,000 distinct places to live will come back to the market, is 10,000 units in New York "negligible" to use your wording? I don't know but I'm guessing it will have some measurable effect. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/28/1145709106/nyc-could-lose-10-000-airbnb-listings-because-of-new-short-term-rental-regulatio https://www.npr.org/2022/12/28/1145709106/nyc-could-lose-10-...
- teddyh 4y ago“Locals”, heh. https://reallifecomics.com/comic.php?comic=february-17-2021 https://reallifecomics.com/comic.php?comic=february-17-2021
- chollida1 4y agoCan you explain that comic? I don't see the word Local anywhere on it and I honestly don't get the joke.
- teddyh 4y agoThe joke (somewhat exaggerated) is that there are no actual local people who live there (i.e. in tourist towns which are small); all houses there are now Airbnb, leaving no houses for local people to live in. It follows that there are no such people as “locals”, which was the word used by the post I was replying to.
- colordrops 4y agoIs there a big tech company that people brag about working at anymore?
- thefounder 4y agoApple(if they would be allowed to)
- nibbleshifter 4y agoThe Apple employees at the nearby Apple campus are very open about working there when you meet them socially.
- ramesh31 4y agoApple, knock on wood.
- speedgoose 4y agoGoogle is still mentioned by some.
- natch 4y agoEww, no.
- ushakov 4y agoMicrosoft is mentioned frequently
- prpl 4y agoPeople are generally fine bragging about where they work outside the bay area (and Seattle to a lesser degree). The stigma of Big Tech is somewhat localized. It’s a job - for many people, especially with families, they are fine with that, and they don’t wrap up their identity with it. The same happens in the defense industry.
- caskstrength 4y agoI regularly see "disclaimer: I work in Google" in comments here. Also, "Why I left Google" is still (surprisingly) a somewhat popular genre.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoI've seen all the comments about cleaning fees but didn't really believe it until I was looking for a place to spend March break; it's completely ridiculous! How is it that they aren't capped as a % of nightly cost? This is like the outrageous shipping costs of old eBay.
- mythhouse 4y agoyou can now chose to see the totals with all the cleaning fees included.
- ww520 4y agoAnd you still have to clean up before leaving.
- streetdumpling 4y agoBecause an Airbnb listing is cleaned every time a new guest checks in, it doesn't matter whether you stay for one night only or 10 nights. It's a fixed cost to the host.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoThen make it a % of a 1 night stay. A $150 cleaning fee is nonsense. It used to be 20-30.
- streetdumpling 4y agoHow much cleaning fee depends on the local market price of cleaning. Depending on how big the place is, $150 is possible. In SF e.g. you can't find a cleaner with $20-30. Hotels pay less on cleaner labor because it's more efficient (cleaners are probably full time employees cleaning all rooms every day anyway). And why it would be % of night rate? Cleaning fee is flat for one cleaning service.
- mattm 4y agoThe owner can clean it themselves or the cleaning fee should be built into the overall price, you know, like hotels.
- Werewolf255 4y ago> Its hard to think of another company outside of Facebook that has blown all their good will so quickly and so completely. Twitter comes rapidly to mind
- wyclif 4y agoThe difference is that Twitter is better than it's ever been now, while Facebook and Airbnb continue to deteriorate.
- seattle_spring 4y agoI'm sorry but I literally laughed out loud after reading your comment.
- wyclif 4y agoLaugh away, but Old Twitter was run by some pretty scummy people who allowed the FBI and CIA to backdoor the service. It was also a lot slower and broken compared to how fast it is now, especially outside North America (they recently added a lot more server capacity). Also massively bloated as recently as a year ago. Loads of people working there who didn't seem to do much except tweak icons 2000 times, enforce DEI mandates, and hit their department's budget. Awful. Glad to see the deadwood getting cleaned out, speed enhancements, and new features being rolled out.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- esprehn 4y agoAdded more server capacity? They just shut down an entire data center (they had 3, so that's a -33% reduction if you assume they're the same size.) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/technology/twitter-elon-musk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/technology/twitter-elon-m... What's the speed enhancements?
- diogenescynic 4y agoI don't think AirBNB is blameless, but so much of this could be avoided by simply building more homes to allow supply to meet demand. US cities have not been building enough homes for decades--this is the main driver of home values going up because scarcity drives prices up. The fact that the President, Congress, and most governors never really address this means it's not going to be solved any time soon. Even in California we do half-measures like upzoning that will take years/decades to have any impact.
- rr808 4y agoIts not just the shortage, its the change in usage. I live in fear that one of my neighbors will become an Air BnB house. Instead of friendly people next door you can grow with, there will be a continual turnover of short term people, parties and clueless behavior.
- Retric 4y agoBuilding more homes requires infrastructure to support those homes. The real solution is to tax each additional dwelling ~30,000$ (depending on area) to pay for the infrastructure to support it and then actually build that infrastructure.
- tekknik 4y agoI’d go with a percentage instead of flat fee. Or some tiered structure to the flat fee. Some of these mega hosts own 40+ properties.
- mythhouse 4y ago> You never hear someone claim to work at AirBnB anymore due to what the company has done to help ruin housing and rental markets. I hear this a lot. I've always wondered if it was that easy wouldn't a lot more people be buying properties and airbnb-ing them out through local agencies ?