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Good. Airbnb messes up the rental market for locals. Like all "gig economy" services, it exploits legal loopholes to avoid proper classification and extract val

Good. Airbnb messes up the rental market for locals. Like all "gig economy" services, it exploits legal loopholes to avoid proper classification and extract value from the commons.

AbrahamParangi 3y ago
I don’t know, tourists aren’t a loss for the local economy, they’re pretty much always a huge win. You may not want them but I don’t know that it’s appropriate to think of it as extracting value from the commons.
- kevinh 3y ago
  We already have a mechanism for handling tourists - hotels.
  - malermeister 3y ago
    Yup, and they are the regulated mechanism that avoids rents skyrocketing that airbnb is trying to circumvent per my original post.
codetrotter 3y ago
Conversely I wonder what the world would look like if it was illegal for people and businesses to rent out housing. Imagine a world where every family was allowed to own a single house or apartment only. All rental properties were owned by the city or whatever other local government, and housing for rental was built to be sustainable and non-profit. I wonder if more people would be able to buy a house/apartment for themselves and their family in such a world.
- throwway120385 3y ago
  I feel like constraining access in this way would lead to some pretty nasty second-order effects if you didn't also redistribute a bunch of wealth from the 1% to the renters. Also with all rental properties being government-owned there would be zero uniqueness and everyone would be forced to make due with whatever the government thought they needed. A good example of this is old Soviet-style tower blocks, where no matter how big your family you get the same size apartment. At least with the current system, people who want to rent detached homes are able to. Your system would suffer from the alternating cycles of austerity that seem to plague governments and the tower blocks would gradually lose all amenities and everything would become exactly the same for the same price. I'm not sure that's better than the current system. A better system would just prohibit private equity from buying real estate and renting it. I think a lot of the housing price increases are due to PE firms buying rental houses and then farming their management out to local management companies.
  - malermeister 3y ago
    > Also with all rental properties being government-owned there would be zero uniqueness and everyone would be forced to make due with whatever the government thought they needed. A good example of this is old Soviet-style tower blocks, where no matter how big your family you get the same size apartment. That part is just not true. See Vienna. This is public housing: https://www.wien.info/en/sightseeing/sights/hundertwasser-house-vienna-348464 https://www.wien.info/en/sightseeing/sights/hundertwasser-ho... So is this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d6DBKoWbtjE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d6DBKoWbtjE
mupuff1234 3y ago
They also hurt the fabric of the neighborhood. I'd rather not live next to a revolving door of strangers.
assvdsevavs 3y ago
> Airbnb messes up the rental market for locals. Like all "gig economy" services, it exploits legal loopholes to avoid proper classification and extract value from the commons. Interesting thing about this argument is, I feel like this assumes there are no benefits of short term rentals for locals. Specially, I see this closely in a small tourist town (not sure how it changes with a big city), but in a small tourist town there's limited supply of hotels and they are generally much more expensive. If you allow airbnb, some home owners prefer short term rentals and so affects supply for long term rentals but, that also means it benefits local home owners, also generate more taxes as most places now have higher taxes for short term rentals, which one can argue is used back to fund stuff in the local community. Also in a small town, many businesses depend on the tourists, so more tourists mean more benefit for local businesses and where locals are employed. So, keeping long term rental prices down for locals by suppressing short term rentals comes at an expense of locals, isn't it?
- malermeister 3y ago
  It benefits a subsection of locals (the ones working in tourism or renting out their apartments) to the detriment of the rest of them. You can see this play out in cities like Barcelona: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/29/the-airbnb-invasion-of-barcelona https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/29/the-airbnb-inv...
  - assvdsevavs 3y ago
    > benefits a subsection of locals .... to the detriment of the rest of them That was my point, the "rest of them" is another subsection of the same local population. I am not sure I understand why some think benefiting one subsection is OK while not the other. Anyway, this entire comment sub thread seems to head towards incorrect/inadequate incentives/regulation. Seems like fixing that is perhaps a better course than to throw out an entire industry that obviously many locals and visitors want and use.
    - malermeister 3y ago
      The issue is that the benefit that subsection gets is parasitic, by damaging the host society for their own benefit. I'm not against them benefiting. I'm against them driving up rents and driving people out of their homes to do so.

Good. Airbnb messes up the rental market for locals. Like all "gig economy" services, it exploits legal loopholes to avoid proper classification and extract value from the commons.

AbrahamParangi 3y ago

I don’t know, tourists aren’t a loss for the local economy, they’re pretty much always a huge win. You may not want them but I don’t know that it’s appropriate to think of it as extracting value from the commons.

kevinh 3y ago
We already have a mechanism for handling tourists - hotels.
- malermeister 3y ago
  Yup, and they are the regulated mechanism that avoids rents skyrocketing that airbnb is trying to circumvent per my original post.

codetrotter 3y ago

Conversely I wonder what the world would look like if it was illegal for people and businesses to rent out housing. Imagine a world where every family was allowed to own a single house or apartment only. All rental properties were owned by the city or whatever other local government, and housing for rental was built to be sustainable and non-profit. I wonder if more people would be able to buy a house/apartment for themselves and their family in such a world.

throwway120385 3y ago
I feel like constraining access in this way would lead to some pretty nasty second-order effects if you didn't also redistribute a bunch of wealth from the 1% to the renters. Also with all rental properties being government-owned there would be zero uniqueness and everyone would be forced to make due with whatever the government thought they needed. A good example of this is old Soviet-style tower blocks, where no matter how big your family you get the same size apartment. At least with the current system, people who want to rent detached homes are able to. Your system would suffer from the alternating cycles of austerity that seem to plague governments and the tower blocks would gradually lose all amenities and everything would become exactly the same for the same price. I'm not sure that's better than the current system. A better system would just prohibit private equity from buying real estate and renting it. I think a lot of the housing price increases are due to PE firms buying rental houses and then farming their management out to local management companies.
- malermeister 3y ago
  > Also with all rental properties being government-owned there would be zero uniqueness and everyone would be forced to make due with whatever the government thought they needed. A good example of this is old Soviet-style tower blocks, where no matter how big your family you get the same size apartment. That part is just not true. See Vienna. This is public housing: https://www.wien.info/en/sightseeing/sights/hundertwasser-house-vienna-348464 https://www.wien.info/en/sightseeing/sights/hundertwasser-ho... So is this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d6DBKoWbtjE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d6DBKoWbtjE

mupuff1234 3y ago

They also hurt the fabric of the neighborhood. I'd rather not live next to a revolving door of strangers.

assvdsevavs 3y ago

> Airbnb messes up the rental market for locals. Like all "gig economy" services, it exploits legal loopholes to avoid proper classification and extract value from the commons. Interesting thing about this argument is, I feel like this assumes there are no benefits of short term rentals for locals. Specially, I see this closely in a small tourist town (not sure how it changes with a big city), but in a small tourist town there's limited supply of hotels and they are generally much more expensive. If you allow airbnb, some home owners prefer short term rentals and so affects supply for long term rentals but, that also means it benefits local home owners, also generate more taxes as most places now have higher taxes for short term rentals, which one can argue is used back to fund stuff in the local community. Also in a small town, many businesses depend on the tourists, so more tourists mean more benefit for local businesses and where locals are employed. So, keeping long term rental prices down for locals by suppressing short term rentals comes at an expense of locals, isn't it?

malermeister 3y ago
It benefits a subsection of locals (the ones working in tourism or renting out their apartments) to the detriment of the rest of them. You can see this play out in cities like Barcelona: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/29/the-airbnb-invasion-of-barcelona https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/29/the-airbnb-inv...
- assvdsevavs 3y ago
  > benefits a subsection of locals .... to the detriment of the rest of them That was my point, the "rest of them" is another subsection of the same local population. I am not sure I understand why some think benefiting one subsection is OK while not the other. Anyway, this entire comment sub thread seems to head towards incorrect/inadequate incentives/regulation. Seems like fixing that is perhaps a better course than to throw out an entire industry that obviously many locals and visitors want and use.
  - malermeister 3y ago
    The issue is that the benefit that subsection gets is parasitic, by damaging the host society for their own benefit. I'm not against them benefiting. I'm against them driving up rents and driving people out of their homes to do so.