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Once you have children (or nieces/nephews), there is a 100% chance that you will feel differently about short-term rentals. Long-term rentals indicate tenants

by rprasad 14y ago

Once you have children (or nieces/nephews), there is a 100% chance that you will feel differently about short-term rentals. Long-term rentals indicate tenants that are stable enough to at least afford the lease. They are subject to at least some vetting (including background checks) prior to moving in. Short term tenants can be anyone. No background checks are conducted.

stephencanon 14y ago
There's a 100% chance that I won't. Strangers, even unvetted ones, almost never pose a danger to children. The vast majority of harm done to children is done by friends and family. Having more strangers around makes your kids safer, if anything.
- tptacek 14y ago
  This is why, when I need sitting for my middle-school aged kids, I drop them off in the middle of Union Station instead of bringing them to their grandparents.
  - gcb 14y ago
    At least they won't get fat! Those grandparents...
- walkon 14y ago
  > Strangers, even unvetted ones, almost never pose a danger to children. The vast majority of harm done to children is done by friends and family. Having more strangers around makes your kids safer, if anything. I hear this a lot and my guess is this is simply a function of how much time family and friends spend with a child (in relative privacy) compared to complete strangers. The surface area of attack is way smaller for random people; they don't have the "reasonable" opportunity.
- geebee 14y ago
  So if you were looking for a babysitter, would you prefer someone randomly selected on airbnb by your downstairs neighbor to someone you've vetted yourself?
  - pacaro 14y ago
    The real key here is to look at who does the selecting. The danger comes from the self selected, if you have a crowd of random people and you choose one at random, then the chances that they have malicious intent are related to the incidence of that in the population; OTOH if you ask for volunteers, or worse, if someone spontaneously volunteers then the chance is way higher...
- rprasad 14y ago
  Lol. Most harm to anyone, regardless of age, is caused by friends and family, but that is primarily because friends and family have the most opporunities. If strangers were afforded equal access to your children, the numbers would not be so favorable. Having strangers around does not make your kids safer. At best, your kinds would be just as safe around strangers. At worst, they would be exposed to far more risk.
  - zeroonetwothree 14y ago
    Where is the data to support your claim? It's possible that strangers are more dangerous on a per opportunity basis, but I suspect it's untrue. For example, children spend about the same time at school as at home (at least on weekdays). Yet abuse is much more frequent at home.
sopooneo 14y ago
While we might infer it, you will notice that the parent poster did not indicate his feelings about short term rentals one way or another.
geebee 14y ago
While I wouldn't try to tell someone how they'll feel after they have children (especially with 100% accuracy), I can say that as a parent of two small children, I wouldn't like to see a constant stream of new people constantly coming and going from the apartment across the hall. I've lived in a flat with a shared back yard, and my kids knew the people who lived below us. I knew them well and became friends with them, and I do find the notion that my kids would have been safer around a steady stream of strangers kind of absurd. I wouldn't have wanted a new group of people I don't know hanging out in the backyard where my kids play every weekend. I personally feel that short term rentals work very well in some places, but they can be very disruptive to neighborhoods as well. I guess it comes down to whether you feel that the preservation of the residential nature of a neighborhood is a legitimate reason to regulate. As you can probably tell from the way I set this up, I do.

by rprasad 14y ago

stephencanon 14y ago

There's a 100% chance that I won't. Strangers, even unvetted ones, almost never pose a danger to children. The vast majority of harm done to children is done by friends and family. Having more strangers around makes your kids safer, if anything.

tptacek 14y ago
This is why, when I need sitting for my middle-school aged kids, I drop them off in the middle of Union Station instead of bringing them to their grandparents.
- gcb 14y ago
  At least they won't get fat! Those grandparents...
walkon 14y ago
> Strangers, even unvetted ones, almost never pose a danger to children. The vast majority of harm done to children is done by friends and family. Having more strangers around makes your kids safer, if anything. I hear this a lot and my guess is this is simply a function of how much time family and friends spend with a child (in relative privacy) compared to complete strangers. The surface area of attack is way smaller for random people; they don't have the "reasonable" opportunity.
geebee 14y ago
So if you were looking for a babysitter, would you prefer someone randomly selected on airbnb by your downstairs neighbor to someone you've vetted yourself?
- pacaro 14y ago
  The real key here is to look at who does the selecting. The danger comes from the self selected, if you have a crowd of random people and you choose one at random, then the chances that they have malicious intent are related to the incidence of that in the population; OTOH if you ask for volunteers, or worse, if someone spontaneously volunteers then the chance is way higher...
rprasad 14y ago
Lol. Most harm to anyone, regardless of age, is caused by friends and family, but that is primarily because friends and family have the most opporunities. If strangers were afforded equal access to your children, the numbers would not be so favorable. Having strangers around does not make your kids safer. At best, your kinds would be just as safe around strangers. At worst, they would be exposed to far more risk.
- zeroonetwothree 14y ago
  Where is the data to support your claim? It's possible that strangers are more dangerous on a per opportunity basis, but I suspect it's untrue. For example, children spend about the same time at school as at home (at least on weekdays). Yet abuse is much more frequent at home.

sopooneo 14y ago

While we might infer it, you will notice that the parent poster did not indicate his feelings about short term rentals one way or another.

geebee 14y ago

While I wouldn't try to tell someone how they'll feel after they have children (especially with 100% accuracy), I can say that as a parent of two small children, I wouldn't like to see a constant stream of new people constantly coming and going from the apartment across the hall. I've lived in a flat with a shared back yard, and my kids knew the people who lived below us. I knew them well and became friends with them, and I do find the notion that my kids would have been safer around a steady stream of strangers kind of absurd. I wouldn't have wanted a new group of people I don't know hanging out in the backyard where my kids play every weekend. I personally feel that short term rentals work very well in some places, but they can be very disruptive to neighborhoods as well. I guess it comes down to whether you feel that the preservation of the residential nature of a neighborhood is a legitimate reason to regulate. As you can probably tell from the way I set this up, I do.