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Before you suggest that short-term rentals through AirBnB impact your living standards, you should try to rent your own place on AirBnB, as well as go travel an

Before you suggest that short-term rentals through AirBnB impact your living standards, you should try to rent your own place on AirBnB, as well as go travel and stay at AirBnB locations. You'd be pleasantly surprised that most visitors are decent human beings and don't have a mission to destroy someone's property. At least, this has been my experience with AirBnB. Saying that "one person complained, once .." is just silly. Wherever you live, you may have a bad neighbor, but that doesn't mean your entire condo building is full of them. More so, if your bad neighbor buys a condo or a house right next door to yours, there's nothing you can do about it either. With short-term rentals, you at least know that less fitting people are only staying for a few days. Finally, the only reason this issue is getting a lot of attention is because AirBnB is so freaking successful. Before them, you could find any short term rental, but you'd go to Craigslist to find it. You'd then have to connect with some shady people and pay them in cash, upon your arrival. With Airbnb, you get quality postings in great location, hosted by some really great folks. Travelers love it and use it. Because of that, hotel industry is getting upset. This small SF-based startup just kicked them where it hurts and shows no signs of slowing down. As a result, hotels are using outdated legal system in order to get their way. Unless you never travel anywhere beyond your backyard or you just love to give up all your money to the hotel owners, you should be jumping up and down and cheering for AirBnB and for short-term guests in your area.

flatline3 14y ago
Your position is painfully naive. A bad neighbor is a part of the community, and has to engage with that community. There are HOA rules, local laws, and social constructs that keep neighborly relations largely above board. We select neighborhoods based on the community. Transient tenants are not part of the community. They are not answerable to the community. Invariably a great deal of them will be poor members of the community, especially in an apartment building, and especially given that they're on vacation (and the rest of us aren't): late nights, smoking, drunken antics, or in the case of our building -- lighting the roof deck on fire by dropping smoldering cigarettes on flammable material. > Unless you never travel anywhere beyond your backyard or you just love to give up all your money to the hotel owners, you should be jumping up and down and cheering for AirBnB and for short-term guests in your area. People pay for hotels because they provide deterministic quality. I know that when I show up, the room will be clean, ready, and of a certain level of quality. It's less for me to worry about; worrying about the accommodations is not something I want to spend time on. For some people, that determinism is not worth the money, or is not even something they're looking for. AirBNB offers an option for those people, but at significant cost to the surrounding community and commons.
slug 14y ago
Well, I used AirBnB in the past and have only good things to say about it, until I tried to find a short-term (month) stay in a big US city. I noticed that more and more people are using AirBnB to advertise their more expensive daily/weekly stays instead of posting to craigslist with a monthly stay. So the middle ground (monthly) is also being disrupted, not sure if I'm happy about it now :)

flatline3 14y ago

Your position is painfully naive. A bad neighbor is a part of the community, and has to engage with that community. There are HOA rules, local laws, and social constructs that keep neighborly relations largely above board. We select neighborhoods based on the community. Transient tenants are not part of the community. They are not answerable to the community. Invariably a great deal of them will be poor members of the community, especially in an apartment building, and especially given that they're on vacation (and the rest of us aren't): late nights, smoking, drunken antics, or in the case of our building -- lighting the roof deck on fire by dropping smoldering cigarettes on flammable material. > Unless you never travel anywhere beyond your backyard or you just love to give up all your money to the hotel owners, you should be jumping up and down and cheering for AirBnB and for short-term guests in your area. People pay for hotels because they provide deterministic quality. I know that when I show up, the room will be clean, ready, and of a certain level of quality. It's less for me to worry about; worrying about the accommodations is not something I want to spend time on. For some people, that determinism is not worth the money, or is not even something they're looking for. AirBNB offers an option for those people, but at significant cost to the surrounding community and commons.

slug 14y ago

Well, I used AirBnB in the past and have only good things to say about it, until I tried to find a short-term (month) stay in a big US city. I noticed that more and more people are using AirBnB to advertise their more expensive daily/weekly stays instead of posting to craigslist with a monthly stay. So the middle ground (monthly) is also being disrupted, not sure if I'm happy about it now :)