3 ms·

Your problem still isn’t with the guy paying lower rent, but scarcity amplified by companies repurposing residential housing stock as tourist accommodation. Yo

by ljm 2y ago

Your problem still isn’t with the guy paying lower rent, but scarcity amplified by companies repurposing residential housing stock as tourist accommodation. You too could live right in the city at an affordable rate if AirBnB and property owners didn’t force out the locals to make a quick buck on holiday makers.

glompers 2y ago
The article says that renting residential units for short terms (of less than 32 days) is already banned citywide in Barcelona. Tourists can stay in hotels.
yes_really 2y ago
No. It seems very clear that his problem is with the guy paying lower rent than him for a better apartment. If the subsidy is done by the government (though regulations, direct subsidy, rent-control, etc), and if he pays those taxes, then his feeling of injustice are perfectly valid. It's one thing for the government to take your money to feed people that are in need. It's another thing for the government to take your money to give someone living conditions better than your own!
energy123 2y ago
Out of all the misdiagnoses of the housing crisis, this is the one I appreciate the most due to its adjacency to the truth. By blaming AirBnB as the root cause, you're implicitly admitting that the problem is too little housing supply. Great. So how can you increase housing supply? Your solution would be to ban AirBnB, which frees up only less than two years worth of new housing stock, while simultaneously reducing tourism revenue. This is a temporary and non durable solution that solves none of the underlying problems that will lead to a lack of supply 5 or 10 years down the road. The durable solution is to increase housing starts by deregulation and financial incentives or public housing. If you double housing starts, in a decade you would have to ban more than five AirBnBs worth of houses to break even. This is the durable solution.
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  We fixate on the easiest things to fixate on, and it becomes an easily attacked effigy for the real problem. When I lived in Mexico City, my friends would complain about gringos causing an increase in rents when the places they wanted to live for cheap were populated almost entirely by every Mexican who makes more money than they do. Yet there was this implication that if you could somehow shut down gringo tourism, there would be no competition for living in the nice apartments in the nice neighborhoods. They would be desperate for your 2000 pesos or something.
  - titanomachy 2y ago
    This sentiment is certainly true in some places, but Mexico City is so big and with such a huge permanent population that tourists will only ever be a drop in the bucket.
- scythe 2y ago
  >The durable solution is to increase housing starts by deregulation and financial incentives or public housing. I think that there is a negligence of the economic conditions that face the construction industry in this and most similar arguments. Construction tends to be a pain point for costs, yet it is almost universally seen as a bad career. How can we reconcile this? It's a boom-and-bust industry. Some years there is more work than people can handle, others they are struggling to get paid. Part of the solution should be to try to level out the cycles by building public housing when there is a downturn, and pulling back when there is not. However, this is basically opposite of the cycle of populist demand for public housing, which tends to spike when prices are high and taper off when they go down. I don't have the deep knowledge of economics to make this argument robust, but what I think I'm aiming at is a sort of Keynesian approach to construction policy.
  - energy123 2y ago
    The inflation of labor and construction materials is reducing housing starts, but we must contextualize it -- what matters is not just the cost of construction but the ROI. Cost contributes to ROI but it isn't the only component. If it was possible to build in the most high-value areas, the high ROI would justify private capital inflows despite the high construction costs. But planning in high-value areas is dominated by NIMBYs like Marc Andreessen lobbying their local government, so approvals happen in low-value areas where the construction costs dominate the ROI equation, which depresses housing starts. But you are right that more should be done to reduce labor input costs for construction. That can only help the situation.
miguelxt 2y ago
Hard banning Airbnbs will for sure push long-term rent prices down, but not by an amount enough to make them affordable. We already have evidence from cities with active bans. Prices in NYC or Lisbon have not come down significantly. We still have to wait a few years to see the real effect that bans have on prices. Lowering prices at most 3-5% by banning Airbnb won't make anybody happy and will come with some negative effects like reduced tourism (and other economic activity), which is a very important part of Spain's GDP.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- kazinator 2y ago
  Regarding tourism, I think airbnb encourages mainly poorer tourists, who just eat food, drink mostly water and take pictures. If you want $$$ from tourism, you have to find ways to attract the rich. D'oh! The rich don't necessarily like their destinations touristy. They don't like to elbow their ways through crowds, stand in lineups, or have stranger "extras" in their pictures. Airbnb contributes to "touristy".
  - bombcar 2y ago
    Another problem is AirBnB almost by definition are less dense than hotels. If there were no AirBnB, the economics for a new high-rise hotel would be much better. But it all comes down to increasing desirable supply (which may be density dwellings at the end of an express train) or building entire new cities (or rejuvenating others). At some point, if supply outstrips demand, prices will start to stabilize - maybe fall.
  - scythe 2y ago
    Tourism is by definition a small fraction of overall global economic activity. Basically the only places which can really run on tourism have major geographical (Barbados, Andorra) or extraordinary historical (Venice, Kyoto) advantages, or both (San Francisco, Cusco). My recommendation is that if you want to encourage tourism, change your mind. Build a great place to live and if you do a good job, you might get a boost in a century. I would call this "the Chicago model".

by ljm 2y ago

glompers 2y ago

The article says that renting residential units for short terms (of less than 32 days) is already banned citywide in Barcelona. Tourists can stay in hotels.

yes_really 2y ago

No. It seems very clear that his problem is with the guy paying lower rent than him for a better apartment. If the subsidy is done by the government (though regulations, direct subsidy, rent-control, etc), and if he pays those taxes, then his feeling of injustice are perfectly valid. It's one thing for the government to take your money to feed people that are in need. It's another thing for the government to take your money to give someone living conditions better than your own!

energy123 2y ago

Out of all the misdiagnoses of the housing crisis, this is the one I appreciate the most due to its adjacency to the truth. By blaming AirBnB as the root cause, you're implicitly admitting that the problem is too little housing supply. Great. So how can you increase housing supply? Your solution would be to ban AirBnB, which frees up only less than two years worth of new housing stock, while simultaneously reducing tourism revenue. This is a temporary and non durable solution that solves none of the underlying problems that will lead to a lack of supply 5 or 10 years down the road. The durable solution is to increase housing starts by deregulation and financial incentives or public housing. If you double housing starts, in a decade you would have to ban more than five AirBnBs worth of houses to break even. This is the durable solution.

hombre_fatal 2y ago
We fixate on the easiest things to fixate on, and it becomes an easily attacked effigy for the real problem. When I lived in Mexico City, my friends would complain about gringos causing an increase in rents when the places they wanted to live for cheap were populated almost entirely by every Mexican who makes more money than they do. Yet there was this implication that if you could somehow shut down gringo tourism, there would be no competition for living in the nice apartments in the nice neighborhoods. They would be desperate for your 2000 pesos or something.
- titanomachy 2y ago
  This sentiment is certainly true in some places, but Mexico City is so big and with such a huge permanent population that tourists will only ever be a drop in the bucket.
scythe 2y ago
>The durable solution is to increase housing starts by deregulation and financial incentives or public housing. I think that there is a negligence of the economic conditions that face the construction industry in this and most similar arguments. Construction tends to be a pain point for costs, yet it is almost universally seen as a bad career. How can we reconcile this? It's a boom-and-bust industry. Some years there is more work than people can handle, others they are struggling to get paid. Part of the solution should be to try to level out the cycles by building public housing when there is a downturn, and pulling back when there is not. However, this is basically opposite of the cycle of populist demand for public housing, which tends to spike when prices are high and taper off when they go down. I don't have the deep knowledge of economics to make this argument robust, but what I think I'm aiming at is a sort of Keynesian approach to construction policy.
- energy123 2y ago
  The inflation of labor and construction materials is reducing housing starts, but we must contextualize it -- what matters is not just the cost of construction but the ROI. Cost contributes to ROI but it isn't the only component. If it was possible to build in the most high-value areas, the high ROI would justify private capital inflows despite the high construction costs. But planning in high-value areas is dominated by NIMBYs like Marc Andreessen lobbying their local government, so approvals happen in low-value areas where the construction costs dominate the ROI equation, which depresses housing starts. But you are right that more should be done to reduce labor input costs for construction. That can only help the situation.

miguelxt 2y ago

Hard banning Airbnbs will for sure push long-term rent prices down, but not by an amount enough to make them affordable. We already have evidence from cities with active bans. Prices in NYC or Lisbon have not come down significantly. We still have to wait a few years to see the real effect that bans have on prices. Lowering prices at most 3-5% by banning Airbnb won't make anybody happy and will come with some negative effects like reduced tourism (and other economic activity), which is a very important part of Spain's GDP.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kazinator 2y ago
Regarding tourism, I think airbnb encourages mainly poorer tourists, who just eat food, drink mostly water and take pictures. If you want $$$ from tourism, you have to find ways to attract the rich. D'oh! The rich don't necessarily like their destinations touristy. They don't like to elbow their ways through crowds, stand in lineups, or have stranger "extras" in their pictures. Airbnb contributes to "touristy".
- bombcar 2y ago
  Another problem is AirBnB almost by definition are less dense than hotels. If there were no AirBnB, the economics for a new high-rise hotel would be much better. But it all comes down to increasing desirable supply (which may be density dwellings at the end of an express train) or building entire new cities (or rejuvenating others). At some point, if supply outstrips demand, prices will start to stabilize - maybe fall.
- scythe 2y ago
  Tourism is by definition a small fraction of overall global economic activity. Basically the only places which can really run on tourism have major geographical (Barbados, Andorra) or extraordinary historical (Venice, Kyoto) advantages, or both (San Francisco, Cusco). My recommendation is that if you want to encourage tourism, change your mind. Build a great place to live and if you do a good job, you might get a boost in a century. I would call this "the Chicago model".