9 ms·

I will never understand the desire to control one's neighbors' property. I don't care who owns it and it's none of my business how they use it.

by sejje 12y ago

city41 12y ago
Your neighbor's actions have an affect on your home, including day to day comfort and how much your home is worth. HOAs exist for a reason. I'm not sure I'd want to live next to an apartment that constantly has new guests, any of which could do who knows what to the building.
- MadManE 12y ago
  So you are against other people having freedoms because they might do something bad? Isn't that the definition of FUD?
  - mister_m 12y ago
    You are creating a straw man argument here.
  - ghaff 12y ago
    Societies (of ten through their governments) restrict all sorts of behaviors that affect others in various ways. My neighbor (in a residentially zoned area) can't decide to open a gas station on their property. You can argue about various laws and rules at the margin but it takes a pretty anarchist perspective to argue that no such rules should exist.
    - MadManE 12y ago
      It's pretty extremist to say that I'm making a case for anarchy. Nobody's saying that we should change zoning or open illegal drug rings. People are wanting to rent out apartments to short-term tenants. How is that remotely close to being a dangerous cartel that needs to be defended against? People are upset that other people are better off than they are, and using the extra financial leverage to treat an apartment as a temporary vacation home. Jealousy, plain and simple.
      - untog 12y ago
        Jealousy, plain and simple. Not even slightly. People are upset because homes surrounding theirs are being rented out to short term tenants that do not care about the long or even medium term future of the home and it's surroundings. If you lived in an apartment building filled with tourists drunkenly stumbling around the stairwells, breaking fixtures and otherwise ruining the shared facilities, you might appreciate the concept.
        MadManE 12y ago
        I do live in an apartment building. It's pretty telling that you assume that I can't possibly relate to the common man, and if only I was in their position, I would be more sympathetic. I am in their position. And I am anything but sympathetic for that very reason.
        untog 12y ago
        You are suggesting that you would have no problem with random groups of people waking you up at night and destroying shared property inside your apartment building?
        MadManE 12y ago
        Reply to untog: Of course I'm not ok with people destroying things. But I don't think that having a law making subleasing illegal prevents that. You're acting as if the ability to do what I want with my property makes it a foregone conclusion that evil things will happen.
        untog 12y ago
        You're acting as if the ability to do what I want with my property makes it a foregone conclusion that evil things will happen. No, I'm acting as if the ability for an unlimited and unknown number of complete strangers to enter my apartment building makes it a foregone conclusion that evil things will happen, which is pretty much true. Even if the vast majority of AirBnB customers behave, the odds are that there will always be an outlier that will ruin it.
  - city41 12y ago
    Couldn't you extend this logic to complete anarchy?
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Two issues. 1. "HOAs exist for a reason." They exist under the pretense that they maintain or increase property values. There is no evidence that this is the case. I have spent well over 100 hours researching this, and was unable to find conclusive data to prove this (and used said data to help communities dissolve their HOAs). 2. Short term rental restrictions fall under city/local (and sometimes state) government ordinances, which are enacted to allow for reasonable housing costs for local citizens. I'd highly recommend Portland's local government get in touch with the NY Attorney General's office to get their recommendations on how to persuade AirBNB to maintain compliance with their local laws. [+] http://www.ag.ny.gov/pdfs/Airbnb%20report.pdf http://www.ag.ny.gov/pdfs/Airbnb%20report.pdf
  - bkor 12y ago
    Why would government need to investigate how to persuade? Just fine them and/or shut them down, possibly go after the people running the company.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      > Just fine them and/or shut them down, possibly go after the people running the company. And New York has experience in exactly how to do this, hence my recommendation! Don't walk the trail of broken glass someone else already has.
- kingkawn 12y ago
  Relax, enjoy your home, enjoy your neighbors, enjoy their guests.
ashark 12y ago
I don't understand your not understanding. Could you explain? I don't see a desire to preserve the value of one's own property, or certain qualities of the environment in which one lives, as difficult to understand, if that's what you mean.
- colept 12y ago
  I had a neighbor who was doing AirBnB style rentals. I moved to this property because it is quiet and offers me some privacy. Most of the problems that arise in our building are from short-term rentals who have no respect for the property or the tenants. They often leave trash, vandalize, and misuse the property to fit their short-term needs. Tenants and owners are subject to rules and consequences which helps moderate behavior. While I don't have an issue with the principle of the matter, most short term rentals seem to be done illegally and there's little oversight over these guests. To get into this building I had to submit to a credit, criminal, and background check. If I wanted to live next to a new person every other week, I would have chosen so.
cratermoon 12y ago
So it's OK with you if your neighbor rents out his property to a sketchy couple that open a meth lab?
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  It doesn't matter if they're a sketchy couple, and local law enforcement would provide for removing any meth lab (or other illegal activity) and the associated people.
- Dystopian 12y ago
  ...or your neighbor could open a meth lab and you may never know about until you find out that half your building has cancer from inhaling the fumes. We have condominium boards and neighborhood regulations in place so that if or when there is bad behavior there's recourse against those actions (yes, I know most condo boards would have regulations against renting. Most of the times they wouldn't get involved unless there was an issue though). One of my neighbors rents out their place on Airbnb almost every other weekend. The tenants are almost always well behaved... unlike an owner that lives on my floor that I've had to have the condo board send a letter to because of late night parties.
yequalsx 12y ago
There are lots of extreme examples one can come up with to show why caring how your neighbors use their land is warranted. Think dumping toxic waste, using their land for as an outdoor shooting gallery at all hours of the day, etc. Just about everyone understands that one can not and should not be allowed to do anything they please with the land they own. The question is where to draw the line. This is where elections, the court system, and societal norms come into play. Make your voice heard at the local level. Get involved. Convince your neighbors that AirBnB is a good thing and shouldn't be any of their or your business. Perhaps your view will prevail with regard to AirBnB. I suggest though that saying that how land is used is none of your business (or mine) is not the right method. It makes you sound extreme. There are far too many people on the planet and far too many people with nefarious intent to let everyone do as they please with their land.
kyledrake 12y ago
Try being seriously under-unemployed in a recession for 5 years, watch a single demographic group of "I've got mine, so the hell with everyone else" entitled brats make tons of money in SF playing casino capitalism with mostly fake valuation companies that don't make any money, and then watch them cash their chips in, go into a city with a major housing crisis and push up prices so high through real estate speculation that nobody actually living there can afford to live there anymore. It's really, really easy to understand why people are mad about it, whether you agree with them or not. Real estate has gone up 30-50% since I moved to Portland 4 years ago, so of course, so have rents. 10+%/yr is a crazy number. Most people didn't make that much more income in the same time frame. I have friends that live in a house and rent a part of the house on AirBNB, and it helps them, and for that I am happy. But I'm torn about whether it's positive overall for the city to let out-of-state management companies buy out what's left of Portland's (very, very limited) supply of real estate and flip it for guerrilla hotel usage. I'm not saying AirBNB should be illegal, but Portlanders generally don't want to become California's vacation home, they don't want to copy the dog-eat-dog jungle that is modern San Francisco, they've never been an Ayn Rand libertarian whatever, and their strong tradition of progressive, heavily interventionist government planning (for things like, say, affordable housing) are being put in jeopardy by these disruptions. It's all quite understandable, again, whether you agree with it or not.
- unchocked 12y ago
  To be fair, 4 years ago was the depth of the housing crisis and real estate was highly depressed. While 10% appreciation per year is evidently unsustainable, it's quite reasonable to expect that sort of appreciation coming out of a disruption like that. And it probably doesn't have much to do with SF money.
- jboggan 12y ago
  I live in Santa Monica, which by one metric has the most expensive hotel rates in the state of California [1]. The result? Multiple people either buying or renting multiple properties to AirBNB them and the availability and price of residential rentals beginning to approach what I left behind in SF. I know several people who are essentially employed fulltime as managers for absentee renters, or rent out 3-4 apartments scattered around the city and live in whichever is getting the least interest on AirBNB. A few people get caught and evicted, but for the most part this behavior continues unimpeded. Looking for an apartment two years apart in the exact same neighborhood (fall 2012 and fall 2014) I saw an incredible difference completely unrelated to any other economic change in the area. I'm not sure what else to attribute it to. 1 -http://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/News-2014/June-2014/06_18_2014_Santa_Monica_Named_Most_Expensive_Destination_in_California.html http://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/New...
throwaway150219 12y ago
Actually, property owners and tenants have a right to quiet enjoyment... http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/quiet_enjoyment http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/quiet_enjoyment
dalke 12y ago
Since you'll never understand it, no explanation will make sense to you. But I'll try anyway. What I do affects my neighbors because many things do not stop at the property border. This can include smells, visual impact, water runoff, sound, chemical waste, and risk of fire. For example, if I decided to run a dry cleaning business at home then my neighbor might be affected by the additional street traffic (a shared resource), the noise of customers coming in and out, and the smell of chemicals. Plus, I dispose of the waste chemicals by pouring them into the ground, which seeps into my neighbors' well water. They might not like that. If I decide to start a fertilizer factory (I'll call it 'West Fertilizer Company II'), then my neighbors might be worried about explosions destroying their home. If I decide to raise cattle, and build a waste lagoon on the edge of my property then my neighbors might be concerned about the smell and the possibility of overflow, both as waste and erosion. If I decide to test my air raid siren collection at 3am then I suspect that my neighbors might have a problem. There are several ways to handle this. One is as an easement system. When you purchase your land, you do not have complete say over what happens on the land. For example, there may be a right-of-way which allows people to cross your land in order to get to the beach. You must also allow people to use the sidewalk, and you are required to keep it clear. So you can think of your neighbors as having certain easement rights, which you agreed to when you purchased the land. Just like the airport has purchased the air rights above a certain height, in properties near the airport, your neighbors also have acquired certain rights. For an example, from http://www.englandairpark.org/sites/default/files/docs/Brochure%20-%20Avigation%20Easement%20Program.pdf http://www.englandairpark.org/sites/default/files/docs/Broch... : > The Avigation Easement grants a right-of-way for the free and unobstructed flight and passage of aircraft through the airspace above, over and across the surface of the property, together with the right to cause such noise, vibration, odors, vapors, particulates, smoke, dust, or other effects as may be inherent in the operation of aircraft, and for the use of said airspace by aircraft for approaching, landing upon, taking off from, maneuvering about or operating on the Alexandria International Airport. As you can see, some of these rights can be on the market, but others are illiquid. However, there are a lot of things which can transgress the property lines. It's too many to enumerate explicitly. Rather than having billions of bilateral neighbor agreements, with billions of opportunities for loopholes, and the need to upgrade those agreements over time as problems arise, we have a unified code and legal framework which handles most of them.

I will never understand the desire to control one's neighbors' property. I don't care who owns it and it's none of my business how they use it.

by sejje 12y ago

I will never understand the desire to control one's neighbors' property. I don't care who owns it and it's none of my business how they use it.

city41 12y ago

Your neighbor's actions have an affect on your home, including day to day comfort and how much your home is worth. HOAs exist for a reason. I'm not sure I'd want to live next to an apartment that constantly has new guests, any of which could do who knows what to the building.

MadManE 12y ago
So you are against other people having freedoms because they might do something bad? Isn't that the definition of FUD?
- mister_m 12y ago
  You are creating a straw man argument here.
- ghaff 12y ago
  Societies (of ten through their governments) restrict all sorts of behaviors that affect others in various ways. My neighbor (in a residentially zoned area) can't decide to open a gas station on their property. You can argue about various laws and rules at the margin but it takes a pretty anarchist perspective to argue that no such rules should exist.
  - MadManE 12y ago
    It's pretty extremist to say that I'm making a case for anarchy. Nobody's saying that we should change zoning or open illegal drug rings. People are wanting to rent out apartments to short-term tenants. How is that remotely close to being a dangerous cartel that needs to be defended against? People are upset that other people are better off than they are, and using the extra financial leverage to treat an apartment as a temporary vacation home. Jealousy, plain and simple.
    - untog 12y ago
      Jealousy, plain and simple. Not even slightly. People are upset because homes surrounding theirs are being rented out to short term tenants that do not care about the long or even medium term future of the home and it's surroundings. If you lived in an apartment building filled with tourists drunkenly stumbling around the stairwells, breaking fixtures and otherwise ruining the shared facilities, you might appreciate the concept.
      - MadManE 12y ago
        I do live in an apartment building. It's pretty telling that you assume that I can't possibly relate to the common man, and if only I was in their position, I would be more sympathetic. I am in their position. And I am anything but sympathetic for that very reason.
        untog 12y ago
        You are suggesting that you would have no problem with random groups of people waking you up at night and destroying shared property inside your apartment building?
        MadManE 12y ago
        Reply to untog: Of course I'm not ok with people destroying things. But I don't think that having a law making subleasing illegal prevents that. You're acting as if the ability to do what I want with my property makes it a foregone conclusion that evil things will happen.
        untog 12y ago
        You're acting as if the ability to do what I want with my property makes it a foregone conclusion that evil things will happen. No, I'm acting as if the ability for an unlimited and unknown number of complete strangers to enter my apartment building makes it a foregone conclusion that evil things will happen, which is pretty much true. Even if the vast majority of AirBnB customers behave, the odds are that there will always be an outlier that will ruin it.
- city41 12y ago
  Couldn't you extend this logic to complete anarchy?
toomuchtodo 12y ago
Two issues. 1. "HOAs exist for a reason." They exist under the pretense that they maintain or increase property values. There is no evidence that this is the case. I have spent well over 100 hours researching this, and was unable to find conclusive data to prove this (and used said data to help communities dissolve their HOAs). 2. Short term rental restrictions fall under city/local (and sometimes state) government ordinances, which are enacted to allow for reasonable housing costs for local citizens. I'd highly recommend Portland's local government get in touch with the NY Attorney General's office to get their recommendations on how to persuade AirBNB to maintain compliance with their local laws. [+] http://www.ag.ny.gov/pdfs/Airbnb%20report.pdf http://www.ag.ny.gov/pdfs/Airbnb%20report.pdf
- bkor 12y ago
  Why would government need to investigate how to persuade? Just fine them and/or shut them down, possibly go after the people running the company.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    > Just fine them and/or shut them down, possibly go after the people running the company. And New York has experience in exactly how to do this, hence my recommendation! Don't walk the trail of broken glass someone else already has.
kingkawn 12y ago
Relax, enjoy your home, enjoy your neighbors, enjoy their guests.

ashark 12y ago

I don't understand your not understanding. Could you explain? I don't see a desire to preserve the value of one's own property, or certain qualities of the environment in which one lives, as difficult to understand, if that's what you mean.

colept 12y ago
I had a neighbor who was doing AirBnB style rentals. I moved to this property because it is quiet and offers me some privacy. Most of the problems that arise in our building are from short-term rentals who have no respect for the property or the tenants. They often leave trash, vandalize, and misuse the property to fit their short-term needs. Tenants and owners are subject to rules and consequences which helps moderate behavior. While I don't have an issue with the principle of the matter, most short term rentals seem to be done illegally and there's little oversight over these guests. To get into this building I had to submit to a credit, criminal, and background check. If I wanted to live next to a new person every other week, I would have chosen so.

cratermoon 12y ago

So it's OK with you if your neighbor rents out his property to a sketchy couple that open a meth lab?

toomuchtodo 12y ago
It doesn't matter if they're a sketchy couple, and local law enforcement would provide for removing any meth lab (or other illegal activity) and the associated people.
Dystopian 12y ago
...or your neighbor could open a meth lab and you may never know about until you find out that half your building has cancer from inhaling the fumes. We have condominium boards and neighborhood regulations in place so that if or when there is bad behavior there's recourse against those actions (yes, I know most condo boards would have regulations against renting. Most of the times they wouldn't get involved unless there was an issue though). One of my neighbors rents out their place on Airbnb almost every other weekend. The tenants are almost always well behaved... unlike an owner that lives on my floor that I've had to have the condo board send a letter to because of late night parties.

yequalsx 12y ago

There are lots of extreme examples one can come up with to show why caring how your neighbors use their land is warranted. Think dumping toxic waste, using their land for as an outdoor shooting gallery at all hours of the day, etc. Just about everyone understands that one can not and should not be allowed to do anything they please with the land they own. The question is where to draw the line. This is where elections, the court system, and societal norms come into play. Make your voice heard at the local level. Get involved. Convince your neighbors that AirBnB is a good thing and shouldn't be any of their or your business. Perhaps your view will prevail with regard to AirBnB. I suggest though that saying that how land is used is none of your business (or mine) is not the right method. It makes you sound extreme. There are far too many people on the planet and far too many people with nefarious intent to let everyone do as they please with their land.

kyledrake 12y ago

Try being seriously under-unemployed in a recession for 5 years, watch a single demographic group of "I've got mine, so the hell with everyone else" entitled brats make tons of money in SF playing casino capitalism with mostly fake valuation companies that don't make any money, and then watch them cash their chips in, go into a city with a major housing crisis and push up prices so high through real estate speculation that nobody actually living there can afford to live there anymore. It's really, really easy to understand why people are mad about it, whether you agree with them or not. Real estate has gone up 30-50% since I moved to Portland 4 years ago, so of course, so have rents. 10+%/yr is a crazy number. Most people didn't make that much more income in the same time frame. I have friends that live in a house and rent a part of the house on AirBNB, and it helps them, and for that I am happy. But I'm torn about whether it's positive overall for the city to let out-of-state management companies buy out what's left of Portland's (very, very limited) supply of real estate and flip it for guerrilla hotel usage. I'm not saying AirBNB should be illegal, but Portlanders generally don't want to become California's vacation home, they don't want to copy the dog-eat-dog jungle that is modern San Francisco, they've never been an Ayn Rand libertarian whatever, and their strong tradition of progressive, heavily interventionist government planning (for things like, say, affordable housing) are being put in jeopardy by these disruptions. It's all quite understandable, again, whether you agree with it or not.

unchocked 12y ago
To be fair, 4 years ago was the depth of the housing crisis and real estate was highly depressed. While 10% appreciation per year is evidently unsustainable, it's quite reasonable to expect that sort of appreciation coming out of a disruption like that. And it probably doesn't have much to do with SF money.
jboggan 12y ago
I live in Santa Monica, which by one metric has the most expensive hotel rates in the state of California [1]. The result? Multiple people either buying or renting multiple properties to AirBNB them and the availability and price of residential rentals beginning to approach what I left behind in SF. I know several people who are essentially employed fulltime as managers for absentee renters, or rent out 3-4 apartments scattered around the city and live in whichever is getting the least interest on AirBNB. A few people get caught and evicted, but for the most part this behavior continues unimpeded. Looking for an apartment two years apart in the exact same neighborhood (fall 2012 and fall 2014) I saw an incredible difference completely unrelated to any other economic change in the area. I'm not sure what else to attribute it to. 1 -http://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/News-2014/June-2014/06_18_2014_Santa_Monica_Named_Most_Expensive_Destination_in_California.html http://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/New...

throwaway150219 12y ago

Actually, property owners and tenants have a right to quiet enjoyment... http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/quiet_enjoyment http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/quiet_enjoyment

dalke 12y ago

Since you'll never understand it, no explanation will make sense to you. But I'll try anyway. What I do affects my neighbors because many things do not stop at the property border. This can include smells, visual impact, water runoff, sound, chemical waste, and risk of fire. For example, if I decided to run a dry cleaning business at home then my neighbor might be affected by the additional street traffic (a shared resource), the noise of customers coming in and out, and the smell of chemicals. Plus, I dispose of the waste chemicals by pouring them into the ground, which seeps into my neighbors' well water. They might not like that. If I decide to start a fertilizer factory (I'll call it 'West Fertilizer Company II'), then my neighbors might be worried about explosions destroying their home. If I decide to raise cattle, and build a waste lagoon on the edge of my property then my neighbors might be concerned about the smell and the possibility of overflow, both as waste and erosion. If I decide to test my air raid siren collection at 3am then I suspect that my neighbors might have a problem. There are several ways to handle this. One is as an easement system. When you purchase your land, you do not have complete say over what happens on the land. For example, there may be a right-of-way which allows people to cross your land in order to get to the beach. You must also allow people to use the sidewalk, and you are required to keep it clear. So you can think of your neighbors as having certain easement rights, which you agreed to when you purchased the land. Just like the airport has purchased the air rights above a certain height, in properties near the airport, your neighbors also have acquired certain rights. For an example, from http://www.englandairpark.org/sites/default/files/docs/Brochure%20-%20Avigation%20Easement%20Program.pdf http://www.englandairpark.org/sites/default/files/docs/Broch... : > The Avigation Easement grants a right-of-way for the free and unobstructed flight and passage of aircraft through the airspace above, over and across the surface of the property, together with the right to cause such noise, vibration, odors, vapors, particulates, smoke, dust, or other effects as may be inherent in the operation of aircraft, and for the use of said airspace by aircraft for approaching, landing upon, taking off from, maneuvering about or operating on the Alexandria International Airport. As you can see, some of these rights can be on the market, but others are illiquid. However, there are a lot of things which can transgress the property lines. It's too many to enumerate explicitly. Rather than having billions of bilateral neighbor agreements, with billions of opportunities for loopholes, and the need to upgrade those agreements over time as problems arise, we have a unified code and legal framework which handles most of them.