21 ms·

Santa Monica council votes 7-0 to crack down on Airbnb

241 points by adamio 11y ago

therobot24 11y ago
Used Airbnb recently for a trip to LA for a friend's wedding. Myself and a few friends were able to rent a house in the hills which was way nicer, less expensive, and significantly easier than organizing a block of hotel rooms. Aside from moments where some would have to wait due to both showers being used, the trip was much more enjoyable. While I agree that some rules need to be adjusted for Airbnb type of rentals, I really can't think of a reason why anyone would want to straight up ban it. > The rules legalize “home-sharing” – in which the occupant rents a couch, spare bedroom or backyard unit – but require hosts to obtain a business license and pay Santa Monica’s 14% hotel tax. Is this going to be the new loophole?
- pneumatics 11y ago
  The owner must be present during home-sharing, so each property owner should be limited to sharing one property at a time. Since the properties must be licensed, it should be easy to shut down the multiple-property Airbnb landlords. What this might enable is "sharing" a huge property, say an apartment complex, essentially opening up a new class of low- or no-amenity hotels.
Old_Thrashbarg 11y ago
A win for the hotel industry lobby groups and a loss for the general public.
- themoonbus 11y ago
  Unless you're part of the general public who lives in a desirable area, and your rent is increasing because limited housing is being turned into unregulated hotels. I should say, I've used AirBnB many times and always had a great experience, but this isn't a clear cut "good" vs "evil" issue.
  - ripley12 11y ago
    "limited housing" is the key point. Most North American municipalities have painful and binding limits on the number of housing units allowed: http://www.metafilter.com/148375/Anyone-have-a-Pop-up-blocker-For-houses#5989161 http://www.metafilter.com/148375/Anyone-have-a-Pop-up-blocke... Banning AirBnB is at best going to lower demand a little bit, it' not going to fix the much larger underlying problem.
    - themoonbus 11y ago
      Completely agree. I'm just saying it's not a clear cut issue of the public vs. the hotels. There are legitimate arguments for limiting someone's ability to rent out their living space to short term tenants that have nothing to do with the hotel lobby. As someone who lives in an apartment building with fairly thin walls, I can sympathize with some one not wanting a parade of short term tenants as their neighbor.
- danhak 11y ago
  A win for people trying to afford homes they actually intend to live in, and for their neighbors who didn't agree to live next to a hotel.
tptacek 11y ago
This is going to happen in most cities; it has to, because the pendulum has swung too far from "abusive regulation" to "abusive lack of regulation". People like to invoke the evil "hotel lobby", which I'm sure does exist!, but it is not even a little bit hard to find loud, angry citizens complaining. Those complaints are entirely predictable: people buy or rent residences in buildings expecting those buildings to be inhabited by long-term residents, then some part of the building gets converted to a hotel. People aren't OK with that. There are also places where vibrant short-term rental markets may exacerbate tight housing markets. I've had nothing but good Airbnb experiences, in SFBA, NYC, and London. I hope Airbnb works this out. But they don't really hold all the cards here.
- jedrek 11y ago
  What's funny is every major city I've ever been in has had ultra-short term, private apartment rentals. AirBNB just made it extremely popular and easy to rent a room or your flat without putting a lot of work in.
  - fixxer 11y ago
    I think that is the real innovation of the "api businesses" like airbnb and uber. of course, there is politics and unions and taxes (oh my!), so it gets muddied.
- shampine 11y ago
  I live in downtown Los Angeles. In my community of buildings all tenants were served letters that threatened eviction if we put our place up on Airbnb. It is specifically outlined in majority of our leases. Several people I know have been evicted as a result. Regulations aren't even needed some buildings are just taking care of this issue on their own. For my specific building and as a renter, I'm okay with there being no Airbnb places.
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    > Regulations aren't even needed some buildings are just taking care of this issue on their own. Some buildings won't take care of it (especially in situations where people are buying whole buildings to rent out), leaving their neighbors without much recourse without regulation.
hackuser 11y ago
This article explains some of the problems caused by short-term rentals such as Airbnb: http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-airbnb-housing-market-20150311-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-airbnb-hous... Also, it seems reasonable that hotels and Airbnb comppete on a level playing field in terms of tax and regulation. All that said, I think they need to find solutions that accomodate all parties: Hotels, short-term rentals, and the housing market for renters.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  Is it reasonable that hotels and my friend with a couple of spare bedrooms in his house should have to compete on a level playing field in terms of regulation, inspection, taxation, and the like? Because as far as I can tell Airbnb does not operate anything; they are just a booking service for people who rent out spare bedrooms. It doesn't seem reasonable that my friend with the big house should have to jump through all the same hoops as the professionals running the Marriott or whatever.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Well, as the guy staying there, I'd like to have SOME guarantee that the place isn't unsafe, unsanitary, cheating me or spying on me. So as a consumer, then yes I do want them to jump through all the hoops.
    - mason240 11y ago
      Then don't go to AirBnB places. Go to hotels. It really is that simple. Don't deprive other people of choice because you don't want to choose.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        We can say that, but it doesn't end there. Paying folks money means I get value in return. There will be disputes about the value; lawyers get involved. The whole hotel-thing is 100's of years of working that out in law. Now we start over? Just because AirBnB is cool, and we want it to succeed? I don't think this is going to end well.
ecnahc515 11y ago
While I love Airbnb, it can truely be destructive to housing markets, at least to an extent. Here in Portland, OR it's beginning to become a larger problem as housing is getting bought purely to rent out. I just hope we can come to a point where perhaps there is a way to allow airbnb to exist, while making it illegal to rent out property purely to rent it. This could allow it to be more like the bed and breakfast logging that it tends to feel like. I'm thinking restrictions to aid this are artificial limits to how many people/how many days per year you can rent out rooms in your home, which airbnb would be required to record. I still have no idea how things like sanitation will be handled. Right now an airbnb host has very little obligation be sanitary like a hotel, except that it might make their reviews worse.
- dataker 11y ago
  It's adapts itself to the market: if there's more gentrification in an area, the more likely it will be to have these things. Without Airbnb, the only difference is that you'd have more shared disgusting hotel rooms.
  - untog 11y ago
    Without Airbnb, the only difference is that you'dmore shared disgusting hotel rooms. And cheaper real estate, as fewer properties are bought up to rent out on a short term basis.
- alexashka 11y ago
  Seems like an easy fix - just make it prohibitively expensive to own multiple properties. All these problems revolve around rich folks investing in real estate to make a buck - that that is even a thing, is insane. Housing is for people to live in, not for you to buy, renovate, sell. Or buy, rent. Or buy, tear down, build new, sell/rent. It's all part of a greater problem - when folks can become multi-millionaires by gaming the system instead of contributing to it and do so with impunity, we have what we have. Housing prices are inflated by people who buy/sell for profit, coupled with retarded regulations that favor that over people trying to live their lives. Capitalism yay in other words :)
will_brown 11y ago
I wish the article explored the penalties associated with continued rentals in violation of the new regulations. Obviously there could be tax penalties but I'm curious if there are additional civil fines, potential criminal violations, or hell maybe civil forfeiture laws might apply (I saw that tounge and cheek but after another front page post that may be a reality?). Would airbnb pay costs and lawyers fees like Uber has done?
- hemantv 11y ago
  AirBnb most of the time brush off their hands. The quality is terrible in some places.
xbryanx 11y ago
I assume this is a story about their strict JS style guide? https://github.com/airbnb/javascript https://github.com/airbnb/javascript
sologoub 11y ago
The article seems to highlight a legitimate use case that the regulation is screwing up, which also happens to be Airbnb's original purpose - to sublet while you are out of town or otherwise not using the space. Sure, Airbnb has grown way past that, but in my mind there is a very big difference between running a business on Airbnb and subletting while you are away to help pay for a trip. A provision with a cap of how many nights a year one could sublet without being considered a hotel would be a lot more sensible. While I'm sure it would be difficult to enforce, services like Airbnb and HomeAway would probably cooperate in disclosing booked stays per address. It wouldn't be that hard to link the data together and spot violators. I'm sure residents would help as well. Taxing is sensible though.
- iamdave 11y ago
  While I'm sure it would be difficult to enforce, services like Airbnb and HomeAway would probably cooperate in disclosing booked stays per address. It wouldn't be that hard to link the data together and spot violators. I can say with first hand knowledge, that HomeAway at least engages with cities politically to build cases for short-term rental advocacy from economic development to enabling and increasing the attractiveness of tourism in cities where they operate. They setup sessions with city and community leaders and work on actionable regulation and legislation with cities to introduce fair laws for rentals. I'm no shill for HomeAway, but I do have a close personal friend who works on the Government Affairs team and have witnessed their efforts with my own eyes. At least in their case, HomeAway works with cities, instead of against them.
jedberg 11y ago
I'm really torn here. On one hand, as a homeowner, I would be pretty upset if my neighbors turned their houses into "hotels". There would be a lot of noise and a lot of people who don't care much about the neighbors since they are only here for a few days. On the other hand, I just got back from traveling to Europe, where all of the bookings we made were AirBnB. My wife and I were traveling with our 4 month old baby, and there weren't any hotels that could really meet our needs as well as the apartments that we rented. The trip would have been much harder without AirBnB. I think Santa Monica went too far here -- they should have left some wiggle room for folks who want to rent out their place on weekends and such, like the folks we rented from in Vienna.
- jonlucc 11y ago
  When your family was travelling, did you make extra noise at the houses and apartments you rented? Why do you expect most people to disrespect the people around them if they are only there temporarily?
  - jedberg 11y ago
    No, because I'm respectful of others. But I definitely know people who have the attitude of "well I'll never see these people again!". Also, when I stay in a real hotel, there have been many times when folks were noisy and disrespectful.
    - rootedbox 11y ago
      And when you are at a hotel and people are acting up.. You can go to the manager. What happens when your neighbor decides to rent their place via Air BNB, And folks are noisy and disrespectful.. Who do you complain to?? The home owner?? Do you think he's going to kick the people out? They are a revenue stream, and you are not. Well.. you may say. I'll call the cops. Ok. Your neighbor gets a warning.. then eventually a 300 dollar fine.. Your neighbor can afford a few fines a month from a few random loud nights as long as the air bnb money keeps coming in. In fact your neighbor will need to make sure their place is full more nights if you start calling the cops.
tdees40 11y ago
We just rented a place for a month on AirBnb only to find out that the owner kept two cats there (undisclosed); my wife has severe cat allergies. Now we're having to fight tooth and nail to get our money back, and the property owner is saying that her policy is no refunds, period. So yeah, I kinda get why people can cozy up to the idea of regulation.
- baddox 11y ago
  That seems like a very good reason to cozy up to the idea that you should be able to get your money back from a host who misrepresents the property being rented, but not a particularly good reason to cozy up to the idea of arbitrary short-term rental regulation.
  - res0nat0r 11y ago
    The greater point is that if Airbnb providers were already regulated this type of thing might not be an issue, ie: playing by the same rules hotels do.
  - tdees40 11y ago
    Sure. But who's going to enforce that "should"? This is why regulation is popular; it's about recourse.
    - baddox 11y ago
      Regardless of who enforces the rules, my point is that the rule prohibiting the misrepresentation of a business transaction is much more reasonable than the rule prohibiting (or significantly limiting) short-term rentals.
- mason240 11y ago
  You were perfectly willing to take that risk when using the service for whatever advantage you thought it had over a traditional hotel (price, location, whatever). You lost on that bet. Rather than than trying to decide if you are willing to take that risk next time or to pay a little extra for certainty with a traditional hotel, you want all the option removed to everyone. This dilemma isn't at unique to hotels, the "cheap with risk versus expensive, reliable name brand" applies to nearly everything. Do you get leaves cleared by some guy off of Craigslist, or spend more for "real" landscape contractor? Do you get your car brakes redone by Joe the Mechanic, or do you pay extra to go to Midas?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
31reasons 11y ago
>>Estimates that more than 7,000 houses and apartments have been taken off the rental market in metro Los Angeles for use as short-term rentals. As I am searching for a good apartment in LA, this makes me bit upset.
- Omniusaspirer 11y ago
  Only because it's contrary to your own personal interest. The owners of these properties have clearly determined that the actual value they can realize on the properties they own is maximized by Airbnb as opposed to a more traditional rental. They're certainly happy, as are -presumably- their short-term renters.
  - 31reasons 11y ago
    Maybe my comment is also contrary to your own personal interest.
    - Omniusaspirer 11y ago
      A downvote, a shill accusation, and no counter-argument. Perhaps you could take a different approach and explain to me why you feel the interests of a single renter should supersede those of a property owner and 10's or even hundreds of shorter-term renters.
- ripley12 11y ago
  You may want to read Greg Morrow's UCLA dissertation on urban planning in Los Angeles for some context: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k64g20f#page-1 http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k64g20f#page-1 This graph (p. 3) shows that zoning changes in LA since 1960 are many orders of magnitude more important than 7,000 short-term rentals: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HnkwzmO56vU/VQHurofJUUI/AAAAAAAABE4/NeJaN16zkkQ/s1600/2014-08-07%2B17-06-37_The%2BHomeowner%2BRevolution_%2BDemocracy%2C%2BLand%2BUse%2Band%2Bthe%2BLos%2BAngeles%2BSlow-Growth%2BMo.png http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HnkwzmO56vU/VQHurofJUUI/AAAAAAAABE...
- prostoalex 11y ago
toolz 11y ago
god forbid that a governing body gives the low influence nuisances less attention than the powerful social nuisances. Slumlords all over the place, but of course the first thing on the governing bodies agenda is to make sure nothing disrupts the hugely homogeneous industry that is room rentals.
staunch 11y ago
I just moved out of downtown Santa Monica, from an apartment building that was swamped with Airbnb renters that caused all kinds of problems. Airbnb is doing good and evil in the world. They deserve to be forced to reduce the evil to reasonable levels. Maybe apartment buildings shouldn't be generally permitted, for example.
- 72deluxe 11y ago
  This would be an interesting rule to enforce in places like Barcelona, where every house is an apartment (as far as I remember after visiting)
nostromo 11y ago
I just don't think city councils are going to be able to put a billion dollar genie back in the bottle. Airbnb is a p2p market. When regulation attacks p2p markets, they don't die, they adapt. Airbnb itself might die like Napster, but someone else will find a way to take their place. Maybe the company that replaces it will be based outside US borders, safe from any subpoena for rental records.
- untog 11y ago
  Maybe the company that replaces it will be based outside US borders, safe from any subpoena for rental records. That only works when activity is online-only and difficult to trace. If you're renting your apartment out it's pretty easy to detect.
  - eropple 11y ago
    Exactly. This is the same thing as rubber-hose cryptanalysis--if somebody can get hold of that meat carrier for your brilliant brain, they can figure out what you're doing. And so AirBNB will lose. (They've knuckled under wherever confronted.) So will the next one.
- prostoalex 11y ago
  They have succumbed to the taxation/licensing pressure in pretty much any market they've been challenged http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Airbnb-to-collect-hotel-taxes-for-San-Francisco-5365352.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Airbnb-to-collect-hotel-t... http://nypost.com/2014/04/14/airbnb-aims-to-start-taxing-renters-by-july-1/ http://nypost.com/2014/04/14/airbnb-aims-to-start-taxing-ren... > When regulation attacks p2p markets, they don't die, they adapt. I think we've seen that iteration with craigslist -> apts/housing -> short-term/sub-lease, and in many popular destinations the space was prone to scams and shady dealers.
natrius 11y ago
There seems to be a general sense that short-term rentals make housing unaffordable. I disagree. We came up with the technology to scale a given piece of land to hundreds of residents at a low marginal cost a long time ago. Unfortunately, we've outlawed that technology in the vast majority of the American urbanized area. As a result, the demand to live on a particular piece of land far outstrips the supply of homes, and this competition makes prices skyrocket. Build more homes. Build a lot of them. It's the only way to keep our cities affordable.
callmeed 11y ago
I have a friend in Santa Monica who rents 2 apartments. One he rents very cheap via some sort of rent control/housing assistance program. He then proceeds to rent the rooms out on AirBnB. He gets enough business to pay for the apartment he lives in and live frugally without having full-time employment. It's hard to blame cities when this (and other) kind of abuse is going on.
- maw 11y ago
  I think it's easy to blame cities for rent control. Just shows what I know.
- aikah 11y ago
  > One he rents very cheap via some sort of rent control/housing assistance program He is probably not untitled to housing assistance if he has another apartment. He should make as much money as possible and stop that scheme because if he get caught doing that he may go to prison for fraud.
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    it's probably a discounted sub-let from someone who has a lease from 10+ years ago. it's very common in santa monica.
- jboggan 11y ago
  There's a lot of this going on because the incentive has been so strong, the arbitrage so great, and the penalties so rare. I think the city is striking an excellent balance with this vote.
jboggan 11y ago
As a Santa Monica resident, I think this is great. Santa Monica has, by some indices, the most expensive hotel rooms in the state. This has driven a huge demand for short rentals near the beach. I have no access to numbers but my personal anecdata is interesting for the number of people I know involved in grey-market short term rentals and the number of people unable to find available apartments, let alone available apartments anywhere near the rents 2-3 years ago pre-AirBnB. I did protracted apartment searches in the same area of Santa Monica in November 2012 and 2014 and the difference in price and availability was immense. At the same time I had one friend who was making a full time job out of "hosting" for AirBnB-ed condos and apartments either bought or rented in the past year by deep-pocketed "investors" in Malibu and Santa Monica with the sole purpose of short term rentals. I know another young lady who rents three apartments and lives in whichever one is earning the least on AirBnb. She nets about $1000 a month doing this and manages to take 3 single residential units off the market in the process. There's a lot of people doing variations on this business model and it is absolutely pushing out the longer term residents. I've seen many of my beach friends (mostly involved in entertainment, good living wages but not anything like tech wages) progressively pushed further and further afield as random housing events (unit selling, massive renovation, roommate disputes) mean they cannot afford to relocate anywhere near the place that they are leaving. That is also despite their earnings increasing through normal career progression. My parents came to visit last Christmas and they used AirBnB to rent a back house for a week a few blocks from my apartment. It was great. Do I think that shouldn't be allowed? No, but considering their host was running a year-round business out of their home I don't think it is unreasonable to treat them like a business.
- therobot24 11y ago
  This is an interesting perspective that i hadn't considered, and honestly i can't think of any balance. If you penalize Airbnb renters with taxes and nonsense licensing you're going to end up with less diversity where just a select few end up doing the same thing you're describing instead of the many that do it now. While if you do nothing you're going to keep pushing real residents out through price hikes. Tough situation. However, I do think that this is very limited to areas of already high demand and shouldn't be a blanket policy across a whole region.
- 11y ago
coliveira 11y ago
I think this is predictable in many more cities across the world. There is already people buying properties with the sole goal of converting them into airbnb units. And this on areas which are supposed to be residential, which is a big problem for people who happen to actually live there.
snowwrestler 11y ago
VRBO has been around for longer than AirBnB, and specializes in full-unit or whole-house short-term rentals. But I never see them mentioned in these sorts of articles, either as a company that is affected by these types of regulations, or as a company that has taken a public position for or against these types of regulations. Why is that? On previous stories the issue has been bedroom rentals, or listing rented apartments (i.e. short-term subleasing). But this seems to target whole-unit short-term rentals, even if they're owned. That seems to be right in the VRBO wheelhouse. For example: 158 listings: http://www.vrbo.com/vacation-rentals/usa/california/los-angeles-county/santa-monica?amenities=bookable http://www.vrbo.com/vacation-rentals/usa/california/los-ange...
- eropple 11y ago
  I can't speak to VRBO, but I know that HomeAway is very particular about chucking out bad renters and works very closely with local governments to build fair legislation around short-term rentals. (Disclaimer, such as it is: former TripAdvisor employee, incidentally touched their Vacation Rentals stuff a few years ago, don't really care about it and I use HomeAway.)
rajacombinator 11y ago
Folks, let's be honest. This is mostly about ornery landlords who are bitter that they are missing out on perceived higher rates for their properties. Add in a few nosy neighbors who have nothing else to do to make them feel important other than file complaints with their local HOA/city/whatever. AirBNB should seriously hire a full time team of economists to publish studies defending their company. The efficiency gains are tremendous.
eonw 11y ago
good, now they just need to shutdown the other regulation skirting companies like Uber as well. It's not fair these companies skirt well known and age old laws to create an unfair advantage(and wealth) for themselves, by simply ignoring those laws. Play by the same rules as your competitors do and see how well you fair. Disruption by evading legalities isn't really all that impressive... the cartels and mobsters have done it for decades.
- Sideloader 11y ago
  Libertarianism, i.e the deluded belief that unfettered capitalism is perfect and the panacea for all the world's ills, is very popular in certain SV startup circles. Uber, for example, blatantly ignoring local bylaws and regulations makes perfect sense when seen through libertarian tinted goggles.
jokoon 11y ago
I recently saw an airbnb advertising in my city in france. The more I hear about uber and airbnb and those websites who try to replace existing services that doesn't use internet, the more it looks like some libertarian business model. I'm not against it, but once insurances and the law adapt to it, I wonder if it will really be attractive anymore.
kriro 11y ago
I think I get all points of the debate but the key question for me is...why are there so many airbnb rentals. Clearly there's some sort of demand, clearly the hotel econsystem doesn't handle it well enough. That's the root issue that needs investigation. Tighter regulations of airbnb are more of a hotfix than a long term solution imo My uninformed gut instinct without doing any research is that the hotel market is probably over regulated and the prices are artificially high or there are simply not enough available rooms (lobby mini-monopolies or whatever you want to call it) and that's the reason why people flock to lower priced/other available options. I guess a study on residential to short term rent demand would be helpful.
- a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
  There isn't any mystery. Property owners in residential neighborhoods absolutely do not want a stream of transients passing through the hood. This is not new. Airbnb just flew under the radar long enough to avoid the hammer of long standing inn-keeping/boarding-house regulations.
- xtian 11y ago
  Yes: this is precisely the issue that most people seem to be ignoring. I traveled in Europe a bit last year and was amazed at the affordable options for travelers. Between nicer hostels and hotels that offered small single rooms with a communal bathroom, I was able to get a clean place to sleep for $25-70/night. I haven't seen that in the US outside of AirBnB. Most US hotels give you a huge room with a huge bed for a high price, and they're either located right in the middle of downtown or all the way on the edge of the city so you'd need to rent a car. When I'm traveling, I much prefer to ditch the bullshit standard amenities like room service, a pool, continental breakfast, etc. and get a simple room in a part of town where people actually live. Even more so if I'm visiting friends. Not sure what in our regulations makes this unpopular, but it's the real problem.
jamilb 11y ago
Airbnb is really just the middleman. There will always be a demand for folks to rent out extra space they have and likewise always be a tenant who is willing to occupy it. Imagine if Airbnb was completely decentralized -- a native, open-source application akin to Bitcoin. With no central server to shut down, office to raid, or company to sue, how would city governments prevent people from renting out their unused housing space? They could catch a few and make examples out of them (similar to RIAA with music torrenting) but they will overwhelming fail to prevent the hotel incumbents from becoming obsolete.
jpatokal 11y ago
So renting entire apartment is banned, but renting parts of it are OK? Apply the "Singapore solution": lock up one bedroom, so the owner can claim they live there, and rent out the rest. (Under Singapore public housing rules, subleasing entire apartments is forbidden, but renting out parts is OK. Sounds familiar, no?)
euphoria83 11y ago
Any new innovation has social impact and a part of the society, including the ruling bodies, react by trying to reverse the change. Any innovation will have some negative impact on the society because of lack of laws regulating the change. AirBnB is facing it, so is Tesla, and Uber. But, it is apparent, at least for the previously listed examples, that these are ideas whose time has come. I do not get worried by such decisions of ruling bodies. They are only temporary.
Futurebot 11y ago
Maybe AirBnB needs a standards enforcement division. A 24-hour service where you call them up, make your complaint, and they send over some big scary people to knock on the offender's door and ask them to "turn it down" or "pick up their garbage." Local government offices and the landlords themselves can't respond quickly enough (the former can't/won't send someone there at 2AM and it'd be pretty tough to get the latter to run over to your apartment for this sort of thing.) Basically AirBnB police.
DigitalSea 11y ago
Sadly that's what happens when you challenge an existing business model and industry who are afraid and will spare no expense to get legislation passed preventing competition from battering your profits. I understand that services like Airbnb and Uber are unregulated, but instead of working with these companies to draft legislation that addresses the concerns, you're seeing draconian bills just outright banning them. It doesn't matter what the people want, when there is money involved, you can bet the side who doesn't necessarily make the most noise, but has the most money will win. Whether or not politicians, corporations and residents afraid of change like it or not, the sharing economy is here to stay and will always find a way around any opposition. Look at Uber, opposed not only in multiple states in the USA, but also in other states in other countries.
- colept 11y ago
  Competition from hotels is just one side of the issue. The other side is safety and security. I lived in a building next to a hostel for a year and a half. It was well maintained and the guests were regulated. Never had any complaints about the guests. On the other hand, my next door neighbor rented out his condo AirBnB style for a few months. It was obnoxious, the owner was remote and the guests were never regulated. The common areas were trashed, the guests were loud, and none of it mattered because they only had to deal with the consequences for a short term. The fact of the matter is: there needs to be a distinction in regulation between short term and long term housing. As much as I am a fan of startups that make life convenient, the unregulated nature of AirBnB makes life difficult for anyone else not in the exchange. That's what hotels are for, to abstract that difficulty so that it only involves those within the boundaries of the exchange: the guests, the owners, and the service.
song 11y ago
In my apartment building there's an apartment that is rented out through Airbnb. There's also an apartment rented out to two students... We have a lot more issues with those two students and their friends than with all of the Airbnb short term renters. It's anecdotical but I don't believe that short term renters are more likely to cause issues. Airbnb's concept is also not new. Before Airbnb people rented apartments on Homelidays. It's interesting that thanks to the critical mass of Airbnb and their marketing people become more aware of it.
zouhair 11y ago
And this should also happen to Uber.
- eropple 11y ago
  I'm critical of Uber because Uber is exploitative and kinda shitty, but I see a difference in kind here. AirBNB causes negative externalities to people around the participants in the transaction. Uber, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't.
dwg 11y ago
I'm a supporter of airbnb. However, government has a right to close loopholes in existing regulations (e.g. hotel tax) that are opened by the changes in the environment (e.g. availability of new technology such as airbnb). It's unfortunate that they chose to do this by an outright ban. It's especially unfortunate for homeowners who can't as easily leave the community if they disagree with the councils decision. As I read through the comments in this and previous posts about airbnb, I noticed that a majority of issues cited by angry neighbors are related to renting of units in apartment buildings, as opposed to single family homes. I'm not suggesting that there are more abuses of the service in apartment buildings (though here may well be for a number of reasons), merely that the abuses are more troublesome in these cases because of the resources shared by neighbors (staircases, walls, etc.). It seems to me that the owners or managers of apartment buildings, and the homeowners associations of condos, should be able to enact reasonable limits to short-term rentals of their own properties in their rental agreements. To me this is a much more desirable way to attack the problem, rather than a hasty ban, as it may give people more choice in the matter. I say may because it's probably equally likely that apartment buildings would blindly start banning it as well. Nonetheless if I am someone who cares about using the service, I would try to find apartment that allows it.
eryman 11y ago
This has to be bribery. There would be no reason to pass this if they were working for the people.
CodeWriter23 11y ago
This isn't about noisy renters. It's about rental arbitragers driving the price of rental properties through the roof.
qooleot 11y ago
Our city (Raleigh) had the last B&B close, and the owners blamed it on Airbnb: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article18917151.html http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/...

241 points by adamio 11y ago

Used Airbnb recently for a trip to LA for a friend's wedding. Myself and a few friends were able to rent a house in the hills which was way nicer, less expensive, and significantly easier than organizing a block of hotel rooms. Aside from moments where some would have to wait due to both showers being used, the trip was much more enjoyable. While I agree that some rules need to be adjusted for Airbnb type of rentals, I really can't think of a reason why anyone would want to straight up ban it. > The rules legalize “home-sharing” – in which the occupant rents a couch, spare bedroom or backyard unit – but require hosts to obtain a business license and pay Santa Monica’s 14% hotel tax. Is this going to be the new loophole?

pneumatics 11y ago
The owner must be present during home-sharing, so each property owner should be limited to sharing one property at a time. Since the properties must be licensed, it should be easy to shut down the multiple-property Airbnb landlords. What this might enable is "sharing" a huge property, say an apartment complex, essentially opening up a new class of low- or no-amenity hotels.

Old_Thrashbarg 11y ago

A win for the hotel industry lobby groups and a loss for the general public.

themoonbus 11y ago
Unless you're part of the general public who lives in a desirable area, and your rent is increasing because limited housing is being turned into unregulated hotels. I should say, I've used AirBnB many times and always had a great experience, but this isn't a clear cut "good" vs "evil" issue.
- ripley12 11y ago
  "limited housing" is the key point. Most North American municipalities have painful and binding limits on the number of housing units allowed: http://www.metafilter.com/148375/Anyone-have-a-Pop-up-blocker-For-houses#5989161 http://www.metafilter.com/148375/Anyone-have-a-Pop-up-blocke... Banning AirBnB is at best going to lower demand a little bit, it' not going to fix the much larger underlying problem.
  - themoonbus 11y ago
    Completely agree. I'm just saying it's not a clear cut issue of the public vs. the hotels. There are legitimate arguments for limiting someone's ability to rent out their living space to short term tenants that have nothing to do with the hotel lobby. As someone who lives in an apartment building with fairly thin walls, I can sympathize with some one not wanting a parade of short term tenants as their neighbor.
danhak 11y ago
A win for people trying to afford homes they actually intend to live in, and for their neighbors who didn't agree to live next to a hotel.

tptacek 11y ago

This is going to happen in most cities; it has to, because the pendulum has swung too far from "abusive regulation" to "abusive lack of regulation". People like to invoke the evil "hotel lobby", which I'm sure does exist!, but it is not even a little bit hard to find loud, angry citizens complaining. Those complaints are entirely predictable: people buy or rent residences in buildings expecting those buildings to be inhabited by long-term residents, then some part of the building gets converted to a hotel. People aren't OK with that. There are also places where vibrant short-term rental markets may exacerbate tight housing markets. I've had nothing but good Airbnb experiences, in SFBA, NYC, and London. I hope Airbnb works this out. But they don't really hold all the cards here.

jedrek 11y ago
What's funny is every major city I've ever been in has had ultra-short term, private apartment rentals. AirBNB just made it extremely popular and easy to rent a room or your flat without putting a lot of work in.
- fixxer 11y ago
  I think that is the real innovation of the "api businesses" like airbnb and uber. of course, there is politics and unions and taxes (oh my!), so it gets muddied.
shampine 11y ago
I live in downtown Los Angeles. In my community of buildings all tenants were served letters that threatened eviction if we put our place up on Airbnb. It is specifically outlined in majority of our leases. Several people I know have been evicted as a result. Regulations aren't even needed some buildings are just taking care of this issue on their own. For my specific building and as a renter, I'm okay with there being no Airbnb places.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  > Regulations aren't even needed some buildings are just taking care of this issue on their own. Some buildings won't take care of it (especially in situations where people are buying whole buildings to rent out), leaving their neighbors without much recourse without regulation.

hackuser 11y ago

This article explains some of the problems caused by short-term rentals such as Airbnb: http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-airbnb-housing-market-20150311-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-airbnb-hous... Also, it seems reasonable that hotels and Airbnb comppete on a level playing field in terms of tax and regulation. All that said, I think they need to find solutions that accomodate all parties: Hotels, short-term rentals, and the housing market for renters.

marssaxman 11y ago
Is it reasonable that hotels and my friend with a couple of spare bedrooms in his house should have to compete on a level playing field in terms of regulation, inspection, taxation, and the like? Because as far as I can tell Airbnb does not operate anything; they are just a booking service for people who rent out spare bedrooms. It doesn't seem reasonable that my friend with the big house should have to jump through all the same hoops as the professionals running the Marriott or whatever.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Well, as the guy staying there, I'd like to have SOME guarantee that the place isn't unsafe, unsanitary, cheating me or spying on me. So as a consumer, then yes I do want them to jump through all the hoops.
  - mason240 11y ago
    Then don't go to AirBnB places. Go to hotels. It really is that simple. Don't deprive other people of choice because you don't want to choose.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      We can say that, but it doesn't end there. Paying folks money means I get value in return. There will be disputes about the value; lawyers get involved. The whole hotel-thing is 100's of years of working that out in law. Now we start over? Just because AirBnB is cool, and we want it to succeed? I don't think this is going to end well.

ecnahc515 11y ago

While I love Airbnb, it can truely be destructive to housing markets, at least to an extent. Here in Portland, OR it's beginning to become a larger problem as housing is getting bought purely to rent out. I just hope we can come to a point where perhaps there is a way to allow airbnb to exist, while making it illegal to rent out property purely to rent it. This could allow it to be more like the bed and breakfast logging that it tends to feel like. I'm thinking restrictions to aid this are artificial limits to how many people/how many days per year you can rent out rooms in your home, which airbnb would be required to record. I still have no idea how things like sanitation will be handled. Right now an airbnb host has very little obligation be sanitary like a hotel, except that it might make their reviews worse.

dataker 11y ago
It's adapts itself to the market: if there's more gentrification in an area, the more likely it will be to have these things. Without Airbnb, the only difference is that you'd have more shared disgusting hotel rooms.
- untog 11y ago
  Without Airbnb, the only difference is that you'dmore shared disgusting hotel rooms. And cheaper real estate, as fewer properties are bought up to rent out on a short term basis.
alexashka 11y ago
Seems like an easy fix - just make it prohibitively expensive to own multiple properties. All these problems revolve around rich folks investing in real estate to make a buck - that that is even a thing, is insane. Housing is for people to live in, not for you to buy, renovate, sell. Or buy, rent. Or buy, tear down, build new, sell/rent. It's all part of a greater problem - when folks can become multi-millionaires by gaming the system instead of contributing to it and do so with impunity, we have what we have. Housing prices are inflated by people who buy/sell for profit, coupled with retarded regulations that favor that over people trying to live their lives. Capitalism yay in other words :)

will_brown 11y ago

I wish the article explored the penalties associated with continued rentals in violation of the new regulations. Obviously there could be tax penalties but I'm curious if there are additional civil fines, potential criminal violations, or hell maybe civil forfeiture laws might apply (I saw that tounge and cheek but after another front page post that may be a reality?). Would airbnb pay costs and lawyers fees like Uber has done?

hemantv 11y ago
AirBnb most of the time brush off their hands. The quality is terrible in some places.

xbryanx 11y ago

I assume this is a story about their strict JS style guide? https://github.com/airbnb/javascript https://github.com/airbnb/javascript

sologoub 11y ago

The article seems to highlight a legitimate use case that the regulation is screwing up, which also happens to be Airbnb's original purpose - to sublet while you are out of town or otherwise not using the space. Sure, Airbnb has grown way past that, but in my mind there is a very big difference between running a business on Airbnb and subletting while you are away to help pay for a trip. A provision with a cap of how many nights a year one could sublet without being considered a hotel would be a lot more sensible. While I'm sure it would be difficult to enforce, services like Airbnb and HomeAway would probably cooperate in disclosing booked stays per address. It wouldn't be that hard to link the data together and spot violators. I'm sure residents would help as well. Taxing is sensible though.

iamdave 11y ago
While I'm sure it would be difficult to enforce, services like Airbnb and HomeAway would probably cooperate in disclosing booked stays per address. It wouldn't be that hard to link the data together and spot violators. I can say with first hand knowledge, that HomeAway at least engages with cities politically to build cases for short-term rental advocacy from economic development to enabling and increasing the attractiveness of tourism in cities where they operate. They setup sessions with city and community leaders and work on actionable regulation and legislation with cities to introduce fair laws for rentals. I'm no shill for HomeAway, but I do have a close personal friend who works on the Government Affairs team and have witnessed their efforts with my own eyes. At least in their case, HomeAway works with cities, instead of against them.

jedberg 11y ago

I'm really torn here. On one hand, as a homeowner, I would be pretty upset if my neighbors turned their houses into "hotels". There would be a lot of noise and a lot of people who don't care much about the neighbors since they are only here for a few days. On the other hand, I just got back from traveling to Europe, where all of the bookings we made were AirBnB. My wife and I were traveling with our 4 month old baby, and there weren't any hotels that could really meet our needs as well as the apartments that we rented. The trip would have been much harder without AirBnB. I think Santa Monica went too far here -- they should have left some wiggle room for folks who want to rent out their place on weekends and such, like the folks we rented from in Vienna.

jonlucc 11y ago
When your family was travelling, did you make extra noise at the houses and apartments you rented? Why do you expect most people to disrespect the people around them if they are only there temporarily?
- jedberg 11y ago
  No, because I'm respectful of others. But I definitely know people who have the attitude of "well I'll never see these people again!". Also, when I stay in a real hotel, there have been many times when folks were noisy and disrespectful.
  - rootedbox 11y ago
    And when you are at a hotel and people are acting up.. You can go to the manager. What happens when your neighbor decides to rent their place via Air BNB, And folks are noisy and disrespectful.. Who do you complain to?? The home owner?? Do you think he's going to kick the people out? They are a revenue stream, and you are not. Well.. you may say. I'll call the cops. Ok. Your neighbor gets a warning.. then eventually a 300 dollar fine.. Your neighbor can afford a few fines a month from a few random loud nights as long as the air bnb money keeps coming in. In fact your neighbor will need to make sure their place is full more nights if you start calling the cops.

tdees40 11y ago

We just rented a place for a month on AirBnb only to find out that the owner kept two cats there (undisclosed); my wife has severe cat allergies. Now we're having to fight tooth and nail to get our money back, and the property owner is saying that her policy is no refunds, period. So yeah, I kinda get why people can cozy up to the idea of regulation.

baddox 11y ago
That seems like a very good reason to cozy up to the idea that you should be able to get your money back from a host who misrepresents the property being rented, but not a particularly good reason to cozy up to the idea of arbitrary short-term rental regulation.
- res0nat0r 11y ago
  The greater point is that if Airbnb providers were already regulated this type of thing might not be an issue, ie: playing by the same rules hotels do.
- tdees40 11y ago
  Sure. But who's going to enforce that "should"? This is why regulation is popular; it's about recourse.
  - baddox 11y ago
    Regardless of who enforces the rules, my point is that the rule prohibiting the misrepresentation of a business transaction is much more reasonable than the rule prohibiting (or significantly limiting) short-term rentals.
mason240 11y ago
You were perfectly willing to take that risk when using the service for whatever advantage you thought it had over a traditional hotel (price, location, whatever). You lost on that bet. Rather than than trying to decide if you are willing to take that risk next time or to pay a little extra for certainty with a traditional hotel, you want all the option removed to everyone. This dilemma isn't at unique to hotels, the "cheap with risk versus expensive, reliable name brand" applies to nearly everything. Do you get leaves cleared by some guy off of Craigslist, or spend more for "real" landscape contractor? Do you get your car brakes redone by Joe the Mechanic, or do you pay extra to go to Midas?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

31reasons 11y ago

>>Estimates that more than 7,000 houses and apartments have been taken off the rental market in metro Los Angeles for use as short-term rentals. As I am searching for a good apartment in LA, this makes me bit upset.

Omniusaspirer 11y ago
Only because it's contrary to your own personal interest. The owners of these properties have clearly determined that the actual value they can realize on the properties they own is maximized by Airbnb as opposed to a more traditional rental. They're certainly happy, as are -presumably- their short-term renters.
- 31reasons 11y ago
  Maybe my comment is also contrary to your own personal interest.
  - Omniusaspirer 11y ago
    A downvote, a shill accusation, and no counter-argument. Perhaps you could take a different approach and explain to me why you feel the interests of a single renter should supersede those of a property owner and 10's or even hundreds of shorter-term renters.
ripley12 11y ago
You may want to read Greg Morrow's UCLA dissertation on urban planning in Los Angeles for some context: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k64g20f#page-1 http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k64g20f#page-1 This graph (p. 3) shows that zoning changes in LA since 1960 are many orders of magnitude more important than 7,000 short-term rentals: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HnkwzmO56vU/VQHurofJUUI/AAAAAAAABE4/NeJaN16zkkQ/s1600/2014-08-07%2B17-06-37_The%2BHomeowner%2BRevolution_%2BDemocracy%2C%2BLand%2BUse%2Band%2Bthe%2BLos%2BAngeles%2BSlow-Growth%2BMo.png http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HnkwzmO56vU/VQHurofJUUI/AAAAAAAABE...
prostoalex 11y ago

toolz 11y ago

god forbid that a governing body gives the low influence nuisances less attention than the powerful social nuisances. Slumlords all over the place, but of course the first thing on the governing bodies agenda is to make sure nothing disrupts the hugely homogeneous industry that is room rentals.

staunch 11y ago

I just moved out of downtown Santa Monica, from an apartment building that was swamped with Airbnb renters that caused all kinds of problems. Airbnb is doing good and evil in the world. They deserve to be forced to reduce the evil to reasonable levels. Maybe apartment buildings shouldn't be generally permitted, for example.

72deluxe 11y ago
This would be an interesting rule to enforce in places like Barcelona, where every house is an apartment (as far as I remember after visiting)

nostromo 11y ago

I just don't think city councils are going to be able to put a billion dollar genie back in the bottle. Airbnb is a p2p market. When regulation attacks p2p markets, they don't die, they adapt. Airbnb itself might die like Napster, but someone else will find a way to take their place. Maybe the company that replaces it will be based outside US borders, safe from any subpoena for rental records.

untog 11y ago
Maybe the company that replaces it will be based outside US borders, safe from any subpoena for rental records. That only works when activity is online-only and difficult to trace. If you're renting your apartment out it's pretty easy to detect.
- eropple 11y ago
  Exactly. This is the same thing as rubber-hose cryptanalysis--if somebody can get hold of that meat carrier for your brilliant brain, they can figure out what you're doing. And so AirBNB will lose. (They've knuckled under wherever confronted.) So will the next one.
prostoalex 11y ago
They have succumbed to the taxation/licensing pressure in pretty much any market they've been challenged http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Airbnb-to-collect-hotel-taxes-for-San-Francisco-5365352.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Airbnb-to-collect-hotel-t... http://nypost.com/2014/04/14/airbnb-aims-to-start-taxing-renters-by-july-1/ http://nypost.com/2014/04/14/airbnb-aims-to-start-taxing-ren... > When regulation attacks p2p markets, they don't die, they adapt. I think we've seen that iteration with craigslist -> apts/housing -> short-term/sub-lease, and in many popular destinations the space was prone to scams and shady dealers.

natrius 11y ago

There seems to be a general sense that short-term rentals make housing unaffordable. I disagree. We came up with the technology to scale a given piece of land to hundreds of residents at a low marginal cost a long time ago. Unfortunately, we've outlawed that technology in the vast majority of the American urbanized area. As a result, the demand to live on a particular piece of land far outstrips the supply of homes, and this competition makes prices skyrocket. Build more homes. Build a lot of them. It's the only way to keep our cities affordable.

callmeed 11y ago

I have a friend in Santa Monica who rents 2 apartments. One he rents very cheap via some sort of rent control/housing assistance program. He then proceeds to rent the rooms out on AirBnB. He gets enough business to pay for the apartment he lives in and live frugally without having full-time employment. It's hard to blame cities when this (and other) kind of abuse is going on.

maw 11y ago
I think it's easy to blame cities for rent control. Just shows what I know.
aikah 11y ago
> One he rents very cheap via some sort of rent control/housing assistance program He is probably not untitled to housing assistance if he has another apartment. He should make as much money as possible and stop that scheme because if he get caught doing that he may go to prison for fraud.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  it's probably a discounted sub-let from someone who has a lease from 10+ years ago. it's very common in santa monica.
jboggan 11y ago
There's a lot of this going on because the incentive has been so strong, the arbitrage so great, and the penalties so rare. I think the city is striking an excellent balance with this vote.

jboggan 11y ago

As a Santa Monica resident, I think this is great. Santa Monica has, by some indices, the most expensive hotel rooms in the state. This has driven a huge demand for short rentals near the beach. I have no access to numbers but my personal anecdata is interesting for the number of people I know involved in grey-market short term rentals and the number of people unable to find available apartments, let alone available apartments anywhere near the rents 2-3 years ago pre-AirBnB. I did protracted apartment searches in the same area of Santa Monica in November 2012 and 2014 and the difference in price and availability was immense. At the same time I had one friend who was making a full time job out of "hosting" for AirBnB-ed condos and apartments either bought or rented in the past year by deep-pocketed "investors" in Malibu and Santa Monica with the sole purpose of short term rentals. I know another young lady who rents three apartments and lives in whichever one is earning the least on AirBnb. She nets about $1000 a month doing this and manages to take 3 single residential units off the market in the process. There's a lot of people doing variations on this business model and it is absolutely pushing out the longer term residents. I've seen many of my beach friends (mostly involved in entertainment, good living wages but not anything like tech wages) progressively pushed further and further afield as random housing events (unit selling, massive renovation, roommate disputes) mean they cannot afford to relocate anywhere near the place that they are leaving. That is also despite their earnings increasing through normal career progression. My parents came to visit last Christmas and they used AirBnB to rent a back house for a week a few blocks from my apartment. It was great. Do I think that shouldn't be allowed? No, but considering their host was running a year-round business out of their home I don't think it is unreasonable to treat them like a business.

therobot24 11y ago
This is an interesting perspective that i hadn't considered, and honestly i can't think of any balance. If you penalize Airbnb renters with taxes and nonsense licensing you're going to end up with less diversity where just a select few end up doing the same thing you're describing instead of the many that do it now. While if you do nothing you're going to keep pushing real residents out through price hikes. Tough situation. However, I do think that this is very limited to areas of already high demand and shouldn't be a blanket policy across a whole region.
11y ago

coliveira 11y ago

I think this is predictable in many more cities across the world. There is already people buying properties with the sole goal of converting them into airbnb units. And this on areas which are supposed to be residential, which is a big problem for people who happen to actually live there.

snowwrestler 11y ago

VRBO has been around for longer than AirBnB, and specializes in full-unit or whole-house short-term rentals. But I never see them mentioned in these sorts of articles, either as a company that is affected by these types of regulations, or as a company that has taken a public position for or against these types of regulations. Why is that? On previous stories the issue has been bedroom rentals, or listing rented apartments (i.e. short-term subleasing). But this seems to target whole-unit short-term rentals, even if they're owned. That seems to be right in the VRBO wheelhouse. For example: 158 listings: http://www.vrbo.com/vacation-rentals/usa/california/los-angeles-county/santa-monica?amenities=bookable http://www.vrbo.com/vacation-rentals/usa/california/los-ange...

eropple 11y ago
I can't speak to VRBO, but I know that HomeAway is very particular about chucking out bad renters and works very closely with local governments to build fair legislation around short-term rentals. (Disclaimer, such as it is: former TripAdvisor employee, incidentally touched their Vacation Rentals stuff a few years ago, don't really care about it and I use HomeAway.)

rajacombinator 11y ago

Folks, let's be honest. This is mostly about ornery landlords who are bitter that they are missing out on perceived higher rates for their properties. Add in a few nosy neighbors who have nothing else to do to make them feel important other than file complaints with their local HOA/city/whatever. AirBNB should seriously hire a full time team of economists to publish studies defending their company. The efficiency gains are tremendous.

eonw 11y ago

good, now they just need to shutdown the other regulation skirting companies like Uber as well. It's not fair these companies skirt well known and age old laws to create an unfair advantage(and wealth) for themselves, by simply ignoring those laws. Play by the same rules as your competitors do and see how well you fair. Disruption by evading legalities isn't really all that impressive... the cartels and mobsters have done it for decades.

Sideloader 11y ago
Libertarianism, i.e the deluded belief that unfettered capitalism is perfect and the panacea for all the world's ills, is very popular in certain SV startup circles. Uber, for example, blatantly ignoring local bylaws and regulations makes perfect sense when seen through libertarian tinted goggles.

jokoon 11y ago

I recently saw an airbnb advertising in my city in france. The more I hear about uber and airbnb and those websites who try to replace existing services that doesn't use internet, the more it looks like some libertarian business model. I'm not against it, but once insurances and the law adapt to it, I wonder if it will really be attractive anymore.

kriro 11y ago

I think I get all points of the debate but the key question for me is...why are there so many airbnb rentals. Clearly there's some sort of demand, clearly the hotel econsystem doesn't handle it well enough. That's the root issue that needs investigation. Tighter regulations of airbnb are more of a hotfix than a long term solution imo My uninformed gut instinct without doing any research is that the hotel market is probably over regulated and the prices are artificially high or there are simply not enough available rooms (lobby mini-monopolies or whatever you want to call it) and that's the reason why people flock to lower priced/other available options. I guess a study on residential to short term rent demand would be helpful.

a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
There isn't any mystery. Property owners in residential neighborhoods absolutely do not want a stream of transients passing through the hood. This is not new. Airbnb just flew under the radar long enough to avoid the hammer of long standing inn-keeping/boarding-house regulations.
xtian 11y ago
Yes: this is precisely the issue that most people seem to be ignoring. I traveled in Europe a bit last year and was amazed at the affordable options for travelers. Between nicer hostels and hotels that offered small single rooms with a communal bathroom, I was able to get a clean place to sleep for $25-70/night. I haven't seen that in the US outside of AirBnB. Most US hotels give you a huge room with a huge bed for a high price, and they're either located right in the middle of downtown or all the way on the edge of the city so you'd need to rent a car. When I'm traveling, I much prefer to ditch the bullshit standard amenities like room service, a pool, continental breakfast, etc. and get a simple room in a part of town where people actually live. Even more so if I'm visiting friends. Not sure what in our regulations makes this unpopular, but it's the real problem.

jamilb 11y ago

Airbnb is really just the middleman. There will always be a demand for folks to rent out extra space they have and likewise always be a tenant who is willing to occupy it. Imagine if Airbnb was completely decentralized -- a native, open-source application akin to Bitcoin. With no central server to shut down, office to raid, or company to sue, how would city governments prevent people from renting out their unused housing space? They could catch a few and make examples out of them (similar to RIAA with music torrenting) but they will overwhelming fail to prevent the hotel incumbents from becoming obsolete.

jpatokal 11y ago

So renting entire apartment is banned, but renting parts of it are OK? Apply the "Singapore solution": lock up one bedroom, so the owner can claim they live there, and rent out the rest. (Under Singapore public housing rules, subleasing entire apartments is forbidden, but renting out parts is OK. Sounds familiar, no?)

euphoria83 11y ago

Any new innovation has social impact and a part of the society, including the ruling bodies, react by trying to reverse the change. Any innovation will have some negative impact on the society because of lack of laws regulating the change. AirBnB is facing it, so is Tesla, and Uber. But, it is apparent, at least for the previously listed examples, that these are ideas whose time has come. I do not get worried by such decisions of ruling bodies. They are only temporary.

Futurebot 11y ago

Maybe AirBnB needs a standards enforcement division. A 24-hour service where you call them up, make your complaint, and they send over some big scary people to knock on the offender's door and ask them to "turn it down" or "pick up their garbage." Local government offices and the landlords themselves can't respond quickly enough (the former can't/won't send someone there at 2AM and it'd be pretty tough to get the latter to run over to your apartment for this sort of thing.) Basically AirBnB police.

DigitalSea 11y ago

Sadly that's what happens when you challenge an existing business model and industry who are afraid and will spare no expense to get legislation passed preventing competition from battering your profits. I understand that services like Airbnb and Uber are unregulated, but instead of working with these companies to draft legislation that addresses the concerns, you're seeing draconian bills just outright banning them. It doesn't matter what the people want, when there is money involved, you can bet the side who doesn't necessarily make the most noise, but has the most money will win. Whether or not politicians, corporations and residents afraid of change like it or not, the sharing economy is here to stay and will always find a way around any opposition. Look at Uber, opposed not only in multiple states in the USA, but also in other states in other countries.

colept 11y ago
Competition from hotels is just one side of the issue. The other side is safety and security. I lived in a building next to a hostel for a year and a half. It was well maintained and the guests were regulated. Never had any complaints about the guests. On the other hand, my next door neighbor rented out his condo AirBnB style for a few months. It was obnoxious, the owner was remote and the guests were never regulated. The common areas were trashed, the guests were loud, and none of it mattered because they only had to deal with the consequences for a short term. The fact of the matter is: there needs to be a distinction in regulation between short term and long term housing. As much as I am a fan of startups that make life convenient, the unregulated nature of AirBnB makes life difficult for anyone else not in the exchange. That's what hotels are for, to abstract that difficulty so that it only involves those within the boundaries of the exchange: the guests, the owners, and the service.

song 11y ago

In my apartment building there's an apartment that is rented out through Airbnb. There's also an apartment rented out to two students... We have a lot more issues with those two students and their friends than with all of the Airbnb short term renters. It's anecdotical but I don't believe that short term renters are more likely to cause issues. Airbnb's concept is also not new. Before Airbnb people rented apartments on Homelidays. It's interesting that thanks to the critical mass of Airbnb and their marketing people become more aware of it.

zouhair 11y ago

And this should also happen to Uber.

eropple 11y ago
I'm critical of Uber because Uber is exploitative and kinda shitty, but I see a difference in kind here. AirBNB causes negative externalities to people around the participants in the transaction. Uber, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't.

dwg 11y ago

I'm a supporter of airbnb. However, government has a right to close loopholes in existing regulations (e.g. hotel tax) that are opened by the changes in the environment (e.g. availability of new technology such as airbnb). It's unfortunate that they chose to do this by an outright ban. It's especially unfortunate for homeowners who can't as easily leave the community if they disagree with the councils decision. As I read through the comments in this and previous posts about airbnb, I noticed that a majority of issues cited by angry neighbors are related to renting of units in apartment buildings, as opposed to single family homes. I'm not suggesting that there are more abuses of the service in apartment buildings (though here may well be for a number of reasons), merely that the abuses are more troublesome in these cases because of the resources shared by neighbors (staircases, walls, etc.). It seems to me that the owners or managers of apartment buildings, and the homeowners associations of condos, should be able to enact reasonable limits to short-term rentals of their own properties in their rental agreements. To me this is a much more desirable way to attack the problem, rather than a hasty ban, as it may give people more choice in the matter. I say may because it's probably equally likely that apartment buildings would blindly start banning it as well. Nonetheless if I am someone who cares about using the service, I would try to find apartment that allows it.

eryman 11y ago

This has to be bribery. There would be no reason to pass this if they were working for the people.

CodeWriter23 11y ago

This isn't about noisy renters. It's about rental arbitragers driving the price of rental properties through the roof.

qooleot 11y ago

Our city (Raleigh) had the last B&B close, and the owners blamed it on Airbnb: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article18917151.html http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/...