Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for short-term rentals

Compare to a city with great transit, then you know. I used to think that Vancouver transit was great. Then I started working in Shenzhen. Shenzhen and Hong Kong are awesome at public transit, Vancouver sucks. Part of the problem is that it's difficult for public transit in Vancouver to be profitable because the population density is so low.

> You do want people living in their homes for the vast majority of the time. You want them living there, hopefully being part of the community, getting invested in their lives there. The original argument is very sensible.

I vehemently disagree. People should be doing what they want, not what some other random person thinks they should be doing. Cities have dead periods all the time: people leave new york in the winter, or buenos aires in the summer. The idea that a community grows stronger by putting a fence is a sad one to me.

> This is only sort of okay. No reasonable person who cares about housing would push to move long term residents to hotels. This is just a terrible premise to put forward.

It is the equivalent premise to saying that you should ban hotels so there are more long term residents, or known as, reduce short term housing stock to increase long term housing stock.

> Do they really? Like whom? AirBnB isn't particularly expensive, and all-in costs are more often than not more expensive than hotels. I don't know _anyone_ who says they travel more because of AirBnb.

You might also not hear anyone say they use cabs more because of lyft and uber but I assure you that they do. Hotels have not particularly suffered their market share because of airbnb, but airbnb is widely used in all major cities. Hostels probably took a hit, but nowhere near the usage airbnb has. Hotels ~=, Hostels -=, Airbnb ++++= => people are travelling more.

Burnaby heights has a real nice resident/commerce mix (but very poor transit and developers are forcing a lot of the commerce out). Metrotown is a good area, around the station the commerce is developed and there is plenty of density but going in any direction from it brings you through strip malls. Brentwood is weird... It is a new artificial neighborhood with plenty of Cactus Clubs and Starbucks but it doesn't have much natural commerce and there is very little in the area in terms of employment, I am afraid that neighborhood might suddenly collapse if the developers stop pouring money into it.

Lougheed is fair, I would generally consider that part of the Burquitlam span. It's awkwardly spread out with the mall itself sitting in a sea of parking lots, that doesn't tend to help build a good neighborhood but it is thriving, possibly due to being within short reach of the box stores out United/Woolridge.

Sorry, I was incorrect about Metrotown, it is a pretty nice city center but the rest of Burnaby suffers from west-coast suburb development, areas are either residential, res+light commerce or res+employers, it's hard to find a neighborhood where you can live, work and shop unless you're working in retail, and IMO a neighborhood that can't supply all three is going to fade away to pure residential in time due to NIMBYism.

I agree, and part of your message is one of my strong objections. Public transit shouldn't be measured in terms of income-cost for profitability, most commercial ventures come with externalities of some sort and public transit provides a strongly net positive externality effect, it helps to subsidize business costs (cheaper transit can be seen as a subsidy to wages), retail prices (again, paying less gas/time/whatever to purchase a good makes it cheaper and reduces amazon's advantage) and psychology (IMO wanderlust is a real human need, being stuck in pattern for too long lowers productivity)

It's a public service and one that society should be happy to invest in. Governments that balance the books on public transit with accountants alone are acting against the societal good.

> In a pre-hotel era, it could have been also argued that hotels reduce the housing stock. After all, if long term residents dont use them, you could build residents in that place.

Sure, in a pre-hotel era, but then someone thought "hey what about people coming to visit our city?" and hotels were born.

> It has to be made absolutely clear that favoring long term residents over short term residents is a matter of power not of economics. It is a modern attempt at a tariff, or at an import restriction.

So? The long-term residents are the people that live in the city and actually make it what it is. They get the final say in what goes on in their own city that they pay taxes to. It's not about power--unless you mean the economic power to continue to afford to live in their city.

> Vancouver might not be able to expand sideways but it can expand up.

Sure, and I mention that as another way of alleviating housing strain--but that still doesn't absolve AirBnB renters.

> But lets say for the sake of argument it is impossible to build even a single dwelling unit more. Who is to say what each unit provides as maximum value? Why do you think that long term residents are more valuable to the city than short term residents even when they pay less, and where do you draw the line between allowing airbnbs or banning hotels. Or putting tourist quotas or tariffs.

I mean, your argument here is basically "wealthy travelers with the help of a large, wealthy corporation should be allowed to break local laws because it might be better for the economy."

> They have a disease that would exist with or without airbnb, which is the affordability of the housing stock.

Sure.

> Airbnb might aggravate that

This is a far cry from your original statement of "Short term rentals do not diminish housing stock"

> like eating ice cream aggravates your indigestion. That doesnt mean the proper solution is to 'regulate' ice cream.

So, a child eats ice cream, gets an upset tummy and demands government reconciliation therefore government regulation is silly?

A better metaphor would simply be a child eating ice cream despite being told not to by her parents, discovering that it gave her a terrible bellyache because she has lactose intolerance, and then deciding that she should regulate her ice cream intake carefully to avoid bellyaches in the future.

But I think you're just mistaken about the impetus for Vancouver to do this. I'm a fan of this regulation as I think it solves the extant problems of AirBnB (eg: people effectively operating hotels in areas without proper zoning without going through the relatively important legal hurdles to license one) while keeping the core principle in tact (ie: if you're going on vacation, it's fair to want to rent out your property for a short term occupant when you're not using it).

Post regulation: short term rentals are legal, provided that a) you acquire a license from the city to operate (note: this also protects consumers to some extant from scams), b) it's your principal dwelling, c) it's an actual legal dwelling (eg: not a hollowed out bus in an industrial park), and d) you have permission from the owner/strata.

Pre-regulation: short term rentals are illegal.

Effectively, this regulation expands the capabilities of AirBnB (good) while also limiting the effects of diminished housing in the city caused by AirBnB (good) while also providing some government-backed consumer protection (good). Literally the only people that this regulation hamstrings are property owners who own multiple residential apartments/houses that they do not live in who've been already breaking the law by allowing short-term rentals while not renting it out to long-term residents (which clearly and obviously diminishes housing stock). Sounds like a win in my books.