What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood
1–10 of 105 posts
Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood
#2The apartment vacancy rate in Vancouver is presently sub 1%.
People are illegally renting suites as Airbnb, taking up domestic housing stock.
It's illegal to rent suites for less than 31 days and without a business licence here, but they do it anyways.
Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood
#3It seems like there is a perfectly reasonable middle ground here — where households have the flexibility to rent out part of their primary residence, on a limited basis (either temporal or just part of the house), subject to clear and evenly enforced regulations. This is a pre-internet idea (e.g., casas particulares in Cuba in the 1990s) that becomes way easier/safer/better with a web-based platform. Personally, I find it massively more fun to stay in a typical home in a region that I'm visiting, and I can often find these on AirBnB.
Of course AirBnB is going to try to grow as much as possible to try to eat hotel revenues and develop new markets. But shouldn't communities have the right to combat the externalities that such growth entails?
Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood
#4Airbnb is a zero sum game - what tourists win, locals lose.
Two of my coworkers are currently being forced to look for a new place to live in a tight housing market because their current landlord can make more money renting on Airbnb.
I've stayed in Airbnbs in the past (and appreciated the convenience), but I no longer will.
Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood
#5Here is where the rubber of “corporate responsibility” meets the road. So far AB&B has looked askance to the issues they bring to the table and have only taken token steps to mitigate what they have wrought on communities. They talk the talk all day long about inclusivity, implicit bias and any other terms du jour to shirk from confronting the gigantic mastodon in the room —the one sided effects their services have on lower and middle income shoppers of housing. Yet, where it matters, they fail to walk the walk.
Their inaction and continued ignorance of these issues does magnitudes more harm than their progressive efforts in their corp HQ which benefits very few people in comparison.
Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood
#6To put it bluntly, I don't like competing with the entire rest of the world for housing in my city, and I'm pretty sure most other people don't either.
Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood
#7Airbnb is a zero sum game - what tourists win, locals lose. Two of my coworkers are currently being forced to look for a new place to live in a tight housing market because their current landlord can make more money renting on Airbnb. I've stayed in Airbnbs in the past (and appreciated the convenience), but I no longer will.
It's not zero sum unless the housing supply is fixed - the additional income from Airbnb can be invested in new housing.
Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood
#8Airbnb is a zero sum game - what tourists win, locals lose. Two of my coworkers are currently being forced to look for a new place to live in a tight housing market because their current landlord can make more money renting on Airbnb. I've stayed in Airbnbs in the past (and appreciated the convenience), but I no longer will.
Airbnb is a zero sum game - what tourists win, locals lose.
I think you mean that "zoning is a zero-sum game." Since the 1970s, when zoning became more severe and restrictive, housing costs have increased substantially: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/12/27/why-did-cities-freeze-in-.... We know how to create a positive-sum game: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-14/californi..., but we've made doing so illegal.
Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood
#9It seems like there is a perfectly reasonable middle ground here — where households have the flexibility to rent out part of their primary residence, on a limited basis (either temporal or just part of the house), subject to clear and evenly enforced regulations. This is a pre-internet idea (e.g., casas particulares in Cuba in the 1990s) that becomes way easier/safer/better with a web-based platform. Personally, I fi…
I suspect that partial apartment rentals are far less disruptive. It's full apartment rents that are causing issues.
I think this also comes back to over tourism. Travel is the new materialism. It used to be you kept up with the Jones by buying new cars, new jewellery, new houses. Now it's by going away, frequently and to the most exotic places, to prove how open minded and wordly you are. And it's killing the planet and many local communities. There will be a backlash eventually.
Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood
#10I agree that AirBNB is enabling (and profiting from) this behaviour but what is essentially happening is people using AirBNB to turn on their own neighbours.
Have there been any government initiatives to educate AirBNB hosts about the impact of their actions?