What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood • Hacker News Board

Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood

#51

Post by matwood » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

guhidalg wrote: post #43

matwood wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my city Your city? Interesting way to frame it. Maybe you were born where you currently live or maybe you moved there last year. Either way it doesn't really matter. Why do you feel the need to keep other people out of the city you currently live? The reasons that you live where you live are the same reasons other people want to live and visit. Why deny someone that ability to move or visit only because you got the…

Because of taxes. OP likely has been paying taxes all his life, his parents likely paying taxes all their life, and so on... in a way, the city belongs more to the OP than not.

You don't think tourists pay a ton in taxes? I live in one of these cities and there are a ton of taxes that are geared towards tourists. In many way locals benefit with lower taxes because of all of the tourist income.

Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood

#52

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #38

danharaj wrote: post #6

To 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.

> my city Your city? Interesting way to frame it. Maybe you were born where you currently live or maybe you moved there last year. Either way it doesn't really matter. Why do you feel the need to keep other people out of the city you currently live? The reasons that you live where you live are the same reasons other people want to live and visit. Why deny someone that ability to move or visit only because you got the…

[deleted]

Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood

#53

Post by grandmczeb » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

ck425 wrote: post #13

grandmczeb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not zero sum unless the housing supply is fixed - the additional income from Airbnb can be invested in new housing.

But that additional housing can also destroy the character of existing areas. That doesn't mean we don't build, just that it has to be considered, which is harder to do when demand is increasing too quickly.

Sounds like preserving character is the real zero sum problem then.

Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood

#54

Post by mcjiggerlog » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

jonny_eh wrote: post #44

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #36

I live next door to an AirBnB, in a building where maybe 1/5 of the flats have been converted to tourist flats. When I moved in 3 years ago there were zero. I'm woken up by screaming drunk tourists as they come home at 3am on a Tuesday night. There are constantly people clattering suitcases up the stairs at all hours. People smoke inside the common areas instead of on the street. Of course, just generally feeling lik…

Neighbours should have a hotline to Airbnb that they can call to report disruptive guests.

I've been thinking this for ages!

Makes me really angry when I think that the guests will receive great reviews from some faceless agency who never even interacted with them, whereas we as residents have to suffer for their behaviour.

Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood

#55

Post by walrus01 » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #17

walrus01 wrote: post #2

The 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.

Are any of those occupied by locals for whom it's the best housing they can find?

There are a great many of these that are 1BD/650 sq ft size condos and apartments that would otherwise be occupied by locals, at market rental rate for standard 12-month lease terms. But the owners of the condos are renting them out on AirBNB.

Or people are renting apartments for $1700/mo from absentee owners, and then illegally subletting them for less than 30-day terms on AirBNB and running the sublet as a business.

Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood

#56

Post by zip1234 » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

pastor_elm wrote: post #29

burlesona wrote: post #25

How have we gotten this far into the comments without anyone mentioning the root cause here is a general shortage of housing in places people want to live / work / visit? It seems to me that AirBNB isn't to blame for the overall lack of housing (and temporary housing aka hostel/hotel) options, rather it's just the most visible brand name competing for the limited supply. Cities can ban it if they want, but I'd rather…

The root cause is that in many ways, housing is subsidized and cheaper. Airbnb takes advantage of that to undercut the hotel industry.

People use AirBnB not just for the price. I've used it before to get a more authentic experience when traveling. The places generally vary a lot more in capacity (IE not just 2-4 per room). For a family with smaller children, renting out a small apartment for a weekend is much nicer than a tiny hotel room on the nth floor of some homogeneous building. I think many hotels can't compete because they cannot provide the variety of options that AirBnB provides.

Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood

#57

Post by guhidalg » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #51

guhidalg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of taxes. OP likely has been paying taxes all his life, his parents likely paying taxes all their life, and so on... in a way, the city belongs more to the OP than not.

You don't think tourists pay a ton in taxes? I live in one of these cities and there are a ton of taxes that are geared towards tourists. In many way locals benefit with lower taxes because of all of the tourist income.

We’d have to look at numbers to argue this objectively, but I highly doubt that a tourist spending 1-2 weeks a year in a city will yield more revenue to the local government than a resident living there 365 days a year.

Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood

#58

Post by ritchiea » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #25

How have we gotten this far into the comments without anyone mentioning the root cause here is a general shortage of housing in places people want to live / work / visit? It seems to me that AirBNB isn't to blame for the overall lack of housing (and temporary housing aka hostel/hotel) options, rather it's just the most visible brand name competing for the limited supply. Cities can ban it if they want, but I'd rather…

It's not just a lack of housing. Airbnb is changing neighborhoods by creating increased demand for vacation friendly activities and turning some areas into an effective full time weekend. It's taking popular neighborhoods like the Mission in SF or Williamsburg in Brooklyn or the Gothic quarter in Barcelona and turning them into 365 day a year tourist parties. Any neighborhood with a reputation for being hip, having art, music, bars etc. is now half populated by Airbnb guests at all times.

Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood

#59

Post by ghaff » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

ck425 wrote: post #9

glup wrote: post #3

It 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…

A lot of tourism is also cheaper because of cheap airfares/lowish fuel prices. Probably Airbnb can also make traveling a bit cheaper for those who use it. Economies of many of the countries in which and from which people travel a lot are fairly strong.

>Travel is the new materialism.

Maybe? I know there is the whole experiences over things mantra. Maybe that's in play. On the other hand, maybe there's less interest in big McMansions but the apartment/condo in a lot of major cities is--as can be seen in other comments--pretty expensive by historical patterns. If tourism were down instead, we'd be hearing arguments that young people who have fewer other obligations aren't traveling because they have no money.

In any case, I have trouble seeing tourism as a particular source of the world's problems.

Re: What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood

#60

Post by dcosson » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

nerdponx wrote: post #27

burlesona wrote: post #25

How have we gotten this far into the comments without anyone mentioning the root cause here is a general shortage of housing in places people want to live / work / visit? It seems to me that AirBNB isn't to blame for the overall lack of housing (and temporary housing aka hostel/hotel) options, rather it's just the most visible brand name competing for the limited supply. Cities can ban it if they want, but I'd rather…

Unless there wasn't, and now there is because of Airbnb. Or an existing shortage was exacerbated by Airbnb.

For a quick order of magnitude comparison, taking SF as an example - as near I can find, there are somewhere between 5k and 10k airbnb listings in the whole bay area. But to be very conservative let's assume 10k and assume they're all in SF itself.

Well between 2010 and 2015 SF added 150k more jobs than housing units. Meaning to get back to 2010 levels of affodability SF would have to add on the order of 150k more housing units (and that has probably grown even worse in the past 3 years since 2015).

Airbnb is unfortunately just a drop in the bucket.