What Airbnb really does to a neighbourhood

Post by lancesells » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 10:55 PM UTC

ralusek wrote: post #37

mc32 wrote: post #5

Here 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 o…

Is Facebook responsible for people using it to browse their highschool sweetheart's page, and using messenger to try to cheat on their spouse? Is Tinder responsible for an increase in STDs, infidelity, or date-rapes that occur? Is Zillow responsible for someone finding a house that was foreclosed on because somebody got sick and couldn't afford to make their mortgage payments? AirBnB lets you find available short-ter…

Post by ck425 » Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 10:02 PM UTC

wwweston wrote: post #100

ck425 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Travel is the new materialism." I wanna argue with this -- I think some portion of the population has a deep-seated psychological personal need to travel for their own internal well-being rather than to perform travel for an audience as a status symbol. But I think there's a pretty strong case that especially with the rise of social media, travel's become much more tightly linked with attention and status.

Post by jdmichal » Tue, Sep 04, 2018, 10:00 PM UTC

forgottenpass wrote: post #102

nix0n wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any neighborhood with a reputation for being hip, having art, music, bars etc. is now half populated by Airbnb guests at all times Why are there so few of these places?

They're generally unsustainable. Having a reputation means a deviation from the norm. Once their reputation is big enough, the number of newcomers to the culture will outstrips the ability for the culture to assimilate them. Sustainability in the face of that requires whatever the culture is centered around to be the kind of thing that can both put up a facade that serve casuals and angry neighbors, while simultaneou…