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Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

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Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#81

Post by nate_meurer »

I run a vacation rental in a small town in the mountains of Colorado. I'm quite happy to pay the taxes the town demands. Our place is busy, and our guests make a significant impact on the town, spending a lot of money in local shops and restaurants. On the other hand, there is increased wear on city and county roads (many of which are gravel), and increased load on water, sewer, and sanitation services.

Cities and counties need money to provide us with the services we depend on to run our little business. Reasonable taxes and fees are a fair, expected, and necessary price. The little town we're in has struck a decent balance price-wise, and they also have a decent regulatory system set up that's designed to ensure that neighbors' complaints about parking, noise, and trash are addressed.

We're very by-the-book operators. I want the city to see money from me because I want them to have an interest in protecting my business.

There are a couple of hotels under construction in town, which makes me nervous. Hotels hate vacation rentals. I'm not fond of AirBNB as a corporate citizen, but the Hoteliers cartel is dirtier. I wouldn't be surprised if the new hotels lobby the town to ban vacation rentals outright, or craft lethal regulations like those in Tennessee recently that require all vacation rentals to install fire-suppression sprinklers [https://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2015/jan/3/cities-acro...].

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#82

Post by dragonwriter »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #57
matchbok wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because my neighborhood is littered with mini-hotels and AirBnb encourages this behavior.

Are they bothering you more than non-registered cars in people's yards bothers the HOA type of people? On some level people have the right to do whatever they please with their property. That's kind of the point of ownership to begin with.

> On some level people have the right to do whatever they please with their property. That's kind of the point of ownership to begin with.

And on some level they don't (or, perhaps more precisely, on some level it's never entirely their property if they aren't the sovereign—even if they are a member of a group which collectively constitutes the sovereign), that's kind of the point of sovereignty.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#83

Post by pjc50 »

drstewart wrote: post #54
simias wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many cities in Europe where AirBnB and similar services are a plague for locals. I'm sure it's great for tourists though. First we couldn't buy and we were forced to rent because wealthy folks would buy the real estate in bulk to rent it and/or use it as a speculative investment, driving prices up and making it unafordable. Now they don't even bother to rent it long-term to locals, they're better off puttin…

Sounds like an easy solution. Raze all the vacant hotels that surely have been put under by the lack of demand as it shifts to Airbnb and make those apartments you can buy instead.

The hotels usually remain full. There's a huge pent-up demand for tourism.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#84

Post by dontbenebby »

frontloadpro wrote: post #7
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #2

The more I look at AirBnb, it reality it seems like a conspiracy to enable illegal activity (illegal listings, not collecting taxes). I wonder if in the future, a US Attorney or State Attorney General will attempt to bring criminal charges against the principals of the company. The threat of real jail time would do wonders to get their attention.

The illegal listings is crony capitalism. Hotels don't want to compete. And tax evasion is a completely different topic, that is not why Airbnbs are shut down. Every industry has tax problems.

It sounds like they're pushing back because if there's a list of taxes paid (with specific addresses), then municipalities may harass owners, even if they're complying with local laws[1].

There's also the meta level issue that holding site operators responsible for the actions of their users is a very slippery slope. Anything that chips away at the communications decency act could have terrible effects for the internet as we know it[2]. For example, as it currently stands if I were to libelously claim that Paul Graham has a meth lab in his basement[3], I could be charged with a crime, but not HN. If the CDA were weakened, blog operators could be liable for comments posted on them. I don't think anyone reasonable wants that.

I think SF's law did a good job balancing things - hosts need to be licensed by the city (the app lists their license #) and can IIRC only lease 90 days out of the year. I looked at a recent receipt for a stay, and they even collected taxes.

[1] https://www.eff.org/mention/making-civil-liberties-case-airb...

[2] https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Airbnb-HomeAway...

[3] To be clear this is a hyperbolic example, and I have no reason to think PaulG has anything illegal in his basement :)

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#85

Post by stale2002 »

braythwayt wrote: post #56
iandanforth wrote: post #37

This seems like an overly critical article. Zoning laws and NIMBY impulses should be fought tooth-and-nail and I'm glad Airbnb is doing so. The platform has allowed me to actually enjoy travel in ways I never could before. What I feel like is missing is a communication path from the community to the platform. Because people start by calling the police to complain it immediately becomes a legal and local ordinance iss…

Why should zoning laws be fought tooth-and-nail? If I buy a house in a neighbourhood full of single-family dwellings that are all one and two storeys high, should I be able to build a condo building on my land? Can I open a nightclub in my house? What about parking? Can I pave my front lawn and rent the space out as parking spots? Or maybe put a dumpster there for local businesses to put their trash in? There's a tre…

> Why should zoning laws be fought tooth-and-nail

Because it is mostly used by rich property owners to artificial prop up the value of their capital investment, to the detriment of renters and people who cannot afford to purchase properties.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#86

Post by koboll »

freshm087 wrote: post #78
duxup wrote: post #26

I lived a few doors down to someone who basically ran an ad hoc AirBnB ... before Airbnb. It was pretty terrible. Parties all the time, trash, they parked anywhere (in other people's driveways...) because there were likely no long term consequences for doing so, the folks staying there didn't care because why should they? I was on the association board, it's kinda thankless job as we had to deal with this house. We g…

The article is essentially about tax authorities trying to offload their work on AirBnB. Irresponsible owners will not disappear if it happened.

It's worded very poorly, too, such as "The onus is on hosts, Airbnb argues", as if there's some debate over whether 1099 contractors are responsible for their own taxes.

I'm sure local governments would love to collect a big check from Airbnb instead of hunting down thousands of tax-dodgers; but doing local tax collection authorities' work for them isn't exactly Airbnb's responsibility.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#87

Post by duxup »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #69
duxup wrote: post #26

I lived a few doors down to someone who basically ran an ad hoc AirBnB ... before Airbnb. It was pretty terrible. Parties all the time, trash, they parked anywhere (in other people's driveways...) because there were likely no long term consequences for doing so, the folks staying there didn't care because why should they? I was on the association board, it's kinda thankless job as we had to deal with this house. We g…

What you are describing is precisely the same situation I had when I lived in an apartment building next to a long-term tenant . She simply didn't give a shit about the noise and trash she generated and all of us had to deal with it. The landlord didn't care either. The police told me to deal with the landlord, because the noise wasn't at 3AM and wasn't "an event" like a concert. But her music was loud enough to shak…

We actually limited the % of units that could be rented out in our association as well for the same reason (we actually allowed exceptions based on need (have to move fast and can't sell and so forth), and actually approved those 100% of the time, it just rarely came up).

Long term rentals can have problem tenants too, but long term rental owners at least had way more leverage over their rentals than short term (who really in our case didn't give a damn).

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#88

Post by dahdum »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #71
iandanforth wrote: post #37

This seems like an overly critical article. Zoning laws and NIMBY impulses should be fought tooth-and-nail and I'm glad Airbnb is doing so. The platform has allowed me to actually enjoy travel in ways I never could before. What I feel like is missing is a communication path from the community to the platform. Because people start by calling the police to complain it immediately becomes a legal and local ordinance iss…

>Because people start by calling the police to complain it immediately becomes a legal and local ordinance issue. That's because in the kind of "upscale but not too upscale" kinds of places where AirBnB tends to flourish conflict resolution is such a lost art that calling the police on each other is what people do.

I'm calling the police well before I walk over to the Miami Beach apartment blasting music at 3AM, likely filled with coked up aggressive young men.

Simple conflict resolution works great with reasonable people, but those aren't the kinds of people blasting techno and screaming all through the night.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#89

Post by drinkzima »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #57
matchbok wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because my neighborhood is littered with mini-hotels and AirBnb encourages this behavior.

Are they bothering you more than non-registered cars in people's yards bothers the HOA type of people? On some level people have the right to do whatever they please with their property. That's kind of the point of ownership to begin with.

Right - it's the level dictated by the zoning laws we all agreed to when we built a governmental framework for property ownership and the management of it's externalities.

Ownership literally doesn't mean you can do whatever you please, that's the point of the top-level comment here.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#90

Post by cronix »

iandanforth wrote: post #37

This seems like an overly critical article. Zoning laws and NIMBY impulses should be fought tooth-and-nail and I'm glad Airbnb is doing so. The platform has allowed me to actually enjoy travel in ways I never could before. What I feel like is missing is a communication path from the community to the platform. Because people start by calling the police to complain it immediately becomes a legal and local ordinance iss…

> What I feel like is missing is a communication path from the community to the platform.

Why? The issue is between the homeowner and the community. The fact that they're using AirBnB or anything else is irrelevant. The homeowner is responsible for what occurs on their property, and the community has a right to set standards via HOA's, city/local ordinances, etc.

The communication path should be between the property owner and AirBnB to discuss issues with their private contracts/arrangements/deals.

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