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Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

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

#101

Post by 188201 »

matchbok wrote: post #15

AirBnb is a terrible, terrible company. Most of their money comes from corporate-owned mini-hotels yet they advertise as a mom and pop shop. At every turn their solution is to sue small towns and cities so they can continue to extract wealth from our neighborhoods. Disgusting.

In addition, register as a host in Airbnb does not require an ID proof, while register as a guest will be required to have an ID proof. And a host does not require to prove ownership of the property.

You can see it is such a convenient place for illegal business and money laundering. Some Airbnb has hidden camera for you know what it does. And as a matter of fact, many Airbnb in Japan is ran by the yakuza. They will use a pretty girl as profile pic. When you call the host, it is a yakuza guy respond to you. Actually, no problem with that as long as it is a smooth trade, but if something happens, god knows who can help you. And Airbnb only care about the host and don't give a fuck about guest.

I won't say don't use Airbnb, but just be reminded that use it if you can take some risk for some adventure.

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

#102

Post by lm28469 »

keanebean86 wrote: post #39
pjc50 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of cities where apartments have become AirBnBs, caused great disruption to their neighbours, and driven up rents. This has resulted in people demanding that Something Be Done.

Are people using airbnbs as apartments? I don't see how it drives rent up. There's a finite amount of tourism/visitors so they should only be competing with hotels. What am I missing here? Edit: downvoted for asking a question you disagree with? What is this reddit?

> There's a finite amount of tourism/visitors

It might be finite but it's exploding. Even semi remote places get crowded these days.

https://ourworldindata.org/tourism

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

#103

Post by rifung »

koboll wrote: post #55
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…

>In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association / neighborhood. By joining a HOA, you've delegated away to the collective the right to dictate to your neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property. In your case, the system worked - because you are in a HOA. If people want to exert that kind of collectivist control over their neighbors, th…

> But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property? All kinds of small businesses are routinely run out of residential zoned properties. "Renting a room" seems like the kind of small business that's ideal for this situation - it takes no more infrastructure to house a vacation rental than it does to house a longer-term resident.

The local laws which are at least indirectly decided by the people who live there decide whether people have a right to do business in residential areas or not.

> This category of complaint seems like a thin veneer around the core of truth that people who sink a colossal chunk of their nest egg and future earnings into one asset are knee-jerk averse to anything perceived as a threat to it.

I'm not a homeowner. I just dislike the idea of a company profiting off blatant disregard of the law. I personally don't really care about rentals, but if you want to do them then I hold the opinion you should get the laws changed to allow for them.

If anything, allowing vacation rentals would actually increase the value of homes in that area because it probably increases the rent.

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

#104

Post by cbsks »

nate_meurer wrote: post #81

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 co…

>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.

Why would renters cause more wear on those resources than full time occupants?

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

#105

Post by sushisushisushi »

koboll wrote: post #55
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…

>In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association / neighborhood. By joining a HOA, you've delegated away to the collective the right to dictate to your neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property. In your case, the system worked - because you are in a HOA. If people want to exert that kind of collectivist control over their neighbors, th…

>But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property?

The fact that what you do with your own property often has direct effects on your neighbors. This is why zoning regulations exist, for example. And noise ordinances. And building codes. There isn't a magical forcefield that ends at your property line that prevents what you're doing from having an adverse affect on others.

Just like people who don't like noise should be careful about living close to other people, people who like to be left alone to do what they want with their own property need to take the same considerations into mind.

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

#106

Post by dragonwriter »

dahdum wrote: post #88
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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

It may even be that more often than not, it is people where simole interaction would suffice on an individual basis, but there are two factors that still weigh in favor of summoning law enforcement:

(1) The social context of one where any individual you deal with would lose face by backing down to anyone without compulsory power, and

(2) Even if the above was not sufficient to tip the odds to “most probably individual interaction will not be productive”, the potential cost of interaction with “coked up aggressive young men” or the like doesn't require a very high probability that that is the scenario before it becomes an unacceptable risk even if the expected net benefit of individual interaction is positive.

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

#107

Post by munk-a »

duxup wrote: post #87
anoncoward111 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think one of the differences is that long term rentals can establish a pattern of bad behavior by the tenant, a short term rental may constantly be in a terrible state but no one renter has committed enough repeated offenses to warrant a citation. The correct answer here (and with a lot of modern society) is that sub-contracting is not an out, the owner of the property has ultimate control over who rents from them and can put in the time and effort to vet people even if they're just staying for the weekend, it's just viewed as an unreasonable cost so people ignore it.

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

#108

Post by mintplant »

taborj wrote: post #95
matchbok wrote: post #15

AirBnb is a terrible, terrible company. Most of their money comes from corporate-owned mini-hotels yet they advertise as a mom and pop shop. At every turn their solution is to sue small towns and cities so they can continue to extract wealth from our neighborhoods. Disgusting.

I can't comment to their operational policies, but I have a coworker who owns a house they use for AirBnb, and they make quite a bit of money off of it. Enough to have a house dedicated to AirBnb, and so one of them doesn't need to work. They seem pleased with it, and they're not a corporation by any means. But, again, I don't have a horse in this race.

Frankly, I don't see that as a positive outcome. That house could be someone's home.

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

#109

Post by friedman23 »

Juliate wrote: post #62
koboll wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association / neighborhood. By joining a HOA, you've delegated away to the collective the right to dictate to your neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property. In your case, the system worked - because you are in a HOA. If people want to exert that kind of collectivist control over their neighbors, th…

> But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property? Ha. Don't come in Europe cities. There _are_ regulations in cities about that. And rightly so.

> And rightly so.

Here come the emotionally and ideologically charged appeals to authority.

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

#110

Post by CPLX »

koboll wrote: post #55
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…

>In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association / neighborhood. By joining a HOA, you've delegated away to the collective the right to dictate to your neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property. In your case, the system worked - because you are in a HOA. If people want to exert that kind of collectivist control over their neighbors, th…

> But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property?

This is literally the core of the concept of zoning.

If you don't like it work against zoning laws, but there's generally a consensus on the broader topic here.

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