Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by gamblor956 » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

praneshp wrote: post #111

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…

> , we had a limit on how many units could rent out at once anyway so they never were going to have enough numbers What does this mean? If I owned a house in your neighborhood and had to move away for work, my options are to sell the house, or get on a waitlist till the number of houses rented out reduces? As someone that's never owned a house, that sounds like a shitty rule that should be disrupted. I'm assuming the…

As someone that's never owned a house, that sounds like a shitty rule that should be disrupted. I'm assuming there is a positive side to that only homeowners can see.

For starters, several federal agencies actually require COA's to limit the number of units that are not owner-occupied as a condition for government-backed mortgages. Some states and local laws also place caps on this to prevent condos from being used as unregistered hotels (see eg timeshares).

As for your options? Generally, for cases like this your option would be to sell the unit or request an exemption. If you're moving far away, it's very likely that the COA will not grant the exemption, because units rented out by distant absentee landlords tend to generate the most and worst problems that COAs deal with.

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

#162

Post by jimmaswell » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

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.

AirBnB was a life saver for me while I was looking for an apartment in my new state. I think it's a great business model and local governments should just work with it instead of trying to legislate away something there's obviously a big demand for.

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

#163

Post by SkyBelow » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #158

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…

I have a right to dictate who parks in my driveway. I have rights to a quiet time to sleep at night. I don't object to you running a hotel next door, but I expect your guests to behave themselves well..

It seems the issue here is that when you are wronged (my guest are way too noisy), you don't have an adequate solution to seek compensation from me, and give enough instances of something like this happening, we turn more towards an outright ban on something that can give rise to the injustice but is not itself an injustice, but which is easier to enforce.

Perhaps if the root issues were given some easy way for one to satisfactorily resolve when they arise then their would be far less support for outright bans.

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

#164

Post by sfotm » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #80

braythwayt wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 infringing on people's right to do what they want with their property deserves a hell of a lot more scrutiny than it gets right now. Trying to centrally manage what can be done where doesn't scale. See SF housing prices. >Can I open a nightclub in my house? As long as it meets the standards that night clubs have to meet then sure. You're unlikely to be able to…

These examples vary in how outrageous they are, but some of them have the ability to singlehandedly depreciate someone else's most valuable asset by tens of thousands of dollars without any sort of recourse. Even if the nightclub or parking ventures aren't successful you'll probably have a hard time getting the same value out of that house.

And that's fine?

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

#165

Post by vladgur » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

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…

In most cases, thats not true.

Its very straight forward and quick to evict a short term renter for violating terms of the lease(noise violation etc).

Whereas its a lengthy and pricey process to evict a long term tenant in many jurisdictions

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

#166

Post by bluGill » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #155

iandanforth wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly correct. US zoning laws in particular are responsible for urban sprawl, separation of services from housing and the massive environmental impact that produces. Default mixed use is demonstrably more efficient use of land. Cleaver neighborhoods are toxic.

> US zoning laws in particular are responsible for urban sprawl [...] Houston managed an impressive urban sprawl without zoning laws.

Houston has zoning laws - they mandate parking for example. The laws are generally more lax than other places, but some of their mandates encourage sprawl.

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

#167

Post by jimmaswell » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #38

visarga wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems they want to enjoy travelling to other cities while blocking other travellers from coming to their city. Same with Waze traffic being routed on previously less known streets.

No, they just want travelers to sleep in places designated for travelers. This wouldn't even be an issue if it wasn't a real problem - a well-behaved group of transients is near-unnoticeable in a neighbourhood and by definition doesn't disturb anybody. Another problem is that the proliferation of this practice seems to be disturbing the already tense situation on the housing market. Meeting an odd couple from the oth…

Why is this crowd suddenly all for restrictive zoning when it comes to AirBnB, yet zoning is evil NIMBYism otherwise?

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

#168

Post by Xylakant » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

turc1656 wrote: post #145

Any time anyone says they "want to pay taxes", you know they are lying. No one anywhere wants to pay - no one looks forward to it. Not that I'm a fan of big government, but I don't understand why, if they really are just ignoring the law in most jurisdictions (which they are), none of these states just issue arrest warrants for the people in charge of these decisions? Why isn't there an outstanding warrant for the CE…

I, as an individual want to lay taxes and I want them to be put to good use. I also think my income bracket pays too little taxes.

I want a thriving, stable society and I’m well aware on an intellectual level that if faced with the constant decision whether I should donate here or donate there or pay more for child-care so that they can subsidize people with less income, I’ll become overwhelmed and fail. I already fail at deciding if and where to direct an end of year donation.

A thriving society needs money to serve all the needs that a thriving society has: infrastructure, education, governance, just to name a few. I don’t always agree how and where tax money is spent. I also sometimes feel cheated when paying taxes, but more often than not it’s because I see someone else, possibly a large Corp such as AirBnB actively avoid paying their due share.

So please, make me pay taxes, but make everyone else pay theirs.

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

#169

Post by jimmaswell » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

unknownkadath wrote: post #160

Nashville resident here. A drunk airbnb user tried to break into a neighbor's house around 11 pm last week while the residents were inside. He was lost and thought he was at his rental, but that wasn't apparent to anyone else in the beginning, so my wife gets a call for help from another neighbor and we go to check it out. When we get there, we discover the assailant has been treed on a shed roof by the woman whose d…

This could have happened in any number of scenarios.

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

#170

Post by bargl » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

unknownkadath wrote: post #160

Nashville resident here. A drunk airbnb user tried to break into a neighbor's house around 11 pm last week while the residents were inside. He was lost and thought he was at his rental, but that wasn't apparent to anyone else in the beginning, so my wife gets a call for help from another neighbor and we go to check it out. When we get there, we discover the assailant has been treed on a shed roof by the woman whose d…

This is the USA, I'm surprised he wasn't shot. Not joking at all, your story is actually kinda funny but it could have gone so much worse at so many points.

Is that AirBnB's fault? Is it the hosts fault? Is it the cities fault for not regulating this? Is it our society's fault for allowing drinking to the point of forgetting your address?

I think in the end it's just a series of unfortunate events, that give you a really great anecdote, which might have turned out much worse. I wouldn't claim this as evidence for or against AirBnB but man did it make me laugh.

Good on you for de-escalating the situation and keeping your head! Hopefully, Trey had the decorum to apologize later on and try to make things right.