51–60 of 120 posts
Intermediary platforms such as Airbnb and Uber exacerbate cities’ housing problems and weaken worker protections. Its interesting that this line has no support and just treated as fact for this article. Is there a source to explain the reasoning?
This reminds me of the Estonian business startup thing that BBC covered, has anyone actually used this to a success? What would be the point of starting a business in countries like Czech and Estonia vs the US?
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The reason construction of affordable housing isn't happening has nothing to do with those city's lack of revenue.
Wouldn’t this be a fairer tax rather than diverting general funds?
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Wouldn’t this be a fairer tax rather than diverting general funds?
The pricing out of existing residents isn't caused (much) by local taxes either.
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Airbnb is highlighting a zoning problem that governments are unwilling to admit to themselves. Sublets and short term rentals existed long before before and most cities on Earth didn't care, but once a frictionless platform came along it suddenly was a problem. My landlord kicked us out to run an airbnb fulltime after seeing how much a neighbour was earning. (Around New Years /Christmas you could easily bring in 2 mo…
It's not a "zoning problem." It's much simpler than that. * Airbnb flophouses are not obliged to conform to fire, health, or safety codes, and they don't pay taxes. Right off the bat, they're scads cheaper than hotels because they don't bear those costs. * Visitors and residents have very different incentives. Tourists may wish to stay in cute residential areas, but they are not necessarily interested in being neighb…
In most old cities, hotels, bed and breakfasts, hostels etc all exist in residential areas. And boarding houses used to be common in these same areas too.
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Airbnb is highlighting a zoning problem that governments are unwilling to admit to themselves. Sublets and short term rentals existed long before before and most cities on Earth didn't care, but once a frictionless platform came along it suddenly was a problem. My landlord kicked us out to run an airbnb fulltime after seeing how much a neighbour was earning. (Around New Years /Christmas you could easily bring in 2 mo…
It's not a "zoning problem." It's much simpler than that. * Airbnb flophouses are not obliged to conform to fire, health, or safety codes, and they don't pay taxes. Right off the bat, they're scads cheaper than hotels because they don't bear those costs. * Visitors and residents have very different incentives. Tourists may wish to stay in cute residential areas, but they are not necessarily interested in being neighb…
Because Airbnbs aren't flophouses. They're holding usually just a couple or family, maybe a dozen people tops unless the place being rented is a really big detached house. Expecting them to be held to the same standards as hotels is not necessary. If this lack of compliance is so dangerous, then why are letting people live in these places full time?
> Visitors and residents have very different incentives. Tourists may wish to stay in cute residential areas, but they are not necessarily interested in being neighborly -- they're not particularly invested in the comfort and safety of the people around them, because they'll be leaving soon.
Tourists also spend more money while on vacation, especially on small businesses like restaurants and bars. More importantly, they bring this money in externally. More tourism attracts the ire of residents that now have to deal with out-of-town people walking around their neighborhood, but I have rarely seen someone complain about negative economic impact of tourism let alone make a coherent argument about why it's bad.
> People do a lot of gross stuff in a hotel that you probably don't want to encounter in your apartment building. Drugs, prostitution, loud parties.
Plenty of people do these things in their apartments, condos, and houses, too.
> No amount of "zoning" is going to make the commingling of apartments and hotels attractive to full-time residents, nor will any change in "zoning" make flophouses less profitable.
Tourists generally don't want to visit residential areas. Airbnb-ing instead of renting a hotel is usually less convenient because the former are further from the city center. When I used an Airbnb in Iceland it was more of a hassle because I effectively needed to rent a car (and then subsequently park a car) to get to the center of the city. It was worth it because of cost. If there were hotel rooms available at the same cost of Airbnb then I would have used that.
However, the number of hotels is usually kept artificially limited. This drives up the cost of renting hotel rooms, which benefits hoteliers. This is the main reason why Airbnb is so much cheaper than hotels. Hoteliers don't want to build more hotels because that would drive their costs down and their expenses up.
We don't like that thing that you do. So we'll just apply taxes and let you continue doing the thing we don't like you to do.
We can do this in Europe because we are great at killing innovation through our taxes and regulations. This way we can safely tax innovative tech giants without hurting our own tech giants. Because they don't exist here. We don't like that thing that you do. So we'll just apply taxes and let you continue doing the thing we don't like you to do.
Once again the former eastern block is implementing smart reforms that are pro-market and anti-globalist.
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It's not a "zoning problem." It's much simpler than that. * Airbnb flophouses are not obliged to conform to fire, health, or safety codes, and they don't pay taxes. Right off the bat, they're scads cheaper than hotels because they don't bear those costs. * Visitors and residents have very different incentives. Tourists may wish to stay in cute residential areas, but they are not necessarily interested in being neighb…
> Airbnb flophouses are not obliged to conform to fire, health, or safety codes, and they don't pay taxes. Right off the bat, they're scads cheaper than hotels because they don't bear those costs. Because Airbnbs aren't flophouses. They're holding usually just a couple or family, maybe a dozen people tops unless the place being rented is a really big detached house. Expecting them to be held to the same standards as…
Tourism is an economic curse similar to the curse of resources. It makes most unrelated economic activity less viable.