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Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

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Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#541

Post by dragonwriter »

jlmorton wrote: post #530
belter wrote: post #526

Everybody seems to be praising Airbnb but a couple of things need to be stated about doing remote work. Just because some rules are difficult to enforce or monitor, the spread of these practices will invite increased scrutiny by local authorities. 1) None of the usual 90 days Visas allow you to perform working activities. Neither when issued in the US or in European countries. Even when you are still a resident and e…

> None of the usual 90 days Visas allow you to perform working activities. They don't allow you to perform work within the jurisdiction. But no one cares if you're working remotely, and I'm not aware of any tourism visas that preclude it. Digital nomad visas are not about legalizing an otherwise-illegal arrangement, they are intended to expand and promote it with longer visa terms that traditional tourism visas allow…

> They don't allow you to perform work within the jurisdiction. But no one cares if you're working remotely, and I'm not aware of any tourism visas that preclude it.

Working in the jurisdiction is working in the jurisdiction no matter where the person paying you or your usual place of work (if such thing even exists) is.

If you are in the jurisdiction, doing labor for pay (regardless of where the pay comes from), you are working in the jurisdiction.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#542

Post by bombcar »

renewiltord wrote: post #280
lultimouomo wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a city that is a major tourist destination worldwide. Tourism has always been a blessing and a curse; shops always suffered a pressure to become tourist oriented; some big buildings were converted to hotels. With AirBnB the problem has expanded massively. I cannot find a 3-room office that is not miles away from the city center because everything that size is an AirBnB. An employee I just hired that moved h…

Never heard of a landlord who’d rather have a string of short term rentals than one continuous long term rental unless there’s some renter protection law that makes you an effective permanent tenant. Just rent through Airbnb and then talk to the guy about a normal lease. If you want, text me where you are, I’ll put up $10k for a bet and then if I can find you a 3 room office, you give me $10k. If I can’t, I’ll give y…

Short term rentals can have significant advantages over long term - for example, it's painless to "evict" a short term renter in almost every jurisdiction, but once it passes 30 or 90 days in some areas it becomes a multi-month process.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#543

Post by bombcar »

jfk13 wrote: post #402
Gareth321 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many major cities are clamping down hard. Mayors and politicians are under much more pressure from locals to stop their cities turning into, well, Amsterdam. Tourism is fine, but it has increasingly come at the cost of locals.

> Tourism is fine Well... a moderate amount of tourism is fine, even beneficial; but excessive tourism in any given location becomes a blight. Airbnb has contributed to that, by facilitating short-term profits for "hosts" and the company and ignoring the negative impact.

Tourism that overwhelms the location turns it into a tourist trap; whatever it had before becomes a veneer over the main industry, which will be tourism.

In some places this is incredibly visible (think Las Vegas Strip vs Las Vegas) but you can also see it in many famous tourist destinations.

Of course, large cities like Tokyo are quite resistant to tourism, just because of how big they are - certain areas and attractions may be tourist heavy but the city is still Tokyo.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#544

Post by belter »

jlmorton wrote: post #530
belter wrote: post #526

Everybody seems to be praising Airbnb but a couple of things need to be stated about doing remote work. Just because some rules are difficult to enforce or monitor, the spread of these practices will invite increased scrutiny by local authorities. 1) None of the usual 90 days Visas allow you to perform working activities. Neither when issued in the US or in European countries. Even when you are still a resident and e…

> None of the usual 90 days Visas allow you to perform working activities. They don't allow you to perform work within the jurisdiction. But no one cares if you're working remotely, and I'm not aware of any tourism visas that preclude it. Digital nomad visas are not about legalizing an otherwise-illegal arrangement, they are intended to expand and promote it with longer visa terms that traditional tourism visas allow…

They don't care as long as this does not become the norm. If you look at some of the references I provided, they explicit state the type of activities you are allowed to do.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#545

Post by bombcar »

disiplus wrote: post #305
imiric wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are certainly no longer allowed to have AirBnBs for the sole purpose of renting out to AirBnb. That's a ridiculous requirement. Owning real estate for the sole purpose of renting has been an income source for ever. Just because Airbnb exploded this practice in popularity doesn't give governments the right to say what purpose owners can use their property for. If Airbnb is causing issues, then address those spec…

they are addressing those issues in limiting short rent rentals. long term rentals are allowed and regulated.

The main thing that is being handled is how to correctly handle/account for it - a long term rental and a house are basically identical from the purposes of what the government provides, both may have families with children going to school, need stores, etc.

But short-term rentals are basically identical with hotels which are commercial properties and have substantially different requirements - the people staying there will not frequent supermarkets, etc as much as they will restaurants, etc. They will not be sending their children to the local school, and so on.

Mixed use property can be (and should be!) encouraged, but it does have externalities that have to be handled and accounted for.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#546

Post by bombcar »

isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote: post #469
sjs7007 wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the reduction in office space usage that will have to be repurposed into something else?

Office buildings are typically not suitable for conversion into apartments, there are no provisions for things like individual bathrooms or kitchens.

Even if they could be converted (and most buildings after a certain height are basically the same except for the interior) they'd likely be torn down and rebuilt; if they even can be due to zoning.

People love to hate on zoning but there are reasons for it, even if the way it's done isn't perfect by a long shot.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#547

Post by bombcar »

chronofar wrote: post #452
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever heard of locals? You can't imagine how much better Rome has been in these last two years without Americans coming to colonize our historical districts. It's not entirely Americans fault, they do not belong here, don't know the language, the traditions, but they gather together all in the same place and suddenly it's not Rome anymore and obviously prices skyrocket up to the point that locals can't afford to live…

Big cities are by nature cosmopolitan, it’s very strange to say only some people “belong” and others don’t. Would you prefer the world isolate into pockets of belonging based on generational inheritance as it has been and we crank back globalization? Certainly there are growing pains, but I would view more globalization as the direction we want to go.

The problem is that people move to Rome because it is Rome and not LA, and then proceed to turn it into LA.

Even a hundred years ago traveling somewhere brought you to a very different world, now it's hard to tell the difference between some cities since they're all covered in McDonald's and Starbucks anyway.

And it's not just the companies, either.

Part of the problem is our American way-of-life covers everything in a think blanket; you can easily move to anywhere in the world and remain an American as long as you want, the pressures that would bring you more in-line with those who live there are almost entirely gone.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#548

Post by gowld »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #462
ErneX wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this isn’t something you can just blame on tech workers. Big cities go through this constantly not only from tech expats but also from better paid local workers.

> Big cities go through this constantly No, they don't. Ask someone from Rome, Barcelona, Madrid even Warsaw, if they are happy of this airbnb-ization of their cities. [1] Anyway, citi es are for citi zens, not for freeloaders. [2] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/31/airbnb... [2] The word city and the related civilization come from the Latin root civitas, originally meaning 'citizenship' or 'co…

Ask someone from NYC if they are happy with the Italianization of their city...

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#549

Post by gowld »

boh wrote: post #439
ultimoo wrote: post #166

>Most companies don’t do this because of the mountain of complexities with taxes, payroll, and time zone availability, but I hope we can open-source a solution so other companies can offer this flexibility as well. I think this is a genius growth play for Airbnb. Make it easier for _other_ companies to operate in a similar way so that _their_ employees can travel and live in an... Airbnb! Next, they should lobby to g…

It's funny how this is meant to be interpreted as a work/life benefit for employees when it is clearly a removal of labor restrictions for the company. If you can hire anyone from anywhere your cost of labor will decrease overall. Yes "you can move anywhere in the country you work in and your compensation won’t change", so future salaries don't have to reflect local expenditures. You can offer flat rates that encoura…

Employee doesn't need leverage if their income isn't going to pay a landlord.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#550

Post by gowld »

wmeredith wrote: post #514
rcpt wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow

Doing rentals to tenants without a paper trail would allow them to claim squatter's rights, which are a nightmare for landlords.

How does a paper trail prevent that? A paper trails gives the squatter far more rights, since they have proof of their right to live there.
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