Quebec Cracks Down on Airbnb

It's also to protect the integrity of the neighborhoods and the well-being of those who live around them.

I own a home, pay residential taxes and expect to have homeowners or tenants living next door. When my neighbor is running an unregulated flophouse, usually without paying sales, lodging and other taxes my property and I suffers.

People who operate hotels have to comply with all sorts of burdensome regulation. Some of that regulation is guided by local zoning (max size, parking demand), others by safety (fireproofing measures, security), others by revenue needs (ie. lodging tax).

I may be downvoted to oblivion for this but I really don't think my neighbors in Boston would like it if I rented my room out on a nightly basis to people they don't know. There are 20 units in my building so seeing many random people coming and going would trigger great unease and I cannot say that I would blame them for that.

I've used AirBnB and I love it but I think the biggest issue is not the commercial property taxes (the gov't would likely disagree) but the negative impact it could have on those living around you in other apartments. It kind of goes back to the saying, "I don't care what people do in the comfort of their own home," except the entranceway, stairwells and halls of an apartment building are the shared property of all residents. This is not so much an issue when people rent out their houses on AirBnb but my guess is that apartments in major cities are some of their most frequently booked listings.

I've read the other AirBnB threads on here discussing the externalities. And I still think the cities would be better off with AirBnB than without it.

The opportunities for property owners to profit as well as providing tourism/business visitors with $40 rooms is massive.

It's opening up a huge new bnb industry, provides a large flow of new revenue for tourism businesses in the cities, greatly expands the amount of tourists/business visitors who can afford to visit.

I'm curious which of the externalities you think can't be addressed by property owners? For example, they can have a no-airbnb policy in the rental agreements. Or liability safety waivers. Or security policies to limit flow of non-tenants. Or handled via disputes between property owners or police such as sound violations.

Besides, the incentives mentioned in the article are a) the market incumbents "Montreal’s Bed and Breakfast Association" want protection and b) the government wants to protect existing tax revenue/regulation fines.

At this point, it's not about externalities. It's about protecting current revenue streams. While ignoring the potential for far greater tax revenue and social benefit.

I wonder what will happen when someone declines to leave the rented space. Do they have any law protecting them? Do the property owners have a law that protects them from this? It would be interesting to see how a magistrate would interpret a property owner renting out the place on airbnb. They are not hotels and are not licensed as such.

Sure, and I agree that the benefits of AirBnb ultimately outweigh the negatives. I wouldn't continue supporting them with my business if I didn't.

But there are more than two choices here - there is a third choice besides "let AirBnb continue as is" and "stop everything AirBnb-like". Things like adhering to sanitation standards, paying of hotel taxes, and the rights of residents in AirBnb buildings are all legitimate reasons to oppose AirBnb in its current model.

> "For example, they can have a no-airbnb policy in the rental agreements."

This is already the case. This is also already the case in many condo/con-op rules. In fact, in most jurisdictions I've seen stopping AirBnb is as simple as enforcing existing laws and contracts - we don't even have to create new ones. AirBnb owes its existence not to friendly legislation, but to a lack of enforcement - a lack of enforcement that is coming to an end because of these negative externalities (and yes, lobbying by the hotel industry).

> "Or liability safety waivers. Or security policies to limit flow of non-tenants. Or handled via disputes between property owners or police such as sound violations."

And such is the definition of a negative externality - to offload the costs of these effects onto other tenants and even the city, without any recompense. AirBnb has created this need for additional legal cost and even additional policing yet is paying for none of it. The way your'e describing it, it sounds like AirBnb is laughing to the bank and leaving the cleanup to everyone else.

In any case, my original point is not specific to AirBnb. Your original post is one that I see on HN a lot - whenever a disruptive product is opposed we scream about corruption and the greed of entrenched players, and conveniently ignore the many legitimate reasons why people might find what we do problematic. My response is a more general complaint against our collective holier-than-thou attitude where we can do no wrong, and our intellectually dishonest trend of blaming said opposition squarely on simplistic villains rather than acknowledging that technology and disruption are nuanced. Our refusal to treat our opponents with basic respect, and our propensity to label them with simplistic titles, is aggravating and annoying.