I will never understand the desire to control one's neighbors' property. I don't care who owns it and it's none of my business how they use it.
Actually, property owners and tenants have a right to quiet enjoyment...
Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments
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Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you are against other people having freedoms because they might do something bad? Isn't that the definition of FUD?
Societies (of ten through their governments) restrict all sorts of behaviors that affect others in various ways. My neighbor (in a residentially zoned area) can't decide to open a gas station on their property. You can argue about various laws and rules at the margin but it takes a pretty anarchist perspective to argue that no such rules should exist.
It's pretty extremist to say that I'm making a case for anarchy. Nobody's saying that we should change zoning or open illegal drug rings. People are wanting to rent out apartments to short-term tenants. How is that remotely close to being a dangerous cartel that needs to be defended against?
People are upset that other people are better off than they are, and using the extra financial leverage to treat an apartment as a temporary vacation home. Jealousy, plain and simple.
Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments
#23couldn't AirBnB just restrict rentals to 90 nights/year in portland? or couldn't the city just look for rentals that are available for more than 90 nights/year?
Yes, but AirBNB would prefer to skirt regulations as long as possible in order to grow revenue and market share. See: Uber.
To expand upon your point, AirBNB, much like Uber, can sit back a bit and pretend that this is just the fault of a couple of careless users as opposed to a systemic problem. This is the "brilliance" of their business models -- at least for now, they can claim that these people aren't their employees, that they're independent contractors or some such, so it's not the company's fault. They get all of the upside with limited legal liabilities (for now). The long play is to have an exit before the legal side of things catches up with them--the legal systems are slow, but AirBNB/Uber's growth rates are pretty fast. The current stockholders can cash in their billions with the exit, and it'll be the CEO's/shareholders' problem in the future if/when the legal system catches up to them.
Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments
#24couldn't AirBnB just restrict rentals to 90 nights/year in portland? or couldn't the city just look for rentals that are available for more than 90 nights/year?
Yes, but then people will just hop from one service to another. 90 days on Airbnb, 90 days on VRBO, etc...
Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments
#25couldn't AirBnB just restrict rentals to 90 nights/year in portland? or couldn't the city just look for rentals that are available for more than 90 nights/year?
Well, you can live in your place while renting part of it so that wouldn't work.
Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments
#26I will never understand the desire to control one's neighbors' property. I don't care who owns it and it's none of my business how they use it.
Since you'll never understand it, no explanation will make sense to you. But I'll try anyway.
What I do affects my neighbors because many things do not stop at the property border. This can include smells, visual impact, water runoff, sound, chemical waste, and risk of fire.
For example, if I decided to run a dry cleaning business at home then my neighbor might be affected by the additional street traffic (a shared resource), the noise of customers coming in and out, and the smell of chemicals. Plus, I dispose of the waste chemicals by pouring them into the ground, which seeps into my neighbors' well water. They might not like that.
If I decide to start a fertilizer factory (I'll call it 'West Fertilizer Company II'), then my neighbors might be worried about explosions destroying their home. If I decide to raise cattle, and build a waste lagoon on the edge of my property then my neighbors might be concerned about the smell and the possibility of overflow, both as waste and erosion. If I decide to test my air raid siren collection at 3am then I suspect that my neighbors might have a problem.
There are several ways to handle this. One is as an easement system. When you purchase your land, you do not have complete say over what happens on the land. For example, there may be a right-of-way which allows people to cross your land in order to get to the beach. You must also allow people to use the sidewalk, and you are required to keep it clear.
So you can think of your neighbors as having certain easement rights, which you agreed to when you purchased the land. Just like the airport has purchased the air rights above a certain height, in properties near the airport, your neighbors also have acquired certain rights. For an example, from http://www.englandairpark.org/sites/default/files/docs/Broch... :
> The Avigation Easement grants a right-of-way for the free and unobstructed flight and passage of aircraft through the airspace above, over and across the surface of the property, together with the right to cause such noise, vibration, odors, vapors, particulates, smoke, dust, or other effects as may be inherent in the operation of aircraft, and for the use of said airspace by aircraft for approaching, landing upon, taking off from, maneuvering about or operating on the Alexandria International Airport.
As you can see, some of these rights can be on the market, but others are illiquid.
However, there are a lot of things which can transgress the property lines. It's too many to enumerate explicitly. Rather than having billions of bilateral neighbor agreements, with billions of opportunities for loopholes, and the need to upgrade those agreements over time as problems arise, we have a unified code and legal framework which handles most of them.
Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments
#27couldn't AirBnB just restrict rentals to 90 nights/year in portland? or couldn't the city just look for rentals that are available for more than 90 nights/year?
Well, you can live in your place while renting part of it so that wouldn't work.
AirBnB collects that information as well ("entire place", "private room", "shared room".) They make no effort to filter out illegal listing, in spite of the fact that a decent (but not perfect) implementation would be utterly trivial.
They are willfully leading a massive conspiracy to violate the law and the company and its executives ought to be held liable.
Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, you can live in your place while renting part of it so that wouldn't work.
AirBnB collects that information as well ("entire place", "private room", "shared room".) They make no effort to filter out illegal listing, in spite of the fact that a decent (but not perfect) implementation would be utterly trivial. They are willfully leading a massive conspiracy to violate the law and the company and its executives ought to be held liable.
Entirely trivial to implement the coding, and entirely a nightmare to implement and maintain the database which stores this information on the current laws of every locality in which airbnb operates.
Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Societies (of ten through their governments) restrict all sorts of behaviors that affect others in various ways. My neighbor (in a residentially zoned area) can't decide to open a gas station on their property. You can argue about various laws and rules at the margin but it takes a pretty anarchist perspective to argue that no such rules should exist.
It's pretty extremist to say that I'm making a case for anarchy. Nobody's saying that we should change zoning or open illegal drug rings. People are wanting to rent out apartments to short-term tenants. How is that remotely close to being a dangerous cartel that needs to be defended against? People are upset that other people are better off than they are, and using the extra financial leverage to treat an apartment a…
Jealousy, plain and simple.
Not even slightly. People are upset because homes surrounding theirs are being rented out to short term tenants that do not care about the long or even medium term future of the home and it's surroundings.
If you lived in an apartment building filled with tourists drunkenly stumbling around the stairwells, breaking fixtures and otherwise ruining the shared facilities, you might appreciate the concept.
Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
AirBnB collects that information as well ("entire place", "private room", "shared room".) They make no effort to filter out illegal listing, in spite of the fact that a decent (but not perfect) implementation would be utterly trivial. They are willfully leading a massive conspiracy to violate the law and the company and its executives ought to be held liable.
Entirely trivial to implement the coding, and entirely a nightmare to implement and maintain the database which stores this information on the current laws of every locality in which airbnb operates.
But trivial to make the data available in a machine-readable format to the taxing authorities and let them do the legwork. Which is actually required, per TFA:
"In addition, the city requires short-term rental companies like Airbnb to list the addresses of their rentals—information that could help the city crack down on hosts who don’t live in their apartments. The company has been reluctant to share information."