Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market
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Re: Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market
#2"The big surprise for us was when we tried to contact Airbnb" to complain, said Thieme, a writer and editor...
Not mentioned is if they tried to talk to their neighbour.
Re: Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market
#3"The big surprise for us was when we tried to contact Airbnb" to complain, said Thieme, a writer and editor... Not mentioned is if they tried to talk to their neighbour .
Not mentioned is if they tried to talk to their neighbour.
Was the neighbor who had control of the unit as a tenant on the lease home when the room was rented out? I don't think so. The article opens with these paragraphs:
"First came the noisy upstairs neighbors who said they were just "renting the place for a couple of nights" but refused to tone it down. Then came the people who would try to open the front door of the Castro/Duboce Triangle apartment where Barnaby Thieme and Rebecca Reagan live, saying they thought it led to the lobby.
"The couple looked online and discovered what was behind the disruptions - a unit in their building was being rented out through Airbnb, the marketplace for short-term housing in private residences."
I read that as saying that the couple who were disturbed by Airbnb visitors DID talk to those visitors, only to find out that they weren't actual tenants of the building. The person putting the unit up for short-term stays on Airbnb doesn't seem to have been available.
AFTER EDIT: A top-level comment that came in since I posted this makes an interesting point:
I admire the optimism that youth brings, allowing someone to look at a problem with a fresh perspective but all too often, the rules, laws and regulations in place that make the old way of doing business so boring and hard are actually in place for a very good reason.
This is usually how the law (and business custom) develops, by encountering actual human behavior. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote, "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." The Common Law (1881), p. 1.
Re: Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market
#4"The big surprise for us was when we tried to contact Airbnb" to complain, said Thieme, a writer and editor... Not mentioned is if they tried to talk to their neighbour .
Not mentioned is whether the person who owns the subletted apartment is, in fact, their actual neighbour (as opposed to someone who lives somewhere else yet still owns the property and rents it via Airbnb).
Re: Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market
#5"We used Airbnb happily in Europe last summer," said Thieme. "I want to extend them the benefit of the doubt that they are still evolving their business model and have had explosive growth, but they need to evolve appropriate mechanisms of monitoring and control. They should deal with zoning laws and tax laws more aggressively and realistically, or they will antagonize people."
tl;dr: "We like Airbnb when others are potentially inconvenienced to our benefit, but not the other way around."
Re: Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market
#6"The big surprise for us was when we tried to contact Airbnb" to complain, said Thieme, a writer and editor... Not mentioned is if they tried to talk to their neighbour .
The point is that they didn't have a neighbor. They had an absentee property owner and a string of short-term tenants.
Re: Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market
#7"The big surprise for us was when we tried to contact Airbnb" to complain, said Thieme, a writer and editor... Not mentioned is if they tried to talk to their neighbour .
Not mentioned is if they tried to talk to their neighbour. Was the neighbor who had control of the unit as a tenant on the lease home when the room was rented out? I don't think so. The article opens with these paragraphs: "First came the noisy upstairs neighbors who said they were just "renting the place for a couple of nights" but refused to tone it down. Then came the people who would try to open the front door of…
..DID talk to those visitors..
They need to talk to the person the visitors are renting from. Is that doesn't work, they can go one level higher up.
Re: Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market
#8For an industry so focused on disrupting ...everything. Things start to get real hard, boring and normal when met with success and exposure to the public. I admire the optimism that youth brings, allowing someone to look at a problem with a fresh perspective but all too often, the rules, laws and regulations in place that make the old way of doing business so boring and hard are actually in place for a very good reason.
Support line dealing with complaints from neighbors? How messy and resource intensive.
Meeting with local community leaders and the public to discuss the issues surrounding their service? That doesn't scale very well and is again ... messy, boring and hard.
Re: Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market
#9"We used Airbnb happily in Europe last summer," said Thieme. "I want to extend them the benefit of the doubt that they are still evolving their business model and have had explosive growth, but they need to evolve appropriate mechanisms of monitoring and control. They should deal with zoning laws and tax laws more aggressively and realistically, or they will antagonize people." tl;dr: "We like Airbnb when others are…
The overwhelming majority of those inconvenienced by abusive Airbnb listings have never previously heard of the site. It's unhelpful to single out a single person who had used Airbnb as a way of warding off criticisms of Airbnb abuse.
Re: Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market
#10Much of the criticism of Airbnb in this article seems to stem from renters "subletting" their apartments to vacationers. Why does Airbnb allow renters to list their apartments on Airbnb at all? In virtually no case does a renter have a lease that permits Airbnb-style listings; the boilerplate lease that virtually everyone works from requires landlord approval for each subletter.
It seems unconscionable to rent an apartment from a landlord and then use the space to run a hotel. Anybody who's ever rented more than one apartment knows that landlords are picky about tenants, often requiring credit checks as well as references from previous landlords. Renters sign a binding agreement with their landlord stipulating that they're using the space as their private residence. Breaking that agreement for profit is unethical.