Airbnb asks people to donate money to landlords, backlash ensues • Hacker News Board

Re: Airbnb asks people to donate money to landlords, backlash ensues

#161

Post by parliament32 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

monkeynotes wrote: post #62

sleavey wrote: post #14

This was really short sighted given Airbnb have claimed since the beginning to regulators, local authorities and the public that they exist only to provide a platform for people to rent out their spare rooms when it's convenient for them. Their core claim is that they are not a hotel company, which is how they manage to skirt so many hotel regulations. Built into these claims is the assumption that the owners of the…

I have somewhat of a 'not in my backyard' opinion of Airbnb. I have admittedly used the service multiple times, but since I moved into a new house I've changed my view on the business model. Our neighbour Airbnbs multiple rooms in his house full time. He barely has parking for 3 cars, 2 cars if you don't want to be boxed in. However he rents out room for 6 people. He constantly has business moving through his house,…

I don't really see how this bothers you. If they're parking on your driveway, just call a tow truck. If they're on the street, you're SOL unless you can pitch the city to make your street "residential parking only" with decals (but this is no different from your neighbour just owning 8 cars and street parking them).

Re: Airbnb asks people to donate money to landlords, backlash ensues

#162

Post by mnm1 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

The expansion of tipping culture has been here for awhile. This particular instance generated outrage, but usually people comply. First it was restaurants because in some states waiters don't even make minimum wage. Then it became almost all restaurants, regardless of whether the employees legally make minimum wage before tips or not. Now it's ride sharing. And food trucks. Anywhere they have Square. As if handing the food through the food truck window is somehow worthy of a tip. Ice cream shops. Food delivery. In addition to exorbitant fees and overpriced items, a tip is still required or the driver is likely not even making money. I can accept this during the pandemic since the driver is risking their life, but outside, every single one of these cases is preposterous.

The underlying issue is that companies are allowed to not pay employees enough and often are allowed to classify employees as contractors. Unless you're easily paying your health insurance out of pocket (premiums, deductible, and out of pocket max), there's no way one should be classified as a contractor. It's absurd to think people making whatever uber offers have control over their lives and their work. It's tiring that these multi-billion dollar companies as refusing to pay living wages and externalizing their pay onto their customers.

Unfortunately, the only recourse is to not tip and this, like so many things, hurts the workers more than their companies. But what else to do? In a society where learned helplessness is the norm and that has no practical way of addressing one's concerns, boycotting remains the only viable action. What am I going to do? Sue? Write my representative? Please. Let's not be delusional. Hopefully if employees suffer enough, they might unionize, and claw back power for themselves. Or these business will go out of business. It's sad, but that's what it seems to take.

Re: Airbnb asks people to donate money to landlords, backlash ensues

#163

Post by nicoburns » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

DINKDINK wrote: post #128

nicoburns wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Housing costs are not up because of Airbnb I think they are partially. In London, rents have decreased 25%-50% since COVID. Part of that will be reduced demand. But I have also seen a lot of rooms advertised for long-term rental that were previously Airbnbs. We could certainly ameliorate this by building more houses. But here in the UK we're a lot more limited by available land space than you are in the US. And whi…

>> Housing costs are not up because of Airbnb >I think they are partially. You're mistaking housing costs with prices. Housing costs are the input prices of components that entrepreneurs accept or reject to produce housing. Such as: * price materials producers demand for their products (concrete, wood, electrical wire etc) * the labor prices, labor sellers demand (Carpenters, iron workers, etc) * the prices land owne…

"housing costs" can also refer to the cost to the consumer in order to obtain housing. I think everyone in this thread is talking about what you refer to as "prices" rather than what you refer to as "costs".

Re: Airbnb asks people to donate money to landlords, backlash ensues

#164

Post by joejerryronnie » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

monkeynotes wrote: post #62

sleavey wrote: post #14

This was really short sighted given Airbnb have claimed since the beginning to regulators, local authorities and the public that they exist only to provide a platform for people to rent out their spare rooms when it's convenient for them. Their core claim is that they are not a hotel company, which is how they manage to skirt so many hotel regulations. Built into these claims is the assumption that the owners of the…

I have somewhat of a 'not in my backyard' opinion of Airbnb. I have admittedly used the service multiple times, but since I moved into a new house I've changed my view on the business model. Our neighbour Airbnbs multiple rooms in his house full time. He barely has parking for 3 cars, 2 cars if you don't want to be boxed in. However he rents out room for 6 people. He constantly has business moving through his house,…

Is this fundamentally different than your next door neighbor replacing their SFH with a 4 story apartment building? One could say Airbnb rentals are based on want and traditional rental housing is based on need, but the residents of the theoretical apartment building don’t “need” to live on your street.

Re: Airbnb asks people to donate money to landlords, backlash ensues

#165

Post by cosmie » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

yardie wrote: post #136

koolba wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hotels do this all the time. Resort fees. Taxes. Surcharges. Amenities. Only airlines publish full fares and that’s because of a federal law. I remember back in the day when it wasn’t the case and you had to click through to the final pricing page to do any serious fare comparison.

No hotel I've ever stayed at has done this. At least not the big names. At most you'll get a different price for halfboard/fullboard. And a price bump for an extra bed. Also, in my encounters, resort fees are in lieu of being a boarder. The resorts by me, Miami Beach, charge visitors for access to the pools and spas, not their guests.

Many hotels have started charging resort/amenity fees for guests as well. Traditionally commissions were only calculated on base room rate, so making up a mandatory fee and shifting some of the rate over acted as a super handy "tax dodge", artificially lowering the commission owed to all their booking partners. The same applies to pre-negotiated corporate and event-block rates – they can win business with an artificially low price, then pad the actual margin of stays via an ambiguously defined and undisclosed but "industry standard" destination/resort/amenity/urban fee.

Between that too-easy-to-pass-up profit optimization, and the marketing benefits of deceptively low list price, it's become pretty pervasive. And isn't limited to actual resorts – I've had bog-standard business hotels in the suburbs tack on a $30/night non-waivable "destination fee". Luckily it got to a ridiculous level recently, triggering a lot of media backlash and class action lawsuits last year[1][2].

It's also losing effectiveness, as things like online booking websites start displaying all-inclusive pricing and renegotiate their commission structures to be inclusive of mandatory, non-governmental fees. Between that, all the negative sentiment, the spate of lawsuits and legislation its triggered, the fees are hopefully on their way out.

[1] http://killresortfees.com/

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/07/resort-fees-being-addressed-...

Re: Airbnb asks people to donate money to landlords, backlash ensues

#166

Post by solidasparagus » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

distances wrote: post #154

solidasparagus wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hotels absolutely do this. Most egregiously in Las Vegas with 'resort fees', but try to book any hotel and you will get charged more than the advertised price due to 'taxes and fees'.

This doesn't happen in Europe. I assume we have consumer protections against this the same way as with flight prices.

Maybe it only applies to users from Europe but when I try to book a hotel room in Europe right now it happens.

Re: Airbnb asks people to donate money to landlords, backlash ensues

#167

Post by joshstrange » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

monkeynotes wrote: post #62

sleavey wrote: post #14

This was really short sighted given Airbnb have claimed since the beginning to regulators, local authorities and the public that they exist only to provide a platform for people to rent out their spare rooms when it's convenient for them. Their core claim is that they are not a hotel company, which is how they manage to skirt so many hotel regulations. Built into these claims is the assumption that the owners of the…

I have somewhat of a 'not in my backyard' opinion of Airbnb. I have admittedly used the service multiple times, but since I moved into a new house I've changed my view on the business model. Our neighbour Airbnbs multiple rooms in his house full time. He barely has parking for 3 cars, 2 cars if you don't want to be boxed in. However he rents out room for 6 people. He constantly has business moving through his house,…

I think the important distinction is the side effects of having a neighbor that rents out on AirBnB. In your case it's "occasionally his guests encroach on our driveway which is adjacent to his" which I think is unacceptable. I have rented ~10 AirBnB's with friends over the years and in every case we either flew into the location and used Uber/Lyft to get around or carpooled there resulting in us only using the allowed number of parking spaces.

A family or group of people occupying a residence that would be occupied by a similarly size group is not a problem in my mind. It's only when there is noise at all hours, trash left around the property or on yours, or parking in your parking area that I would really start to mind.

Maybe that's easy for me to say as someone who doesn't (that I know of) live near someone who rents out on AirBnB. That said, I do live next to 1 house that has ~6 (I honestly can't be sure) people that live there (all adults) and on the other side have a house that is often vacant and the owners have their parents live there sometimes I think and none of that bothers me. That's mainly because they keep to themselves, don't make lots of noise, leave trash laying around, or take up extra parking. So knowing all that I don't think I'd mind an AirBnB as long as all those factors didn't change.

Re: Airbnb asks people to donate money to landlords, backlash ensues

#168

Post by mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

sleavey wrote: post #14

This was really short sighted given Airbnb have claimed since the beginning to regulators, local authorities and the public that they exist only to provide a platform for people to rent out their spare rooms when it's convenient for them. Their core claim is that they are not a hotel company, which is how they manage to skirt so many hotel regulations. Built into these claims is the assumption that the owners of the…

Cleaning fee is actually a discount on longer stays. Hotels offer such discounts too.

Re: Airbnb asks people to donate money to landlords, backlash ensues

#169

Post by mathattack » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

mchusma wrote: post #92

mathattack wrote: post #21

This seems counter-productive. Housing costs are up because of AirBnB. I’m not thrilled, but that’s the market. The market needs to reprice. Folks who bet on the market would get rich if the bet paid off. Let them sell their places, and someone else can rent them out in the future. Call me callous but I don’t feel the need to bail out someone who charged me $500/night on a place with a $3000 monthly payment. I entere…

Housing costs are not up because of Airbnb, they are up because of government regulation. If we wanted housing to cost to buy a house in the US to be $100k average, we could do it almost overnight by lifting regulations unrelated to safety. With existing automation tech (produce like industry instead of custom each time) we could get it to $50k. In 10 years we could make housing affordable if we had the societal will…

I could have been more precise and said “in part due to AirBnB.” AirBnB increased the demand for housing (from investors) without increasing supply. So home ownership costs go up. Conversely they do increase the rental supply.

I concur with you that zoning and regulations definitely impact the supply quite a bit. (Mostly reducing supply)

Re: Airbnb asks people to donate money to landlords, backlash ensues

#170

Post by cworth » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

bagacrap wrote: post #93

Nasrudith wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just property but also jobs and industries. Look at the vastly disproportionate amount of tears for coal miners. That feeling seems to apply to any way to make a living that they react hostility to being told is risky. Because everything is an investment and everything is a risk including not taking one. I suspect it has to do with Calvinism essentially and the religious fixation of work as righteous and a g…

I'd rather live in a society that held work as righteous rather than idleness. It seems to be a problem currently that we're paying many workers more to stay home than they'd normally make on the job, and their personal attitudes towards work are not enough to overcome this inverse monetary incentive. As Musk put it, the economy is not just a free flowing cornucopia of "stuff" that everyone has to squabble over. You…

In a pandemic, incentivizing people to stay home instead of working is exactly what we should be doing.