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Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out

euronews.com

221–230 of 337 posts

Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out

#221
post #216

Sigh. This appears to be one of those cases of media exaggeration for eyeballs. The study says: > the effect on violence was only consistent visible for the measure of Airbnb penetration–or the extent to which buildings in the neighborhood have one or more listings (and for the measure of density, or the listings per household in the two-year lags). It was never present for overall usage, or the estimated quantity of…

I agree that it seems to be a pretty poor paper.

>They even acknowledge that the correlation could be due to a factor that isn't being accounted for.

Related to this, they're performing a regression between Airbnb prevalence and crime, but they only control for a single variable: income[0]. They look at others in a robustness check, but a single control variable practically screams p-hacking.

They also don't address the fact that both Airbnb prevalence and crime are nonstationary[1]. Regressing two nonstationary time series results in a nonsense coefficient[2]. Two totally unrelated time series will have a high coefficient if both exhibit consistent trends.

[0] "We report the results based on using income as the main tract-level control variable"

[1] They are consistent trends over time, see https://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/07/stationary....

[2] https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/94723/using-non-st...

Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out

#222
post #33

A common quote on HN (and one that I firmly believe in) is: > It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. This so applies to AirBnB. It's not salary per se but those that benefit by renting out units or those for whom this has saved them money I've found typically get so defensive about AirBnB to the point of calling detractors NIMBYists and the like. I'…

I am generally against airbnb as it induces rent-seeking behavior. This is bad for the economy because you are not adding value (in an economic sense). Plus the added dis benefits if increasing rent, reducing housing supply, etc. Ultimately it is a product of cheap money and as soon as the money is no longer cheap, it will be detrimental to airbnb. Sadly, the pandemic has increased our government's addiction to print…

Does a hotel not add economic value?

Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out

#223
post #143
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how expensive is it really The answer, as with all govtech, is “a lot more than it should be.” Governments, especially local governments, have no internal technology competence, and have to rely on vendors and contractors for absolutely everything.

It's also a 2-part cost. To run a tip-line and collect tips: probably very little. To act on that information , so you're able to identify and punish violators, without which there's no point in having a tip line: looooooots more.

You just have to make the fine enough that it covers the cost of defending it against the people that do contest it.

Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out

#224
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The whole concept of residential property as an investment must go. I wonder if enough AirBnB in the area could actually drive property cost down, because nobody would like to live there long term and then essentially wiping off all the profits people made by renting out. In the end only the AirBnB would really profit. It's a business model clearly bases on a loophole and should be closed. If someone wants t…

> The whole concept of residential property as an investment must go. Well, not this exactly. I mean when you rent a property, you're renting it from someone else who owns it. That's what residential property is. So there's really only three broad alternatives here: 1. It's owned by governments at some level. I think we can all agree this would largely be a disaster at any sort of scale; 2. They're owned privately. T…

> 1. It's owned by governments at some level. I think we can all agree this would largely be a disaster at any sort of scale;

Henry George enters the chat:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

There's a reasonable philosophical case that land ownership is a very odd concept, probably wrong at some fundamental level -- people may feel a sense of possessiveness over a place, but most territory isn't a fruit of anyone's labors and attempts to base claims on "improvements" run afoul of the problem that (a) what constitutes and improvement is fairly subjective and (b) really not a matter of the underlying territory claim anyway. And in some sense, having land as property at all is married to the idea of a social order which can assign its disposition, which is close enough to the idea of property itself that it starts to become clear that all property is at some level also government property.

Now, whether it's practical to treat it that way is a different question, but a system where people own and trade in leases that they pay to the state as a tax is also... pretty similar to existing property tax + private leases, it's just that a lot of the private leases would essentially become a public revenue source. And it gets especially interesting if you try to envision an economic system where that's the primary tax.

Personally, I think it could work at least as well as the current system, but the transition might be politically intractable, and it's not a hill I care to die on, so...

Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't some listings on airbnb do the exact same thing? Would those be ok from airbnb if they stopped the other types? Is the only difference having a landlord on site?

I absolutely would be more accepting of it if they only allowed ones where the landlord was on-site, yes.

In Denver the law is that a person can only AirBnb a property that is their primary residence. If you have an ADU or want to rent a room you can do that full time. We rent our place when we travel..

It seems like a good compromise to me.

Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally the fines would pay for the program, but how expensive is it really to have an anonymous phone tip line, and reuse existing infrastructure to fine or ticket a property owner?

And the cost for an enforcement agent/department to investigate. And each agent's salary, benefits, and pension. In many cities, the police don't even respond to auto/bike burglaries -- they're very minimally staffed.

Most cities have ample police force them being understaffed is somewhat of a bullshit narrative.

For example NYPD has 36000 ifficers for 8.4M residents or 1 for every 230 people. In Chicago it's 225. In Seattle it's over 500 but they could probably afford more if they weren't paying individual officers up to 400k including non electronically tracked probably fraudulent overtime.

Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out

#227
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1. It's owned by governments at some level. I think we can all agree this would largely be a disaster at any sort of scale; Not me! I've heard great things about living in Vienna where about 25% of housing is government owned.

Have you heard of Grenfell Tower?

Have you heard of [Insert private housing unit that failed catastrophically]? Anecdotes are not data.

Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like Uber? They violated… and people would be pissed to see them go. So companies hope to be the rule breaker that gets too big to fail.

People like Uber because it's cheaper than taxis but I'm hearing complaints that prices are up. Seems the reason it's cheaper than taxis is Uber is subsidizing with investor money and they shifted costs to the drivers, many who are realizing it's not worth it. Seems to me Uber has always been unsustainable (they're billions in the red, spending to capture market share) but they were hoping to have self driving cars t…

I hated taxis long before Uber showed up.

Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out

#229
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The whole concept of residential property as an investment must go. I wonder if enough AirBnB in the area could actually drive property cost down, because nobody would like to live there long term and then essentially wiping off all the profits people made by renting out. In the end only the AirBnB would really profit. It's a business model clearly bases on a loophole and should be closed. If someone wants t…

> The whole concept of residential property as an investment must go. Well, not this exactly. I mean when you rent a property, you're renting it from someone else who owns it. That's what residential property is. So there's really only three broad alternatives here: 1. It's owned by governments at some level. I think we can all agree this would largely be a disaster at any sort of scale; 2. They're owned privately. T…

Most land is to some level owned by the government, yes. You have to pay a lease in the form of property tax and the government has the final say in what is done with it, as long as they compensate you for it (penalty for breaking the lease).

Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out

#230
post #33

A common quote on HN (and one that I firmly believe in) is: > It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. This so applies to AirBnB. It's not salary per se but those that benefit by renting out units or those for whom this has saved them money I've found typically get so defensive about AirBnB to the point of calling detractors NIMBYists and the like. I'…

> 4. Brings temporary residents into neighbourhoods that have no tie to that neighbourhood. Where I live we call this "tourism"

Was going to make a similar comment. Don't see how this is being viewed as a negative.
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