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Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments

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Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments

#31

Post by bradleyjg »

oh_sigh wrote: post #28
bradleyjg wrote: post #27

Earlier 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.

That's why they get paid the big bucks. These aren't some guys in a garage, they have a $13B valuation. They can afford to hire some people to implement and maintain that database.

In any event, we need not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. They can start with the low hanging fruit. In NYC they reportedly make millions of dollars a year. Certainly that justifies the cost of adding a line in a database? (<30 days, whole place, apartment).

Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments

#32

Post by bkor »

oh_sigh wrote: post #28
bradleyjg wrote: post #27

Earlier 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.

Any other (big) international business follows local regulations and gets fined when they don't. That it is a nightmare: deal with it.

I find it surprising how acceptable it is that certain company can ignore so many regulations, while another company has to abide by them. Unfair competition.

Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments

#33

Post by bkor »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #10
city41 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your neighbor's actions have an affect on your home, including day to day comfort and how much your home is worth. HOAs exist for a reason. I'm not sure I'd want to live next to an apartment that constantly has new guests, any of which could do who knows what to the building.

Two issues. 1. "HOAs exist for a reason." They exist under the pretense that they maintain or increase property values. There is no evidence that this is the case. I have spent well over 100 hours researching this, and was unable to find conclusive data to prove this (and used said data to help communities dissolve their HOAs). 2. Short term rental restrictions fall under city/local (and sometimes state) government o…

Why would government need to investigate how to persuade? Just fine them and/or shut them down, possibly go after the people running the company.

Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments

#34

Post by MadManE »

untog wrote: post #29
MadManE wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I do live in an apartment building. It's pretty telling that you assume that I can't possibly relate to the common man, and if only I was in their position, I would be more sympathetic.

I am in their position. And I am anything but sympathetic for that very reason.

Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments

#35

Post by untog »

MadManE wrote: post #34
untog wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I do live in an apartment building. It's pretty telling that you assume that I can't possibly relate to the common man, and if only I was in their position, I would be more sympathetic . I am in their position. And I am anything but sympathetic for that very reason.

You are suggesting that you would have no problem with random groups of people waking you up at night and destroying shared property inside your apartment building?

Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments

#36

Post by jboggan »

kyledrake wrote: post #19
sejje wrote: post #2

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.

Try being seriously under-unemployed in a recession for 5 years, watch a single demographic group of "I've got mine, so the hell with everyone else" entitled brats make tons of money in SF playing casino capitalism with mostly fake valuation companies that don't make any money, and then watch them cash their chips in, go into a city with a major housing crisis and push up prices so high through real estate speculatio…

I live in Santa Monica, which by one metric has the most expensive hotel rates in the state of California [1]. The result? Multiple people either buying or renting multiple properties to AirBNB them and the availability and price of residential rentals beginning to approach what I left behind in SF. I know several people who are essentially employed fulltime as managers for absentee renters, or rent out 3-4 apartments scattered around the city and live in whichever is getting the least interest on AirBNB. A few people get caught and evicted, but for the most part this behavior continues unimpeded.

Looking for an apartment two years apart in the exact same neighborhood (fall 2012 and fall 2014) I saw an incredible difference completely unrelated to any other economic change in the area. I'm not sure what else to attribute it to.

1 -http://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/New...

Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments

#37

Post by MadManE »

MadManE wrote: post #34
untog wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I do live in an apartment building. It's pretty telling that you assume that I can't possibly relate to the common man, and if only I was in their position, I would be more sympathetic . I am in their position. And I am anything but sympathetic for that very reason.

Reply to untog:

Of course I'm not ok with people destroying things. But I don't think that having a law making subleasing illegal prevents that. You're acting as if the ability to do what I want with my property makes it a foregone conclusion that evil things will happen.

Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments

#38

Post by untog »

MadManE wrote: post #37
MadManE wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do live in an apartment building. It's pretty telling that you assume that I can't possibly relate to the common man, and if only I was in their position, I would be more sympathetic . I am in their position. And I am anything but sympathetic for that very reason.

Reply to untog: Of course I'm not ok with people destroying things. But I don't think that having a law making subleasing illegal prevents that. You're acting as if the ability to do what I want with my property makes it a foregone conclusion that evil things will happen.

You're acting as if the ability to do what I want with my property makes it a foregone conclusion that evil things will happen.

No, I'm acting as if the ability for an unlimited and unknown number of complete strangers to enter my apartment building makes it a foregone conclusion that evil things will happen, which is pretty much true. Even if the vast majority of AirBnB customers behave, the odds are that there will always be an outlier that will ruin it.

Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments

#39

Post by ghaff »

MadManE wrote: post #22
ghaff wrote: post #7

Earlier 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…

One of the main purposes of zoning, for example, is (to use your words) to restrict "the ability to do what I want with my property." Would every use restricted by zoning harm me? Probably not. But some unit of local government has chosen to enact some set of restrictions that local residents believe will serve to reduce potentially harmful activities.

None of this is perfect of course. And rules can get pretty silly especially when you start talking about homeowners associations and historical districts and the like. But in the aggregate, these laws serve a useful purpose.

Re: Portland Does Little when AirBnB Hosts Rent Multiple Apartments

#40

Post by pyrophane »

oh_sigh wrote: post #28
bradleyjg wrote: post #27

Earlier 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.

Not really. Large companies have to do that sort of thing all the time. Amazon collects sales tax, which is even more complicated. Airbnb is certainly sufficiently well funded to be expected to be able to deal with this sort of thing.
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