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

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

I see one stat in the paper that "40% of buildings had airbnb listings in some tracts" but if the buildings had 10 units in them each this still may mean a relatively small number of total listings were from Airbnbs. In fact, even in Boston there are some tracts where I suppose that the average building must have 30+ units which would meant that if 60% of buildings had no listing the total percentage of listings that are Airbnbs is relatively small.

>higher levels of violent crime did not appear immediately after Airbnb listings became available to tourists, but rather developed over the course of several years, the researchers said.

Alternative theory. Every area had some Airbnbs. In neighborhoods that were being wealthier/more popular/had more jobs decided it was easier to just do long-term rentals. In areas where landlords had trouble renting them out to anyone long-term (because locals know if a neighborhood is nice or not) they turned more units into Airbnbs because outsiders don't know/don't care.

  We use difference-in-difference models (Eq (1)) to test whether a rise in the prevalence of Airbnb in a census tract in one year predicts increases in crime and disorder in the following year.
  ...
  The models control for tract-level and year fixed effects. In order to make the parameter estimates that follow more interpretable, we note that the average census tract in the average year experienced 11.32 events of private conflict, 7.68 events of public social disorder, and 28.58 events of public violence per 1,000 residents.

I've not dug into the study enough to vouch for its quality as a whole - but it's clear the researchers are plenty aware of the differences between correlation and causation and are at least attempting to address them. This is actually often the case with scientific papers, even if it's lost in the media coverage of them.

"The large-scale conversion of housing units into short-term rentals undermines a neighborhood’s social organization, and in turn its natural ability...to counteract and discourage crime,"

and the research reeks of p-hacking and non-reproducibility:

Spain:

  >"It encourages the concentration of tourists who, due to their characteristics, are suitable targets for victimisation," Maldonado-Guzmán said.

> The researchers found that there was a positive correlation between higher penetration of Airbnb properties in an area – for example buildings containing multiple Airbnb lets – and a rise in violence. However, crime types associated with rowdy visitors, like drunkenness and noise complaints, as well as private conflicts, did not increase.

> "It's not the number of Airbnb tourists who stay in a neighborhood that causes an increase in criminal activities," said Professor Babak Heydari from Northeastern University.

I have seen areas close to 100%... in Hollywood, FL (not Airbnb though...)