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Cities Struggling To Crack Down On Airbnb Renters (latimes.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
A California man has been charged with eight misdemeanors for renting several apartments under his own name, and then subletting them all. "Apartments in Santa Monica that might fetch $3500 a month as ordinary rentals, are worth three or four times that on a daily or weekly basis," reports one newsweekly, and the subletter notes that he only received two years of probation plus a $3,500 fine, "what one of my properties makes in a month."
On Wednesday three prominent U.S. Senators "called for a regulatory probe into whether short-term rental websites such as Airbnb are taking housing away from long-term renters and pushing up prices," but the number of Americans planning to use Airbnb this summer has apparently already doubled since last year.
The Hotel and Lodging Association of Alaska is complaining that the state's renters "are not required to follow the same state and federal safety mandates that are required for other hotels and lodges creating an unsafe and unfair market for consumers as well as hoteliers." But it seems like currently the only pushback is coming from local and city officials, like the short-term rental rules that Airbnb is currently fighting in their home city of San Francisco. For example, in Maine, the owner of one of Portland's 425 rentals units is now fighting a city order "demanding that he stop renting out part of his home through Airbnb. "Portland has a limited staff to enforce zoning rules, so it comes down on the most egregious cases, said City Hall spokeswoman Jessica Grondin."
I laughed at the quote from the City Hall spokeswoman. "It's kind of like speeding on the highway. You know it is illegal, you do it anyway, and you get caught."
The Hotel and Lodging Association of Alaska is complaining that the state's renters "are not required to follow the same state and federal safety mandates that are required for other hotels and lodges creating an unsafe and unfair market for consumers as well as hoteliers." But it seems like currently the only pushback is coming from local and city officials, like the short-term rental rules that Airbnb is currently fighting in their home city of San Francisco. For example, in Maine, the owner of one of Portland's 425 rentals units is now fighting a city order "demanding that he stop renting out part of his home through Airbnb. "Portland has a limited staff to enforce zoning rules, so it comes down on the most egregious cases, said City Hall spokeswoman Jessica Grondin."
I laughed at the quote from the City Hall spokeswoman. "It's kind of like speeding on the highway. You know it is illegal, you do it anyway, and you get caught."
When I speed, I'm not forcing people with smaller cars off of the expressway and onto dirt roads, far far away.
These people are driving up the rents and prices of homes in communities, while not being restricted by the laws that hotels/motels/holidayinns have to follow. So for those who want decent housing at decent pricing, they have to live far away, or in worse areas.. driving the next people to live farther and worse-er.
If by "little people", you mean folks that can buy 425 properties, you and I have very different definitions... The article is all about the abusing that people with plenty of money are doing to a system would have worked if it was only done on a small scale.
Well, it sure is pushing down prices for hotels. Which is probably why crony capitalists get all pushed out of shape about this. As for housing prices and the housing shortage, AirBnB isn't responsible for that, it's zoning laws, rent control, and the interference of the federal government in the mortgage markets. But, hey, leave it to the usual suspects (Warren, Feinstein) to first wreck people's lives and then blame "big evil corporations" for the mess they created.
Be it Uber or AirBNB, the pattern is the same — the old way of doing things is struggling against the technology-enabled new way.
We lived through this, when automobiles replaced horse-drawn transport, we are witnessing it now...
It is decidedly no less "safe" than the overpriced "real" hotels/motels. And it is only unfair because of the costs of government-regulations, which those "real" establishments have always passed on to their customers.
With the immediately-available customer ratings offered by the new companies, the government regulators are simply no longer necessary. If "fairness" is a concern, the hotels should be left alone — and unregulated — too.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
uber is a fake taxi, avoids taxes, and avoids regulations and requirements designed to protect the public.
airbnb is a fake hotel, avoids taxes, and avoids regulations and requirements designed to protect the public
This is definitely one of those cases where technology has rendered moot the underlying reality that forced the need for regulation in the first place.
I disagree, technology is simply providing a new way for people to evade the laws and recreate the same problems that -- long ago -- caused the laws to be created.
Now, there is some virtue to "shaking things up", but the underlying issues here are not actually computational at all, they are issues about monetary-incentives, damage and accountability, and various tragedies of the commons.
The cities and towns who want to regulate this and Uber and the like are doing so not because there is some sort of crisis or need for regulation. By their own admission, they do not have control over it now and yet there are very few reports of problems, which strongly suggests there aren't many issues.
No, they don't want to solve anything. They're just mad that somebody is doing something without asking permission and paying for licenses and other crap. An awful lot of government is devoted to making people ask for permission to do things and making them pay fees to get that permission.
If people realize they can do things just fine without permits, then all hell will break loose of people doing stuff on their own for free! How can bloated bureaucratic governments survive and justify their own existence if people just DO stuff?
You're right. There's absolutely no need for permits to do things like electrical wiring. And no reason whatsoever to mandate that property owners have smoke alarms and fire extinguishers on their properties. Nothing has ever gone wrong in the past, all of these rules and regulations just came to be out of thin air because some bureaucrat thought it would be a great way to make money.
The "natural state" is me hitting you and taking your stuff.
Your ad here. Ask me how!