New Book Describes How AirBNB Influenced City Laws (backchannel.com)

"For years, Airbnb was the friendly foil to Uber, aiming to work with cities rather than against them," writes Slashdot reader mirandakatz. "But as it grew and regulatory challenges mounted, the startup had to grow fangs." She shares an excerpt from a new book called The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World. The reality people saw often depended on where their sympathies lay. Regulators, left-wing politicians, hotel CEOs, union leaders, affordable housing advocates, and angry neighbors tired of carousing guests saw Airbnb as nothing but a rule breaker from the far-away land of arrogant, entitled billionaires. Investors, hosts, property owners struggling to make their monthly mortgage payments, travel-discount shoppers, and high-tech aficionados tended to believe in the startup with good intentions that was disrupting the stultified hospitality industry.
The book is by Brad Stone, who also wrote The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon. He describes how "good AirBNB" got Portland to eliminate the $4,000 permits for B&Bs by agreeing to collect lodging taxes from AirBNB hosts (and by opening a Portland call center). But his excerpt ends as "momentum was shifting" against AirBNB in New York City, as powerful hotels and their service employee unions convinced city lawmakers that legitimizing the company would be "politically radioactive" -- while the company's CEO "was going to fight for every inch of territory".

Comments

Regulations

[stephenmac7]

Companies such as Airbnb and Uber serve to show just how regulated most industries are. When they waltz into an existing industry with services just different enough to escape regulations, the suffocating nature of special interest-driven regulation becomes apparent. Entrenched taxi companies demand licensing restrictions. Hotels demand regulation and taxes. Unions demand classification of contractors as employees (and people realize they aren't so different from each other -- employees are just special contractors with government-mandated benefits). The New York decision is a classic example of special interests aiming to limit competition and creative destruction.

Re:Regulations

[kinthalas]

Because god fucking forbid I take a ride in a car and don't have to worry that the driver is a rapist or murderer.

Or that I stay in a place that isn't a fire prone death trap.

Or that people make a living wage doing what they're doing, so they don't have to starve in the damn street or die of a preventable illness.

Fucking government, making rules and shit to protect people, even though most people aren't violently killed by the very things they're trying to prevent.

Re:Regulations

[93 Escort Wagon]

I tend to lean in the same direction as you - but it's not like the entrenched companies are all sweetness and light. I think we need to realize this isn't an either/or situation, but more of a continuum.

The regulations which exist weren't originally put there to protect special interests - by and large, they were created to protect customers. But companies, being companies, have done what they could to mold the regulatory environment into something which gives them a leg up on any upstarts. And the agencies tasked with protecting particular regulations often act to serve their own power.

I see unions in the same light. They were created to empower to workers who were at the mercy of abusive corporations - and I still think they serve that important purpose. But in my personal experience, when those same unions have to choose between what is best for a worker versus what protects the union's entrenched power, the worker loses.

Basically Lord Acton was right, in other words.

Re: Regulations

[dnaumov]

You got things backwards: the whole reason why goverments exist to begin with is "being a security blanket". There are literally few to none other reasons for a goverment to exist at all.

Re:Regulations

[drinkypoo]

The regulations which exist weren't originally put there to protect special interests - by and large, they were created to protect customers.

The regulatory frameworks may have been created to protect customers, but the government framework was designed to protect oligarchy, so the regulations wind up promoting oligarchy.

AirBnB is not your friend, neither is Uber

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to just come out and admit it, "sharing economy" things are just unregulated businesses.

AirBnB was fine when it was actually B&B's, but as soon as it turned into "entire building" or "entire condo", it became an unlicensed hotel service, and that is bad because it puts substantial pressure on the rental housing stock, and in some cities like SFO, NYC and YVR rental housing is at such a premium, and no new housing is being made available, that AirBnB shouldn't exist in these cities.

What AirBnB should have done to "hose off" claims of destroying rental stock is to ALSO become a conventional rental management payment gateway. If it did that, then the same people who want to rent a unit monthly unfurnished can also list their units on the service with the stipulation of "month-to-month lease" or "fixed lease expiring on (date)" and thus anyone who wants to actually wants to see the history of a unit wouldn't need to go very far.

Likewise with Uber. Uber should have initially started out as "car sharing" where person X is going to Y, if you need to go to Y too, X will go out of their way to get you" and gradually moved up to "safe taxi/limo service" with finally having "automated personal vehicle service". That way Uber acts as the last mile of a conventional transit system instead of being "an alternative" to legal taxi services, which is why it's ruffling so many feathers with cities. When it starts doing things that are not in everyones best interests (like harming union activities) it is quite literately asking to be regulated out of existence.

Much of the "sharing economy" comes at the expense of those that are following the rules. So in the case of NYC, SFO and YVR, both AirBnB and Uber have damaged a lot of goodwill with the cities they operate in and in the case of YVR(Vancouver) AirBnB got a huge slapdown, the city put in place empty-home taxes, and the province put in foreign-buyer taxes. If AirBnB didn't exist, the pressure on rental prices would go back down. Uber is also banned from operating in Vancouver since it tried to operate without appropriate licencing.

Hmmm

[rmdingler]

Without playing to either side of the political spectrum, I mean, honestly; do you see anti-hotel legislation flourishing during Mr. Trump's administration?