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Indiana Considers Prohibiting Cities From Banning Airbnb (usnews.com)
"Indiana's cities and towns wouldn't be allowed to put their own restrictions on companies such as Airbnb under a proposal state lawmakers are considering," reports the Associated Press. Slashdot reader El Cubano writes:
The proposed legislation would prohibit local government in the state from banning Airbnb rentals by their residents. There are exceptions for home owner associations (which will still be allowed to ban rentals in their communities) and 180-day per year cap.
It is interesting to see something like this being considered at the state level. Supporters say that they are trying to prevent knee-jerk regulations and to protect an innovative emerging market. At the same time, local authorities are upset that they will no longer have the option to make the determination for themselves.
The bill has already been approved by the Indiana House, as well as a key committee in the Indiana Senate.
It is interesting to see something like this being considered at the state level. Supporters say that they are trying to prevent knee-jerk regulations and to protect an innovative emerging market. At the same time, local authorities are upset that they will no longer have the option to make the determination for themselves.
The bill has already been approved by the Indiana House, as well as a key committee in the Indiana Senate.
So, I am the submitter of the story, and I was really curious about was whether others think this is a good or bad thing. (Since I didn't submit it as an Ask Slashdot I didn't think I should go with questions in the story summary). I will reserve my own thoughts on whether this is good or bad as I am interested in what others have to say on the matter.
Is it good that Airbnb will be allowed to operate statewide, with protection of their innovative approach to the market being enshrined in law?
Alternately, is this an overreach on the part of the part of the state government?
I have to imagine that Airbnb is pleased by a developments like this since it keeps them from having to fight different local regulations in lots of different small jurisdictions.
I don't think it's overreach, it's simply banning overreach on the local/municipal level. This is moving control of the issue to the HOA's, and thus the people.
Most laws that move the decision making closer to the people is good in my eyes.
She: Hey, are you a traitor? Me: No, I'm atheist.
If you're constituency is the entrenched hospitality industry, it's hardly and overreach. If your constituency is actually the people who voted for you and you actually give a rats ass about their interests, its most egregious overreach. Gee, I wonder where the party lines will be on this one.
I know that the hotel industry feels threatened. They whip the local community into an uproar that AirBnB is going to lower their property values. Which is not the case. Instead these innovative companies bring money in by having people spend money in towns that they would not normally visit. Places that are on the outskirts of say a Disney or Dollywood would just be drive through cities. Now they become micro-attractions because more people are staying in there.
My wife and I stayed in an AirBnB over the summer. We loved it. It was quiet neighborhood with no annoying ice machine get used repeatedly at 2am in the morning. The person who shared his home with us provided us a small DVD collection and library for entertainment. We could have went to the big attractions but decided to stay in town. There was a mall and bowling alley, and a few small parks for us to walk around.
But my comments isn't just limited to AirBnB. Its things like Lyft and Uber, even the Netflix and Hulu of the television world. Cab and broadcast TV companies don't want to evolve because it means changing their comfortable corporate structure. They've become so rigid and undisciplined that they can't change. Or rather they're disciplined, but only their own bureaucracy so they canâ(TM)t react to changing market. I applaud the idea of putting limits local regulations in the instance of limiting new innovations.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
As a Hoosier I don't know what to think. I'm so used to looking at legislation at the state level with a mix of suspicion, shame, and bafflement (RFRA, all the various "control women's bodies" bills, etc) that I tend to dismiss things like this as motivated by something other than the common good.
But who knows? Until it's applied for good or ill I'll reserve judgement, unless I see a compelling argument to do otherwise.
Generally I think it's a good idea and a move in the right direction, but I would also like to see more responsibility for AirBnB hosts for their guests. Living next to an apartment that's being used more or less exclusively for AirBnB can be taxing if it is handed around between people who enjoy to party, and some apartment are actually being sold as "party location".
The least I'd expect if you turn the apartment next to mine into the noise equivalent of a frat house is that I get an easy way to have fines coming down on your that make you reconsider.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is just a precursor to a state-level tax on AirBnB. Why should localities get that tax money when the state can have it?
Government does nothing out of benevolence. This is no exception.
This sounds like something that is better decided at the local level, so the state getting involved seems like overreach to me.
Note that unlike what the title claims, this is not only about banning but also about restricting.There is a difference between renting out your house when you happen to be away and renting it out almost full time. So restrictions on the number of rental days per year can be useful to keep areas that are in demand by tourists as residential areas. 180 days per year is such a generous cap that I'm not sure it would prevent houses from being used as rentals all year round.
I think it's terrible. Localized government should have the power to make decisions about what they want to allow. If the residents don't like it then some of them can go into politics. We need more involvement with politics anyway. AirBNB has serious ramifications for the way cities and towns work. If it chews up all the low-cost housing, where are the burger flippers going to live? It simply cannot be permitted to operate unchecked in a world without sensible rent control systems which effectively ban it anyway, or at least severely limit it.
My favorite AirBNB restriction is the one where you can only AirBNB part of a house. Someone has to be living there. If nobody lives there, then it's not a home and it's not sharing. It's just a hotel or boarding house or short-term rental, and the patron is simply renting it. This has opened up room rentals in houses in some cities. It also helps protect the owner of the building, because there's someone there to call the cops if the renters start trashing the place, but many of them don't actually seem to care about that. I presume they're hoping a renter burns the place down so that they can cash in on their insurance. I wonder what happens when they find out that their insurance company won't cover their commercial venture...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's what you get if you employ Italian builders.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If you're a small town, Airbnb might not be a problem for you. I like in Reykjavík where there have been big problems with it. We're a place that's been experiencing very rapid tourism growth. In the pre-Airbnb days, if someone wanted to fill the tourist demand for housing, they'd build a hotel, and in the process end up with rooms for hundreds of people. Nowadays they just rent out residential apartments. Always in the most convenient locations in town. Residents can't compete with the amount of money tourists spend per night, so residents get pushed out of town. This creates resentment.
Beyond that, companies deciding that they don't have to play by the rules that everyone else does always gets on my nerve. If you want to operate a hotel, follow hotel regulations. I agree that there should be "lower-overhead" regulations for little "starter" hotels (aka, anyone who wants to fill the B&B niche). But you don't just go into a market and act like the rules don't apply to you.
IMHO.
Aeris Died For Your Sins.
To my mind this is fundamentally wrong. There is a reason that municipal governments exist - because what's good for the state may not be good in any particular city in that state. It SHOULD be possible for a municipality to make laws or implement programs that do no exist elsewhere in the state and the state should not be able to prevent this unless there is a truly compelling reason (like a constitutional violation). This becomes particularly egregious when you have liberal cities in red states- surely, at least within their own cities, the liberal voters' beliefs should get some traction into the laws they live under ?
It's a gross overreach when a state government interferes with a municipality's attempts to provide free broadband after ISPs failed to cover their citizens.
It is a gross overreach when a city votes to protect trans-rights and a state-law then not only changes the default law in the state to one that denies trans rights but also invalidates the local municipal law and prohibits municipalities from making such laws themselves.
It's a gross overreach when a city, for whatever reason, is told by the state what regulations they can or cannot have on what kinds of businesses. Some business regulations must be on the state or even federal level since they regulate activities which do not remain confined to borders (air and water pollution regulations for example), others are entirely local in their impact and whether those impacts are positive or negative thus entirely depends on the local context - and the municipality should be able to make local rules as appropriate for such activities.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Here, here.
It should also be noted that as far as the US goes, there was a reason as to why any power not explicitly granted to Congress is either reserved by the states or the people. It is a limitation on government, and an important one. One of the biggest reasons through out history for an empire to fall is over management. What works at the capital, does not necessary work at the frontiers. If the ruling party does not allow flexibility in the law for these differences, all it will do is create tension, and anger.
I guess our current ruling party has forgotten those lessons....
It's overreach. TX is considering the same preemption for airbnb an also uber/lyft. I would like the outcome of the preemption but it's still preemption.
This is a common bit of talking point I hear a lot of lately, usually by small government folks who think it's an easier sell than just abolishing government and letting the rich and powerful do Whatever The Fuck They Want (tm). The reality of the situation is that the smaller you can group your citizens, the less power any particular group will have and the politicians will be less expensive to purchase. Rules and regulations will by nature cover fewer people at a time, and it is more likely they will be able to find an underrepresented area where there is no one locally interested in stepping up and running government properly. It's a variation of the divide and conquer technique. The reality is a strong national government and consistent rules for everyone is the most efficient way to do things and the fairest for everyone.
The conventional wisdom is that these renters don't keep their domiciles and yards up as well as the homeowners, and they may not prioritize the benefit of neighborhood community like long time residents. This is a seemingly legitimate complaint, and yet, mostly falls outside of city and state regulations. It is quite a trick to balance the property rights of the landlord(s) with that of the regular residents.
Airbnb is another entity altogether. Where we have lived in the US, they appear to be in direct competition with hotels and motels without paying the same occupancy tax that many local communities use to boost tourism and improve infrastructure.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Residents can't compete with the amount of money tourists spend per night, so residents get pushed out of town. This creates resentment.
Which is why lawmakers should add a quota requirement. That is, for all the residential apartments/houses, only x% maximum apartments/houses can be allotted to AirBnB. Hopefully, x is a reasonable number like 10% or 20%.
The only ones who should be banning overreach on the local/municipal level is local government representing the neighborhood level. For a state to say this is wrong you must do X to a city is as bad as the federal governement saying the same thing to a state. Not everyone in Indiana have the same thoughts on the matter and it is up to the cities to decide how they want to enforce these policies.
Personally I don't have an issue with AirBnB so long as the owner is present at the location the entire time of the stay, and is accountable for any damage or disturbance caused by the guest including potential crimes that are commited as a result of a previous stay. If they want to be able to absolve themselves of such responsibilities then they need to establish their location as a purely commerical property away from residential areas. But that's just me, because I have had a neighbor use the service which resulted in a party they didn't know which included a drunk person their guest invited over break my door because they thought they were locked out. Cops or no cops, my wife didn't sleep until they were gone.
Whatever. Cities can still impose hefty fees/taxes on operators. Who wants to rent out a bedroom for $50 when they have to kick $100 to the city?
I guess you never heard about vacations. How about house swapping? How do you deal with that.
Can there be abuse? Absolutely. Do I want my apartment building to turn into an SRO (Single Room Occupancy for those not in NYC).
But there are plenty of reasons to not be there when the renter is there. (Such as going to your girlfriend's house for the weekend while your apt is being used.)
The "being there" requirement is overreach.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
The 180 day limit is kind of meaningless. A lot of hotel rooms in the state probably come in under that, given that the national average has fluctuated between 54% and 64% over the past decade and Indiana isn't exactly known as a tourist or business destination, so would probably come in well under the average.
>>the state getting involved seems like overreach to me.
>Here, here.
what's the problem with setting the same rules for everybody ????
I want the same rules for everybody on our planet.
Is Indiana really in a position to stop people from visiting their state and spending money? Seriously, is that a problem for them?
HOAs only cover about 50% of owner occupied households. For the non-HOA 50%, this law moves control of the issue further away from the people.
I have rented on AirBnB, and I will never buy in an HOA because it would annoy me way too much to have to deal with that.
Envelopes of cash all around.
Yeah, 180 days seems like a lot for a statewide requirement. I think it makes sense to allow people the freedom to do the occasional rental, I'd say 90 days for statewide, then local can allow more if they want.
The local governments are not making this rule/law based on concern for the noise level of neighborhoods. They are making it because they want travelers staying at hotels that pay room taxes. I expect a law will come that charges AirBnB renters the same room tax that the hotels pay. Someone has to pay for Lucus Oil Stadium.
So it's cool with you if a localized government wants to ban people with penises from going into women's restrooms, because they should be able to decide what they allow or forbid?
What we're talking about here is protecting people, right? Your example is not of a valid concern; if you wanted to protect people from errant penises in restrooms it would make more sense to ban republican congressmen from men's rooms with multiple occupancy. But it is a valid concern that workers won't be able to find housing, and this will do actual harm to local economies. If AirBnB is like every other corporation and therefore can't manage to exercise conscientious restraint then it's reasonable to limit their activities with regulation.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I guess you never heard about vacations. How about house swapping? How do you deal with that.
By not charging money. That would be the actual "sharing" economy. All it takes is a website that is monetized in some fashion other than charging people for the swap. They're not prohibiting people staying in the house. They're prohibiting a variety of people staying in the house for money. They're not even prohibiting people staying in the house for money, but they are setting regulations on how long they can stay there for, how you treat them, and what their obligations are.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you're constituency is the entrenched hospitality industry, it's hardly and overreach. If your constituency is actually the people who voted for you and you actually give a rats ass about their interests, its most egregious overreach. Gee, I wonder where the party lines will be on this one.
That's the key - it's only over reach if they prevent you from doing something or let others do something you don't like; it's good policy if they let you do something or prevent others from doing something you don't want them to be able to do. personally, the state's function is to set uniform rules for safety, codes, etc. where uniformity is needed and let local governments decide what sorts of regulations are appropriate for their locality. Of course, special interests find it easier to influence state legislature so they work at that level, wether it's to ban municipalities from becoming ISPs or overriding local laws they don't like. For all the "libertarian" talk often coming from startups some sure sure jump right into government regulation when their business is being disrupted.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Someone has to pay for Lucus Oil Stadium.
If you want to complain that room taxes are too high because governments have overinflated the actual costs of bearing hotel traffic (whether in the vehicular or commercial sense, or in fact both) then I'm open to the debate, but there is a real financial cost to supporting that business which differs from that of a normal rental market.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think it is a bad thing because the state cannot possibly take into account what is happening in each municipality's housing markets. It also strips away local democracy which is something Republicans seem very fond of doing *cough* Michigan *cough*
Most laws that move the decision making closer to the people is good in my eyes.
Except this doesn't. It would basically prevent local governments from making that decision.
HOA have exemptions, yes, but that's so the rich state legislators can ban it from THEIR neighborhoods.
Apparently, it must be cheaper for AirBnB to bribe state lawmakers than going after all the local lawmakers.
I used to live next to a place that would have different guests nightly. The street was choked with cars, and you would see 10-20 adults, likely sloppy drunk, all crashed out in/around the rental house. Fights with different people always happened in the wee hours of the morning. To boot, the owner of the property was proud of the fact that he didn't have to bother paying bed taxes, and snickered at the hotels that did.
Needless to say, when I could, I moved elsewhere. I'm really not impressed with AirBnB, because it screws hotels and innkeepers who actually pay their taxes and deal with licensing and other fees.
...So I put a ban on your ban.
This is the quintessential conundrum for the small-government proponents.
On the one hand, small-governmenters want a minimum of regulations telling businesses what they are and aren't allowed to d. So, a rule saying that communities can't issue their own regulations on businesses operations is good.
On the other hand, small-governmenters want return of control to local governments. So a rule telling communities what laws they can't pass is bad.
Overall, a mishmash of local communities enacting different regulations governing every aspect of life with different degrees of control results in chaos; it would make it nearly impossible for businesses to operate if they need a lawyer in every single community they might do business in to analyze the regulations. The advantage of state and federal government is that it can standardize the regulations, so that there isn't a different law in every single community.
But, federal and local governments can certainly overuse this power. Like almost everything, it's a trade-off.
Did the state invest? Are they preventing someone who has a put?
For the non-HOA 50%, this law moves control of the issue further away from the people.
Wrong. If there is no HOA then control resides with each individual homeowner, and which is the most local level possible. This regulation isn't forcing homeowners to use AirBnB; it is giving control to homeowners.
People who won't buy a home covered by an HOA because it would annoy them, but then still want to control what their neighbors do, are a special form of hypocrite.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I think it's a bad idea, it panders to corporations and shows my state's continual "Profit > People" concept. How is this? Because the only group allowed to ban are HOAs - generally they're business entities. If I live in a non-HOA area, however, my neighbors and I are not considered worthy enough to challenge the great corporations. Only fellow businesses have that right. It's total upheaval of the rights of a neighborhood or city in preference of business. It seems that Republicans, increasingly, believe equality matters if it's pro-business. If it's pro-people, it's a hinderance.
Localized government should have the power to make decisions about what they want to allow.
I'm not from the US, but here in the UK there is a very clear definition of who's responsible for what, depending on what level of government you're talking about. For instance, only the national government gets to decide to go to war. Similarly, the local town council will approve normal planning requests and not have to refer every decision to the Ministry of Sheds.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This sounds like something that is better decided at the local level, so the state getting involved seems like overreach to me.
The knee jerk reaction of wanting it decided at the local level does not seem fully thought through. How local? Would the county be at the correct level? Would the city? Would the neighborhood association? Local is a relative term.
This legislation seems to give control at the most local level possible: the homeowners. Homeowners, and homeowner associations when the owners chose to create one, have control over whether to allow AirBnB under this proposed law. Regulations coming from townships, cities, or counties would be better characterized as overreach if your concern is making these decisions at the "local" level.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I don't give a shit about the hotel industry.
With that said, I also don't want to live near commercial hotels. There's a reason zoning is a thing, and contrary to popular belief, not every rule under the sun is purely for some evil corp's monetary gain. Some rules actually exist so people can sleep at night.
Even regular renting is a pain: people staying for a year or two, then a new neighbor comes in and you're gambling again if they're going to be nice or not. If not, you have to again reach out to them, make compromises, talk problems out, etc. The faster the turnaround, the higher the odds and frequency of these things. There's a reason high owner occupancy (even beyond the minimum to get an easy mortgage) is a selling point.
Now, bring it to the AirBNB frequency and it's a total nightmare. Even if the vast majority of visitors are fine, the frequency of bad ones are drastically increased, and they're not there long enough to solve any problems.
My downstairs neighbors always joke that I'm not allowed to move, ever, because we bought the property from someone who was AirBNBing it, and it was a nightmare to them. Cops had to be involved multiple times over a decade (they were doing short term leases even before AirBNB was a thing, it just got worse afterward).
Again, regular rentals have the same problems (or even owner occupancy in areas where flipping properties is common), but at a much slower pace. It's also a compromise we as a society made long ago. AirBNB just pushes it from a compromise to being a total shit show.
I would say this is something that should have much more local influence than state influence, given an individual community's needs for short-term housing. I can appreciate the risk for overreach in a small town to protect the only hotel, or in a college town to prevent housing scarcity, or in the city to keep traditional neighborhoods in character.
Greater good though..? It likely skews towards protecting short-term rentals without letting them be 365 day per year uses.
having lived in a HOA in the past, its not something i will ever do again. to many rules on how to live my life by people i dont know nor care about. no thanks
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
This seems like a remake of an earlier-discussed movie, where:
I wonder, if this current remake will have a different the ending — AirBNB is generally liked here, unlike the ISPs...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
you don't just go into a market and act like the rules don't apply to you
You do if making money is your over-riding concern.
The whole point of the crop of "disruptive" businesses like Uber and Airbnb is that they've realised that any market where there is regulation can be under-cut by not following those regulations and having to incur the relevant costs.
If you are a psychopath, I imagine that disrupting the pesky regulations over food or drug safety is going to be a popular idea, for instance.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The 180 day limit is kind of meaningless. A lot of hotel rooms in the state probably come in under that, given that the national average has fluctuated between 54% and 64% over the past decade and Indiana isn't exactly known as a tourist or business destination, so would probably come in well under the average.
Exactly - it's meaningless. No homes can be rented out for more than 180 days, so the prices for the renters increase, that's all.
so does ISIS
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
if "the people" dont like it, they dont use airBnB, problem solved
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Because what you define as "rules" doesn't apply the same way to everyone on earth. In some cases, applying generic rules like that will cause more harm than good. (for example, health average measurements, like average body temperature, amount of recommended daily exercise, etc. are different depending on where you live. A person living in Alaska will get a lot more exercise and have a much different average body temperature than someone living in New York. Too much exercise can be bad for your heart, especially with older age groups.)
In other cases it's a question of who makes the rules. People like having some control over their own lives. Yes, YOU might be satisfied with the rules you choose, but that doesn't mean everyone will be. Considering that you want the state to dictate something as minor as rentals, I'm sure you'd want them to dictate the major stuff. What's your preferred religion? Abortion OK or Bad? What's your stance on marriage? Should we pay more money to the military damn the state of what they "defend", or should we take that money and use it to improve the lives of our citizens and cut the military budget? What about immigration? What should the "Earth language" be? Whatever you answer to those questions, there are plenty of people around the world that would fight you to the death over your choices being forced on them. Not everyone thinks the same way, nor should they. You have to allow the local populations to make those choices. What works for them may not work for everyone else. On the contrary, what everyone else does may not be the best solution to implement. Let them experiment. You will only create needless suffering otherwise.
The real world isn't perfect. You can't pretty it up in a spreadsheet and file it away nice and neat. The only way you could even come close to that, would be to implement the greatest authoritarian dictatorship the world has ever seen. But even that would be a fairy tale. What would appear to be a "perfect" world would be subject to the eyes of the beholder, and many people would say that such a world would be a dystopia.
You are right, I was seeing this from the flipside (that of the state asserting control, rather than local jurisdictions).
Like others have said, the issue is complicated. However, I think in balance that this action at the state level is bad. In many areas, the primary issues with AirBNB are twofold: it bypasses hospitality regulation when it is in fact part of the hospitality industry, and it disrupts the residential rental market in the area. Both of these are legitimate concerns for any area, though for different populations. For the first, it's a similar issues as with Uber and Lyft: regardless of what libertarians and others like to claim, regulations on insurance and such such for professional organizations exist largely to protect consumers as well as companies. Someone renting a room or a property through AirBNB almost certainly doesn't have the necessary insurance to protect a renter in the event of an incident nor to protect themselves in the case of a bad tenant. Further, without any kind of health or safety inspection, the quality and safety of the rentals are extremely suspect; yes, some of that is handled by word-of-mouth and ratings, but the average person doesn't know the finer points on pool treatment and the like. The latter is a bigger issue in some places than in others, but that doesn't mean it isn't a valid concern. San Francisco, for example, is notorious for its high housing costs, and AirBNB is just making it worse by taking a percentage (however small) of potential properties off the rental market. While other areas of California aren't as bad, many still have a similar housing crunch. These properties are not zoned for short-term rental and were granted development permits with the explicit intent of providing long-term housing; AirBNB essentially negates that permit process. Since permits are all handled at the local municipal level, it seems counter-intuitive to have the state step in and essentially tell municipalities what they can or cannot permit. I cannot say if the same issues exist in Indiana, but the principle isn't any different. While the state has a vested interest in keeping regulatory environments similar for the entire state, it's hard to argue that the municipalities are doing anything to hinder AirBNB *as it was meant to be used by its creators*; instead, the state is supporting behavior that AirBNB itself as well as the municipalities are against. That makes it rather hard to justify.
Wrong. Those people who are not part of an HOA but do not want to deal with Airbnb issues have voted in city council members to restrict airbnb in their community
Now you are just trading overreach from the state with overreach from the city council. You cannot say you fundamentally want the decision to be made at a more local level, but then complain that leaving the decision with homeowners or HOA's is simply too local.
If your assertion is you simply like regulation to prohibit AirBnB, that is perfectly reasonable. But if the complaint is that the control is being taken away from the local level (the statement I was arguing against), that complaint has no leg to stand on. My own personal argument is I like Airbnb and don't care what level of government is loosening regulations, but that is not the argument I'm making here. I'm only stating that complaining about state overreach is both hollow and hypocritical.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I'm starting to believe that cities should only have enumerated rights. Federal government -- enumerated rights. State government -- unenumerated rights. Local governments -- enumerated rights. City governments seem too prone to abusing whatever powers they are given.
>For a state to say this is wrong you must do X to a city is as bad as the federal governement saying the same thing to a state.
In Ontario many cities tried to ban Walmart. The excuses wore very thin and it quickly turned into a "Walmart doesn't treat employees well" setup (the worse excuse was a Jewish retreat 10 km away from a proposed location that already had box stores being used as an excuse to deny permits).
The Ontario Municipal Board (provincial government) stepped in and started requesting cities to provide evidence of why allowing it would be an issue. Unsurprisingly a Jewish retreat so far away from the proposed location didn't stand up to scrutiny, and the city folded.
At times the watchers need watching to prevent the biases of the majority from becoming a tyranny over the minority.
FWIW, that location has caused no issues in the 10 years there's been a Walmart there. In fact, at least in this area where there were so many complaints (about 5 Walmarts were protested by local government), 10 years later there continue to be no municipal issues and Walmart became popular enough that the public is now biased for them and thus so is government (we may see them being approved in inappropriate locations now... sigh).
Bad. I think that each city, town, neighborhood, whatever should be able to make whatever rules they want on the subject. I like the inexpensive stays and potential side income from AirB&B, but living in an area with them can really suck because you get can get stuck with a different shitty neighbor every few nights. not to mention the fact that that additional income can contribute to the inflation of the real-estate in an area. I think any sweeping regulation on the issue would be heavy-handed, the determination of if it should be permitted should be determined individually in each area, by the people who live in that area.
A city is clearly too large a system to dictate and oppress residents of a house. You should be able to rent your house to whoever you want however you want any time you want.
You can't handle the truth.
It is a gross overreach when a city votes to protect trans-rights and a state-law then not only changes the default law in the state to one that denies trans rights but also invalidates the local municipal law and prohibits municipalities from making such laws themselves.
Is it also "a gross overreach" when vice versa, that is, when a city votes to deny trans-rights and a state-law then not only changes the default law in the state to one that protects trans rights but also invalidates the local municipal law and prohibits municipalities from making such laws themselves?
Because that's the situation we have here: a city voted to deny homeowners' rights to make a short-term rental and a proposed state law would change the law to protect said rights, overriding city ordinances to the contrary.
If they want to be able to absolve themselves of such responsibilities then they need to establish their location as a purely commerical property away from residential areas.
Separation by zoning boards between residential use and light commercial use makes cities less walkable. Or do you consider car culture a good thing?
As much as you claim that, I suspect you'd complain if your neighbors opened up a hog farm.
I am a fan of HOAs, and I also prefer strong governments at every level, so you are certainly correct that I would complain if my neighbors tried putting a hog farm on their 8775 sq ft plots. I don't personally have an HOA, but chose a village with laws I prefer (and am active in local politics, including our planning and zoning commission). But then again I never said how I feel about government overreach, I was merely pointing out the hypocrisy in complaining about state overreach while thinking it is fine for city governments to restrict land owner rights.
In almost all cases, whenever someone complains about government overreach they only do so when they dislike the law itself. When the law benefits them, they are silent.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Shall we play "spot the shill?"
Mussolini made the trains run on time. So any transportation company that owns trains and ensures that they run on time must be a fascist entity
Actually, the state should not set a statewide maximum, but rather a minimum maximum.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
If you don't definitively know what the right answer is, then the best thing to do is to try all possible answers. Some communities ban Airbnb, some communities allow it. Some states ban it, some allow it. Give it a decade or so, then look to see which solution seems to be working best. Everyone has an opinion about Airbnb, but without evidence to back it up it's just a WAG (wild-ass guess). The process we're going through now is the evidence-collecting phase of the market at work - to filter out what doesn't work and allow what works to rise to the top. Unforeseen problems which crop up are also addressed the same way. Some different states will try different legislation to try to address those problems, and some may simply leave it alone to see if the problem goes away on its own (market corrects it naturally). Though this could lead to this process taking longer than about a decade.
Implementing these things at the state or local level is fine so long as other states and communities try different things. What you need to be wary about is ideology-based legislation forcing something to be implemented on a national level without having first gone through this vetting process. e.g. Obamacare - it should've been implemented in a few states first to see how well it worked. Then either it worked and there would've been little debate about implementing it nationally because you would've had objective numeric data showing states which implemented it had lower overall health care costs than those which didn't. Or you'd have objective numeric data showing that it didn't reduce costs or actually made it higher, and it could be rejected nationally. But because it was implemented based on ideology and the assumption that what worked in other countries piggy-backing off medical advancements made (and paid for) in the U.S. would work in the U.S., we're stuck in an endless debate about its efficacy with no clear answer.
Like taking a test in school, getting the right answer is not the point. It's learning the process you use to arrive at the answer which is important. If you make a wild guess and happen to get the right answer, you still haven't learned anything.
Oh yes, please do that. You'll call the cops every single time without anything changing AT ALL. What are the cops going to do? Tell them to be quiet. Which they will probably even be.
Then the next day the next party crowd moves in and you get the cops again. At some point, the cops will simply stop showing up.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I wonder how much Airbnb paid to have that proposed?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Works both ways, though; a strong national government can screw things up everywhere. Consider somethig like low-flow toilets. In hilly, arid California, these are an excellent idea. In flat, wet areas east of the Mississippi, this means that sewage lines get clogged more easily. Regulations that make sense in some places can be lunacy in others, like the old British imperial rule that public buildings' roofs must support the weight of six feet of snow - even in Malaysia.
useful to keep areas that are in demand by tourists as residential areas
If tourists want to be there, then its far from only a "residential area." The zoning of a plot does not justify itself.
Stop meddling.
"His name was James Damore."
People don't all want the same things. Non-uniform rules means they don't have to pretend to agree on things they don't agree on. Diversity is good; tyranny is bad.
Let me guess: do you want their values forcefully imposed on you, or your values forcefully imposed on them?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Sure, because HOAs are famous for being democratic and accountable to the homeowners, rather than infamous for imposing draconian rules on members and being virtually completely unaccountable.
Oh, wait...
I'd like to see HOAs abolished, not given even more powers. Cities, at least, provide services and - given their role in planning - have every right to want to control what buildings function as hotels. HOAs have pretty much no responsibilities whatsoever, they have absolutely no need to regulate homes being used as hotels, they're just a way for neighbors to find ways to hurt one another. Fuck 'em. They shouldn't exist.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
This is moving control of the issue to the HOA's, and thus the people. Most laws that move the decision making closer to the people is good in my eyes.
And the cities aren't the people? By that logic moving the deciding power from the states to the cities is better than the state banning it.
The knee jerk reaction of wanting it decided at the local level does not seem fully thought through. How local? Would the county be at the correct level? Would the city? Would the neighborhood association? Local is a relative term.
No, this is precisely what the local level is for. At the high level, we need protections that protect basically everyone, so we institute explicit protections for whichever type of class is being targeted the most at the time. Essentially, we ban bans. But any ban we haven't banned is fair play at the next level down. The people living in the place are the ones with an opinion. If we find they're using their influence to target some class we think should be protected, then we can do something at the next higher level to try to protect that class.
Here Indiana may choose to protect the interests of land owners over the interests of everyone else, which would be a familiar pattern. But land ownership, like most other things, is as much a matter of circumstance as anything else. Most people who own land had some kind of substantial help from their parents, whether directly as co-signers on their first property, or in some other obvious form.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Airbnb/VRBO has had a very noticeable impact in the lease and sales market in many cities in Southern California. Landlords can make more money renting out a house a few days a month over the course of a year than they do with a 12 month lease. It's the middle of March, most of the nation is still chilly, some experiencing very wintery weather. It was 80+ and very sunny in the Southland last week. People pay big bucks for that.
And that's ignoring the impact it has on local communities, businesses, and schools. These newly transient communities are turning areas with neighborhoods built around community into cities like Parker AZ where nearly any decently located property is a vacation rental property.
Who would vote for a state representative to take away their local communities representatives ability to represent the community? This reeks of representing corporations and not citizens.
I do not think the state is the correct level at which this should be taken care of. It is not hypocritical to say that the town or HOA level is the more appropriate level. Why is it overreach for a town through its elected representatives to decide that they don't want something the majority of the residents perceive to be a nuisance source?
I don't think it is overreach for a town to do this, but then again I don't think it is overreach for the state to do it either. Neither a state nor town is a single homogeneous group. My township has poor areas, wealthy areas, decent schools, great schools, areas with loose regulations, and areas with heavy regulations. I have very little in common with people from many of the neighborhoods in my town, just as I have very little in common with people from many towns in my state.
As I said it is perfectly acceptable to just not like the law. But claiming overreach is not a strong argument as it will always be arbitrary. The same argument which can be made that the state representatives don't fully represent the whole state could be made for whether the township representatives represent the whole town.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Someone has to pay for Lucus Oil Stadium.
If you want to complain that room taxes are too high because governments have overinflated the actual costs of bearing hotel traffic (whether in the vehicular or commercial sense, or in fact both) then I'm open to the debate, but there is a real financial cost to supporting that business which differs from that of a normal rental market.
What I am insinuating is that to pay for Lucus Oil Stadium, Marion county (Indianapolis) and all surrounding counties have increased taxes to any restaurant or bar and a tax on hotel rooms. Rather than lose some revenue on the room tax the government will make a law that charges the same tax on AirBnB rentals. Then they will not lose revenue and this is all about revenue...not noise.
Its simpler than that though: either the government has the right to inspect and question everybody's genitalia, or the do not have the right to inspect or question anybody's genitalia.
The moment you are proposing a law that subjects some citizens to a government scrutiny and not others - you have a violation of a basic human right: the right to equality before the law.
The bathroom bills are just the noisy frontline. What this really is, is government claiming the right to question whether your genitals match your outfit - or did not match it a long time ago. The 'birth certificate' is based on the only proxy for gender available with a newborn: genitals and any claims about this that pretends it is not an attempt to reduce people to nothing more than genitals is therefore a flagrant and obvious lie.
And seriously ... who the fuck carries their birth certificate around everywhere ? If some douchenozzle accuses you of not being feminine/masculimr enough for the bathroom you are in how the hell do you prove its the one the law forces you to use ?
It gets sillier... imagine this conversation.
My 3yr old: daddy I have to go.
Me: sorry my love, mommy is not here, you are not old enough that I can send you to a public bathroom alone, I cannot legally go with you and you cannot legally come with me.
My daughter: but daddy I really have to go !
Me: you know what: piss on the floor right here my love. I want to see the judge who will convict us for it when its actually illegal for you to use the potty.
Plenty of moms are gonna have the same problem with their sons too.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The real issue is preemption. State law preempts local law. It's a tool, and thus value-neutral. Preemption has also been used to prevent cities from setting up municipal WiFi. Comcast bought the state legislature. Bad. In this case, preemption appears to be used to create a "right to rent". Good if you want to rent. Bad if you don't like people coming and going in your neighborhood.
Preemption at the state level means that if the law doesn't suit you, you must chose another state or live with it. Since leaving Indiana is not an option for many of the people who will find this undesirable (namely, people who find short-term rentals in their neighborhood to be a nuisance), I find myself leaning against this.
IMHO, preemption should generally only be used when municipal governments are "mis-behaving" in ways that would cause problems to the state as a whole. e.g., cities generally aren't allowed to license drivers as it would just annoy the hell out of anybody moving within the state. OTOH, cities are generally allowed to license businesses and Airbnb fits that pattern. So does WiFi. We ought to have a right to municipal WiFi... but a lot of places don't.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Federal government -- enumerated rights. State government -- unenumerated rights. Local governments -- enumerated rights.
Two problems with this. First, the word is "powers", not "rights". People have rights; governments have powers. Second, state governments should have only enumerated powers, just like federal and local governments. Carefully delineated boundaries on the use of power are a good idea at all levels of government.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Its cheaper to buy one state government than many city governments. As an example consider the case of the uber fight in austin. So uber is now doing what airbnb did in IN, pushing for a state law to supercede the local law. Uber will probably spend about what they did in austin on media buys and instead spend it directly on hookers for legislators and get what they want at the state level.
The conventional wisdom is that these renters don't keep their domiciles and yards up as well as the homeowners
That's what local ordinances are for. I too own a house with a tenant in it. I have received a council request to improve the state of the yard. So I asked the tenants to either fix it, pay someone to fix it, or I'll find a really expensive gardner, send them over and then forward them the bill.
There's no reason a rental shouldn't be kept in good condition.
And who sets those rules? Shall we have President Maduro set the rules for the world? After all, they are working so well in Venezuela...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
This is moving control of the issue to the HOA's, and thus the people.
LOL moving the issue from the governments that people can vote for, to HOAs - wholly unaccountable property fiefdoms that you can often only escape by moving to the sticks - is transferring control to "the people?"
This is going to be a boon for HOA directors who will all demand some palm grease from AirBnB to operate in their realms, similar to the situation with broadband in apartment buildings.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
From what I've seen, walmart used to devastate local economies. Essentially, they were a giant leech attached to the local economy that rapidly and efficiently removed all the money circulating there.
However, these days Amazon does the same thing even more efficiently than walmart so banning walmart won't help you.
Another 5-10 years, amazon is going to wipe out all their fulfillment jobs with a second layer of robots.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Tax them instead. Lay down a $100 + 10% per day per person local tax for boarding someone on Residentially-
zoned property in exchange for money, unless there's a 30 days or longer written lease agreement for this specific rental
recorded on the title for the property prior to the lessee arriving at the property.
To a first approximation, all laws are passed and enforced under claims of protecting people. "We have to protect property values against this couple's vegetable garden, fine them $100/day!" "We have to protect people from speeders, send poor people to jail if they can't pay traffic tickets!" "We have to protect the good people of New York from untaxed cigarettes, choke this non-violent man to death!"
Your real criterion, which you tried to hide, is whether you personally agree with the law.
The moment you are proposing a law that subjects some citizens to a government scrutiny and not others - you have a violation of a basic human right: the right to equality before the law.
To conservatives, both cis and trans people choose to make themselves subject to government scrutiny by using a public restroom, just as people choose to make themselves subject to backscatter imaging by using an airline.
And seriously ... who the fuck carries their birth certificate around everywhere ?
Every licensed driver, as a valid driver's license is a proxy for a birth certificate for this purpose.
Plenty of moms are gonna have the same problem with their sons too.
Many of these bills exempt a single-digit-year-old child accompanied by his or her parent of the opposite sex (source).
>Every licensed driver, as a valid driver's license is a proxy for a birth certificate for this purpose.
That's fewer people than you think, and not all trans people are old enough to have one, and a drivers license can be changed if you legally change sex. They chose 'birth certificate' on purpose - exactly because, unlike a drivers license, it cannot be changed.
>Many of these bills exempt a single-digit-year-old child accompanied by his or her parent of the opposite sex
Not all of them though - but at least some of them must have heard this common complaint I guess. That said - these bills remain a nightmare for enforcement anyway. There's already been a bunch of people who were falsely accused of using a bathroom not matching their biological sex - by people who just thought they didn't look feminine/masculine enough to be a women/man. The irony is that trans people try very hard to be indistinguishable - it's the only way to survive - and frankly a trans-women will usually present and appear more feminine than average - which means a great many women look less feminine than a trans-women does (and vice versa).
The biggest clencher of all of course... is that the people who write these bills always forget about trans-men, and seem oblivious to the fact that they just sent a bunch of ultra-masculine, muscled 6-foot-four dudes with beards into the ladies room because they happen to have a vulva.
And of course, most of them never think to add an exclusion for intersex people -if your genitals are ambiguous, you don't get to pee at all ?
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
All that said though - my use of the example wasn't really intended to trigger a debate about which side is right here (I did state clearly which side I'm on but that's it) - I was merely using it as one of many examples where cities and states have had differing views on a topic and I think it's overreach for the state to force the city to change, especially since conservative/liberal attitudes very frequently get bordered by city-lines. Cities have a tendency to attract and foster liberal attitudes.
Right now, the federal government has not done it's job and determined if it is, in fact, a human right for people to be a gender other than the one commonly associated with their sex (to my mind - it's impossible to deny that without also denying basic freedom of expression and freedom of thought) - so in the meantime, at least allow citizens to decide for themselves, even if states and cities disagree on the outcome - it would be better than having states take away the few cities where government is NOT being obsessed with people's genitals.
I'll never understand how 'small government' republicans who always talk about keeping government out of people's lives are so happy to invite it into people's pants.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
To a first approximation, all laws are passed and enforced under claims of protecting people.
Yes, but some of those claims are bullshit, like laws prohibiting trans people from using the restroom which is associated with their identified gender. Like the meme says, there have been more republican congressmen cited for misconduct in a bathroom than trans people, regardless of gender.
Your real criterion, which you tried to hide, is whether you personally agree with the law.
My criterion has to do with facts and evidence. Why don't you try them out sometime?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why do you hate transgender people, and want to lump them in with rapists? Why do you hate rape survivors, and want to lump sexual assault in with cruising for sex?
(The people who push for the anti-transgender bathroom laws say they are protecting women from rapists, or from being reminded of sexual assault, not from transgender people. There have been quite a few sexual assaults and privacy invasions by non-transgender men in women's restrooms. The tiny number of "misconduct" cases you cite were people seeking consensual sex.)
How seriously do you expect me to take a doubly dishonest meme? How seriously do you expect me to take your claims about "facts and evidence" when the only thing you cite is that dishonest meme?
The people who push for the anti-transgender bathroom laws say they are protecting women from rapists, or from being reminded of sexual assault, not from transgender people.
They outright say that they are protecting women from rapists who are pretending to be trans people. Only this has never been a credible threat.
There have been quite a few sexual assaults and privacy invasions by non-transgender men in women's restrooms.
And this is already illegal. It doesn't require a new law about who is allowed to go where.
How seriously do you expect me to take your claims about "facts and evidence" when the only thing you cite is that dishonest meme?
How seriously do you expect me to take the assertion that you have a brain at all when you are repeating lies as if they meant something?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It has never been a credible threat because it was previously presumptively illegal for trans women to use the women's restroom. Now, it could be illegal discrimination to challenge a man who tries to walk into a women's restroom -- we have to wait until some woman is actually assaulted.
If you have two brain cells to put together, please do so.
a drivers license can be changed if you legally change sex. They chose 'birth certificate' on purpose - exactly because, unlike a drivers license, it cannot be changed.
North Carolina allows amending the birth certificate of a post-op trans person born in North Carolina.
And of course, most of them never think to add an exclusion for intersex people
For example, the bathroom bill in my home state of Indiana, if read literally, would have banned from both restrooms any person whose genital presentation at birth does not match his or her chromosomes, such as people with de la Chapelle syndrome where the SRY gene crosses over from the Y chromosome to the X chromosome. Fortunately, it died in committee before I had a chance to pass on my thoughts to my state representative and senator.
Right now, the federal government has not done it's job and determined if it is, in fact, a human right [...] so in the meantime, at least allow citizens to decide for themselves
On the one hand, the Ninth Amendment acknowledges the existence of unenumerated rights of the people. On the other hand, the Tenth Amendment acknowledges the existence of unenumerated powers of the several states. Would it not be "allow[ing] citizens to decide for themselves" by allowing them to vote in representatives to make this decision on their behalf?
>North Carolina allows amending the birth certificate of a post-op trans person born in North Carolina [cnn.com].
Well that's great if you are post-op and was born there... but that's one very risky, very expensive op - so a great many trans people do not get the option to go for it, and even those that do not until later in life. According to Google only 33% of trans people have undergone any surgery at all - and only 14% went whole-hog sex-change. Lets be generous and assume the NC bill would apply for partial gender confirmation surgeries (like breast enhancements only) - that only one-third who have the option, but now it's further narrowed by the requirement that you be born in the state - which is will reduce the number of eligible folks (all adults - the people harmed the least by these laws). Sure, if you're from another state it may be possible (depending which state) to get that state to alter it but that would likely require an expensive trip back to a place you no longer live -and may not have lived for decades. So even if we are generous and assume less than full sex-changes would qualify - we're probably only talking about say 20% of the people affected having an out. That's probably still being too generous - that 33% was a national figure - I'm willing to wager that in a conservative community like NC the figure is significantly lower (not least because access to doctors willing to do it is harder) - and most of that 33% are living in liberal cities on the coast.
If it's the 14% who had a full sex change... well that reduces the number of people who have this option to what ? Maybe 5% ?
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Ah, the Indiana General Assembly. All for "local control", as long as "local" means them.
"Overreach" is an ambiguous term. Legally, I suspect this is valid; I'm not about to pour over the whole Indiana constitution, but I suspect the courts would consider it "general" and thus not fall foul of 4.22. And there doesn't seem to be much else in the constitution that protects local-government powers. (IA very much NAL, but I'm happy to pretend on the Internet.)
Conceptually, it looks like an encroachment on powers historically delegated to local governments, such as zoning. But again those seem to be at the discretion of the General Assembly, and what the GA giveth, the GA can taketh the hell back.
Personally, I think it's an asshole move, but then I don't like AirBnB and the rest of the "sharing economy". I don't know that I have any better reason for disliking this bill. And certainly there are times when I don't care for things the local governments in my necks[1] of the woods do, and I may from time to time dream of the state legislatures reining them in. Who's to say who's right?[2]
[1] I own houses in two states. Neither of them happens to be Indiana. I have quite a number of friends there, but I don't know their opinion on this. Not that you care. Why are you even reading this footnote?
[2] I kid. This is the Internet, so of course I'm right.
Here, here.
The original phrase is most likely "hear, hear", a Parliamentary cry of support, as in "hear what that dude is saying!".
But perhaps you knew that and were using the homonym for the purpose of amusement. And, of course, there's little chance of confusion. And probably the "wrong" (etymologically unjustified) version of the phrase is close to achieving parity with the "correct" one anyway. (I tried the Google Books ngram viewer, but there are too many false positives.)
Carry on.