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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.
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?
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 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
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.
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.
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.'"
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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 *