Slashdot Mirror
What Airbnb Did To New York City (citylab.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: There are two kinds of horror stories about Airbnb. When the home-sharing platform first appeared, the initial cautionary tales tended to emphasize extreme guest (and occasionally host) misbehavior. But as the now decade-old service matured and the number of rental properties proliferated dramatically, a second genre emerged, one that focused on what the service was doing to the larger community: Airbnb was raising rents and taking housing off the rental market. It was supercharging gentrification while discriminating against guests and hosts of color. And as commercial operators took over, it was transforming from a way to help homeowners occasionally rent out an extra room into a purveyor of creepy, makeshift hotels.
Several studies have looked into these claims; some focused on just one issue at a time, or measured Airbnb-linked trends across wide swaths of the country. But a recent report by David Wachsmuth, a professor of Urban Planning at McGill University, zeroes in on New York City in an effort to answer the question of exactly what home sharing is doing to the city. [...] Their conclusion: Most of those rumors are true. Wachsmuth found reason to believe that Airbnb has indeed raised rents, removed housing from the rental market, and fueled gentrification -- at least in New York City. "
Several studies have looked into these claims; some focused on just one issue at a time, or measured Airbnb-linked trends across wide swaths of the country. But a recent report by David Wachsmuth, a professor of Urban Planning at McGill University, zeroes in on New York City in an effort to answer the question of exactly what home sharing is doing to the city. [...] Their conclusion: Most of those rumors are true. Wachsmuth found reason to believe that Airbnb has indeed raised rents, removed housing from the rental market, and fueled gentrification -- at least in New York City. "
transforming from a way to help homeowners occasionally rent out an extra room into a purveyor of creepy, makeshift hotels.
How about this: create a law that Limits the number of housing units AND number of days rented out per year which any 1 person or business is allowed to make available for short-term rent without a Hotel permit for each property --- including through any number of business partners or related entities.
So if you're a homeowner and have 1 or 2 properties which you rent out less than 80% of the year total across your properties, then FINE, allow that ---- You're allowed to have up to a total of ONE rental unit for short/temp housing accommodation (Count that includes Any and all sub-rentals across all properties that occur for a time less than 20 days) rented out 80% of the days each year, OR two housing accommodations rented out average 40% of the days per 1 year per unit, OR three housing accommodations rented out no more than average 26.67% of the days per 1 year per unit.
(In other words: the more units that are rented out to different tenants, the fewer days you may be renting them out per year.)
Thus if you have 3 properties in the same city Or have it rented out your properties for a combined total among your properties of more than 290 rental-days, then you're in a "Short-term accommodation business" and must have planning approval and permit your properties as Hotel space --- which if approved by Zoning includes regular inspections, and an additional Tax on each rental.
Reasonable regulation should allow reasonable rental revenue by an ordinary homeowner BUT prevent wealthy real-estate investors or corporations from exploiting Uber to make large-scale transformations of apartments to hotel rooms, etc.
The problem with these types of studies is you will never know if they are correct or not, because there is no way to see what would have happened if Airbnb never came to NYC. Maybe it would have gentrified faster without Airbnb. NYC was gentrifying way before Airbnb came to the city. Of course, speculation is now presented as fact. That will make the funders of this study (the hotel industry) happy though, and that is what this is all about anyway. They can now push to get Airbnb out of NYC.
Look, don't blame Airbnb, Uber or whatever company happened to come along in this moment, for all your woes. What you're actually mad at is the absolute failure of our governments, public institutions, and elected officials to adapt their services and approaches (or be allowed to do this by a public that seemingly wants to vote by popularity contest rather than efficacy of government).
Get mad at your fellow city residents who only vote in and approve of city ordinances that let housing stagnate, reward people who've just been here a long time and nothing else, foster complacency and lack of quality in taxi regulation, or believe that voters should have a say in everything and vote out people who happen to implement one rule they don't like.
Get mad at policymakers who are too distracted with getting re-elected and resisting PAC money to actually focus on governing and making reasonable policies, leaving our basic infrastructure to crumble while they go after higher profile symbolic issues.
Be mad at yourself, and this system we thought was the best in the world, but actually needs maintenance and dedication to make it work properly.
Companies are just the messengers.
I used AirBnB a few times about 4 years ago. But I got turned off by them when they pushed their updated EULA that required me to promise that I would not be a dick to people. The word salad they used was a great deal more hipster and included phrases meant to make them look like they were the perfect little SJW's. Bottom line is that I don't need some company preaching to me that I have to behave a certain way or I can't use their product. Fine, I'll do both. I'll continue to be a nice person and I won't use their product.
Honestly though, it wouldn't bother me if AirBnB is discovered to be a social evil and ends up at the mercy of government regulation or simply goes out of business. They demonstrated a great deal of hubris with that EULA demand and if you choose to believe this survey, appear to be worse than the people they wanted to socially engineer. And I still don't miss using their product.
Charter Member of The Committee Group For The Elimination And Eradication Of Repetitive Redundancy
Airbnb takes commission on both sides and when there is a major problem to deal with they disappear.
If you are lucky enough to book with a decent host you may get what you pay for. Unfortunately when you book with a scammer you are on your own. There is absolutely no help provided from Airbnb. This is based on my personal experience traveling for 30 years so your mileage may vary.
No business is perfect. This is not about perfection. This is bout what happens when things go wrong. You are thousands of miles away and may have limited funds available or in a completely different culture where communication is not easy.
Normally with a regular permitted establishment you can verify various independent reviews. On Airbnb only positive reviews are posted. You only find this out when things go wrong. Airbnb does not post negative reviews even though you paid for the full stay.
Permitted establishments normally are inspected by local authorities which try to ensure a minimum standards. This does not mean that something won't go wrong but there is a bare minimum such as fire regulations. Information posting. Emergency exits. With Airbnb you are no even guaranteed that there will be a place to stay. Again Airbnb takes very little responsibility as to the accessibility or even to the legality of the rental. They haven't even visited the location to ensure that it is fit for the purpose advertised.
So Airbnb takes commission on both sides of the deal and provides none of the advantages afforded from the regulated and established lodging hosts and when things go wrong you are left abandoned and screwed. The horror stories haven't disappeared they are just pushed under the rug. If it's so bad that the local authorities are left to deal with it, you may hear about it. You can't post negative reviews on Airbnb.
Airbnb is not a sharing service since you are not required to live with current occupants and takes advantage of the increased costs of regulations which it does not abide with and wipes it's hands from all and any responsibility when things go terribly wrong. Airbnb pretends to be a listing service but implicates itself in every aspect of the business which milks every possible penny and extracts itself from any form of responsibility. I don't know why anyone needed a report to point this out if an individual acted this way people would say that they were running a scam.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Hotels have regulations to follow which Airbnb washes it's hands. Airbnb doesn't care about negative reviews because you can't post them. When things go wrong Airbnb doesn't care, doesn't allow you to post about it on the site, and doesn't refund the payments. It has to hit the media in order for Airbnb to react. When it does hit the media the wash their hands of it by claiming to delist the owner only to find them back again a few months later.
Regulations should apply to all or to none. If Airbnb is a listing service then travelers shouldn't have to pay commission. If travelers pay commission then Airbnb is the travelers agent and should be responsible for the state of the destination as a travel agent is in some jurisdictions.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
The thing I've always 'disliked' about 'room-sharing' and 'ride-sharing' (and I guess to some extent E-bay and Youtube) is that people make it a full-time job instead of a 'community' thing.
I don't remember the taxi company complaining about the 'ride-sharing' board at the University. If you were going home for the weekend, why not take along a passenger that was going the same way. In general that's the basic idea of Uber and Lyft. I have a car, you're going my way, hop in.
There was also the 'couch-surfing' phenomenon of a while back. The differences between that and what AirBnB is now are what I see as the problem. It's one thing to allow someone to spend the night in your empty guest room because nobody else is using it. It's a completely different thing to buy a room/ apartment/ house dedicated to having people pay to stay there.
The 'problem' with Uber and AirBnB is that people have transformed the 'occasionality' of it into a permanent full-time job. It's not a sporadic and almost random thing they offer, it's 'the only thing.'
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
...I was able to stay two weeks in NYC with my family (2 adults, 2 kids) in a clean 1200 sq. foot. two-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights for $120/night. Comparable hotel would have cost me $300/night at least. And my (14 nights * $120/night) went mostly into the hands of an actual family living in NYC (two public school teachers with 2 kids of their own) instead of, say, "Hilton" or "Marriot".