A blessing, really, for cities experiencing housing shortage.
this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Have you considered building more housing?
True! Getting rid of these AirBnBs probably doesn't hurt things though. Now they might actually get a long-term resident.
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Good. That was kinda the whole fucking point of Airbnb in the first place. If you want to own property for the sole purpose of short term rentals buy a hotel.
Yep. Just like Uber it morphed, from people sharing a ride or their place while on vacation, into full time drivers and landlords. Not the philosophical intebt of the original service, and it ruined it for everyone.
I mean Uber started as a black car service and wanted it to be possible for drivers to do it full time if they wanted. Neither Uber nor Lyft were ever billed as “make some money sharing a ride to where you are already driving”, the platform doesn’t even account/allow for that.
I fully agree on Airbnb but I don’t think the Uber example works.
I looked it up and you're correct. I didn't realize Uber started literally as "UberCab" and later dropped the "cab" and added the personal car ride sharing component. Thx for the tip!
Smart. People can still rent out an extra room, but can’t squat on an apartment solely for Airbnb.
That’s how airbnbs were when I’ve used them in the past, things like a place where you can sleep on someone’s couch, or a house with a spare room you can crash in. Those kinds of arrangements were way cheaper than hotels and very appealing.
The rent for regular apartments has basically doubled in the past couple years. You see studios go for $3000/mo, and 1 bedrooms for $4500+ quite often. I really hope this will have a helpful effect on lowering for the people who already live here, who can't make ends meet because of absurd rental prices and hikes lately. There needs to be more housing and reasonable prices for people who live here. Compared to the median income here (and not the mean, because it's not representative to count the billionaires), it's literally not affordable for the people who grew up here and started their lives here, to afford to have a roof over their head. That's why you see shit like 5 unrelated adults in a 1 bedroom apartment together, or a big extended family of multiple generations, partners, etc., all living under the same roof. Nobody can afford anything better here.
It is a serious crisis in many places throughout the world. Especially considering the income stagnation. I have lived in many cities and have heard this cry across multiple continents, from coast to coast, and at most income levels (except the ultra wealthy).
What I’m hoping becomes more popular are ways to make the short term rentals not as profitable. I really like the idea what other cities are doing by limiting the number of days they can rent it out.
Sure, rent it out for 45 days a year and get $10k total revenue and try to scrape out a profit. Or rent out the unit as your primary residence for the entire year for a similar cost.
It’s not absolutely perfect, but it will greatly reduce those willing to buy places to use as an investment for short term rentals. And that should put negative pressure on housing prices, while also opening up more units for primary residence housing.
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I hope that these type of easily exploitable services just absolutely die. New York is the last place I would have expected to hear these type of services turned scummy to start to disappear, but I welcome it and hope it spreads across the country.
Toronto desperately needs this.
~~Toronto~~ Everywhere desperately needs this.
Downtown service businesses looking at empty offices due to WFH. "Well, at least people still come downtown for its hotels. Tourists still have lots of money to prop us up!" AirBnB gets banned, hotels start jacking up prices. "Well, #$%#."
I think offices into hotels would solve both problems, right?
Hotels require a vastly more dense plumbing structure, I don't think it's easy or cheap to retrofit onto an office building.
Hotels with dorm like shower systens maybe could work. I think something like a hostel.
That being said you cant charge much when you are forcing customers to share bathrooms.
With enshittification and being one of the worlds top tourist cities of course you can! Just look what they charge for rent. Then LA and Chicago will follow suit ;)
Well, shared bathroom means zero stars so yeah, you basically can't call it a hotel anymore.
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99% invisible just did an episode on skyscraper conversion. Its farily complicated.
Who is having trouble finding a hotel room in New York City? It's expensive, but everything is expensive there.
Off topic but I always thought the airbnb logo looks like a dangling ballsack and their service fits well with that image, so I'm not the least bit surprised to see the company struggling.
I feel like this approach to Airbnb is the wrong way. They should pass laws to prevent anyone from owning more than 2 homes and one of the homes should be one they live in. Corporations shouldn’t be able to buy multiple homes to rent out.
Airbnb makes it way easier for people to find places to rent, instead of focusing on making the housing crises better by preventing landlords and corporations from buying all the homes to rent out they’re just making it harder to rent places… fix the system don’t just focus your efforts on making one tech harder to use
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That still exist? Why, when you have actual hotels that are cheaper?
ELI5: why is having airbnb’s a bad thing? ( not local, not in the loop )
It applies to anywhere. The problem isn’t one situation. It’s this same story, repeated thousands of times in every city across the globe.
Bobby wants to live in a house. Monthly rent prices are usually around $1,000 per month in his home town.
Joe wants to make money by renting out a house on AirBnb. Hotel prices are usually around $200 per night in the same location. If Joe rents out his house for just 10 nights a month, he can make $2,000. This easily covers Joe’s expenses and puts the extra cash in his bank account. If he rents it out for 25 nights, he’s putting away a lot of cash.
When houses are up for sale, Bobby can only spend a similar cost as his rent. Joe has been watching his bank account climb and is ready to spend a lot on another house to put on AirBnb. Joe can make a profit even if the house is double the price.
Bobby’s landlord sees housing prices rise. Decides to either (1) increase Bobby’s rent to $2,000 - which he can’t afford or (2) sell the house to someone like Joe for a major markup.
Bobby has to move in with roommates and will never be able to afford to buy a home when competing against all the Joes out there.
Got it, thanks!
Raises rent prices, overall cost of living and takes apartments from long term rental market.
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