- cross-posted to:
- housing_bubble_2@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- housing_bubble_2@lemmy.world
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They didn’t accidentally do shit. They ignored the consequences of their decisions for profit at the expense of everyone else. You don’t get to make $100 billion dollars and feign ignorance about how you got it and the damage you caused to obtain it.
I still think municipalities share a significant amount of blame here. They definitely could have at least limited vacation rental saturation, and didn’t do anything.
I live in a ski town, and have been to city hall meetings on this issue. The overwhelming amount of attendees at these are vacation homeowners or their representatives, and the prevailing attitude is, “fuck the locals, our profit is at stake here.” A number of owners have changed their primary residence to our town just to have more say that local long term renters. These meetings are held at 2pm, when locals are working. It’s about as fucked as it can get. And when we’ve had a sympathetic council person, they’re immediately recalled or replaced the following election cycle. It’s a shitshow.
During COVID, when the Airbnb boom really took off, we had a 25% resident attrition rate. That’s no typo; twenty five percent of our valley’s residents had to leave town because they were priced out (about 5000 in a population of 20,000) because either rents skyrocketed, or the owners of their homes sold out from beneath them. These days, much of our local labor force commutes at least an hour into town. It has gotten a little better, and some have been able to moved back, but the damage is done.
Even for prospective buyers, like my wife and I, prices are outrageous. Our current home, which is valued around $600k, would have been $200k pre COVID. And this is solely because of Airbnb assholes.
My office regulates airbnbs for the city and it’s very hard to do anything about it. None of the rental platforms will work with us - we’ve sent them about a million notices that they’re collecting the wrong tax amount and they don’t even bother to respond, and they just send a check every quarter but refuse to break it out by address/owner. They won’t provide any data on what addresses are being rented, either. Apparently some other cities have successfully sued airbnb, but for a small city with a correspondingly small budget, that’s an expense that’s hard to justify to taxpayers.
We have some owners that are great - they get licensed right away, get their inspections done, no problem. Then there are other people who have done things like dig out their crawlspace themselves and turn it into non-conforming bedrooms with no egress windows - no permits or inspections, of course, and an engineer basically said the entire thing was in danger of collapsing any minute. Or the person who had a buddy do a bunch of unlicensed electrical work that was so bad the city couldn’t even let the owner stay there until it was fixed. I honestly wouldn’t stay in an airbnb now, having seen what I’ve seen - people will absolutely put renters at risk to make a buck. And we can go after them but only if we know it’s happening.
I’d personally love it if rental platforms were forced to provide owner data to cities/states, and for cities to tax the shit out of rentals that aren’t also owner-occupied, but I’m not in charge and the people with money have a vested interest in making sure that doesn’t happen. It sucks.
I’m an activist writing a housing bill to get introduced to my state legislature. Part of it specifically addresses these platforms, but I don’t know what’s been tried against them yet. Any tips?
Unfortunately, I don’t know too much - most of the contact has been initiated by our sales tax staff to whatever department handles tax collection on the company side, but from what they’ve told me, they just don’t get a response. Our municipal code only allows us to go after owners if they fail to get licensed (and even that is a nightmare for us to try to do) but there’s nothing about the actual companies.
It’s kind of the wild west at the moment - the problem isn’t evenly distributed, so there’s not one catch-all solution. One of the mountain towns here said they have 700+ rentals and their official population is only like 500 people. We have <100 in a city of about 40k. It’s still a problem here, but nowhere near as bad as ski towns have it. Most of the laws I’ve seen are aimed at the owners, not at the companies facilitating the rentals, and they range from things designed to just make sure someone’s actually inspecting the rentals so no one dies all the way to making it unaffordable to rent multiple properties by charging a fuckton of taxes and fees. I’d kill for something forcing airbnb, vrbo, etc to actually cooperate.
I’d kill for something forcing airbnb, vrbo, etc to actually cooperate.
I’ll go one step further, I’d pay taxes to the government that actually regulates shitty business practices. How is it easier to have a 12% increase in homelessness last year than it is to regulate fucking airbnb? Airbnb is not northrup grumman. It’s not allied steel. it can go the fuck away.
Oh I 100% agree - when I finally managed to finish my degree a few years ago, I did my capstone research on suburban/rural homelessness, and I’m now an even bigger proponent of housing-first policies. Supportive housing works better than piecemeal programs, and outcomes are better for sobriety and mental health treatment than they are for programs that require those things as a condition of getting housing.
Unfortunately, people fucking love to hate the homeless. Everyone wants to put conditions on every scrap you give them because “I worked for what I have, they should have to, too!” There’s not a lot of political support to be found for policies that are based on meeting people where they are. Saying we should use housing that’s already vacant to help people get off the streets would get you booed right out of the room a lot of the time.
Cops would rather beat up college students and the unhoused than go after landlords.
that’s an expense that’s hard to justify to taxpayers
Ah, yes. We don’t have money because collecting taxes would be too expensive. Classic.
EDIT:
https://www.businessinsider.com/irs-tax-audits-recover-12-dollars-for-every-dollar-spent-2023-6?op=1
I mean, paying to sue a massive company that definitely has more (and probably better) attorneys than we do in order to collect a few thousand dollars more a year in sales tax isn’t necessarily the best use of city funds. If we were a bigger city, it would make more sense, but it would take us years just for the taxes to cover what we’d spend in attorneys fees and staff time. I don’t like that that’s the reality, but I can see why the idea isn’t popular.
Also, the police aren’t involved in regulating short-term rentals. I’m no fan of cops, but this is entirely civil and they have no part in this particular issue.
Is it not tax evasion/fraud? In the US, either can bring criminal charges. For a smaller municipality, is there no assistance available from higher government?
No clue - most of that is either a department I’m not in and don’t know much about, or it’s way over my head. I’m just a mid-level peon. And politicians are the ones who have to give us the tools to actually do our jobs and all of these companies have deep pockets. That’s the biggest impediment.
That’s fair.
Not being corrupted is just too darn expensive.
Visiting my husband’s home town where this has happened and all his parent’s friends have moved into trailers because the houses where they raised their kids were bought for insane amounts but then they couldn’t afford a smaller house in the same town. Where we live now on the East Coast, we can no longer stay in our school district for less than half a million because doctors from larger urban areas keep buying the houses in our school district and we’re being forced 60+100 miles out from my hometown where we raised our young kids to even begin to afford housing.
The government just doesn’t work for the people anymore. It works for the donors that fund them.
You don’t get to make $100 billion dollars and feign ignorance about how you got it and the damage you caused to obtain it.
Don’t you? I can’t think of any instance of justice truly being served to billionaires, can you?
SBF recently and Madoff before him.
Those are fair points, but I can’t help but chuckle that they were brought to justice because they stole from millionaires and other billionaires to make their ill gotten gains. Probably woulda got away with it if they just stole from the poor and middle class.
Is that so for SBF? I genuinely have no idea.
Not quite as many as Madoff, but some notable folks and investors.
Fuckem.
…decisions for profit at the expense of everyone else.
-The American Dream™
They are a company with zero morals and the goal to maximize profits. That’s what capitalism is for and were it’s good at.
The government needs to create rules and laws to make sure that this profit maximizing doesn’t happen on the back of ordinary people, but since corporate america is allowed to control the government through money, this doesn’t happen.
Capitalism is a tool, can we please start to use it like that again?!
the problem is already in the word itself… capitalism
aka to capitalize on someone else’s problems\misfortunes
Capitalism is a tool. Without it, we wouldn’t have cars, smartphones and so much more.
The problem is that we started to let the tool decide what is important. And since for them profit is more important then people, we are fucked.
Is a hammer generally bad because it can crush your fingers?
Accidentally? Man these writers will suck any corporate dick.
Yeah, real hard-hitting journalism here from… arktrek.shop?
The guy seems to rehashing news (probably with AI) and posting it on his ad filled blog for clicks. Check his profile.
“accidentally” 🤦♂️
It was - and is - entirely fucking intentional.
Big tech - move fast, break things, disrupt, and destroy
Like kudzu
or feral swine
Southerner here. FYI, kudzu is nowhere near as bad as this big tech shit. It doesn’t actually engulf entire forests; it just looks like it does because it covers the edges of them and that’s mostly the part that people see.
Mostly profit though.
Forgot the opportunity cost.
The only thing they’ve ever done on accident was make their logo look like a ballsack.
Can’t unseen it now, thanks.
Lol
This is a stupid light take, starting with the flowery version of their early 2010-ish “good intentions”.
Their “guarantee” insurance was notoriously difficult to actually access if needed. This was typical enshitification from the start, they just had to do a bit more early to gain public trust, until they reached critical mass and then flipped the switch.
The drug dealer gives you the first baggie for free, not because they are good dudes that care about you saving money…
The drug dealer gives you the first baggie for free
We should kill this urban legend, this simply doesn’t happen in the real world
Not an urban legend, just not in your first hand POV - Many examples around crack in the 80s, Molly at raves, a bump of coke at a party… All followed by, “and hey man, if you ever want more, hit me up”
When you’re making definitive statements try to add “doesn’t happen TO ME…” or “IMO/IME”, otherwise you just sound like you base the truth of the entire world solely on your own hyper limited, lived experience.
Having some free drugs at a party isn’t the same thing as “the first baggie being free”.
I would be very surprised if you could just walk up to drug dealers on the street and get free drugs like the urban / astroturf / DARE / LEO myth suggests.
It’s more of “I am too poor to understand this concept”
Can confirm this happened to me a few times, especially with dope, you don’t know what you’re talking about
Sure it does. Or at least it happened all the time when I was in college.
I actually was talking to a neighbor at my apartments 20 some-odd years ago. We got to talking about coke and he asked if I’d ever smoked it before.
“No…” So I followed him across the hall to his apartment and took a hit. “Whoa, this is fucking great! …Wait, when you smoke it isn’t it crack?”
“Yeah, it’s awesome isn’t it!? You know, if you want more I can probably find some…”
So, yup. I got my first hit of crack for free. I never thought that happened in real life before, either, and I’ve never had or heard of it happening since. Additionally, about six months later I stopped smoking crack.
It also never happened to me.
Or maybe it has happened to me a dozen times but I’d shout, “No way man! Drugs are for losers!” And hand him a DARE pamphlet and then I gained a reputation.
Accidentally?
Same when NASA accidentally landed on the moon
I don’t think it was accidental
I can’t believe people trust others enough to rent their house out like a hotel. I’ve already seen so many problems from this I can’t believe it’s still legal. My neighbor moved and they turned it into an AirBnB, some kids threw a party and left some trash out that poisoned my other neighbors dog. There’s a lawsuit, but the dog is still fucking dead.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been in an airbnb that’s actually somebody’s house. It seems like they’re mostly “investment properties” that people rent out. I’m sure that’s great for housing. \s
It started this way tho, people renting a room or a couch in their home. Pretty quickly it became either full units or rooms in a share appartement with other AirBnB guests.
There are a few things humans (and thus a healthy society) require for survival. Water, food, shelter.
When we start to point unadulterated VC backed capitalism at those resources, I think we give up something in our society and culture that we don’t actually want to give away.
I travel a lot worldwide and have used Airbnb quite a few times. However I’m now on the side of “Airbnb is evil”.
A couple years ago had a horrific experience in a villa and Airbnb customer support didn’t give a rats ass. Fortunately, my bank did and my credit card chargeback for $4,000 was successful. While I was going through that experience I came across a multitude of communities of travelers who have had equally horrific, oftentimes more horrific experiences with Airbnb where they’ve failed to step in and assist in any way.
Random dudes who own houses are on average unqualified in the hospitality business and not incentivized by maintaining a brand reputation. There are so many issues caused by shitty Airbnb hosts that hotels - real hotels - just don’t suffer from.
So now we have this situation where a lot of spaces are allocated to hotel businesses, more space is allocated to residential housing, And any random dude who can qualify for a mortgage can take a house off the market, fill it for 10 or 15 days out of the month, and keep both a domicile unused for a resident and a hotel room empty.
This is one of the few areas where I think hotel regulations are smart.
Just had an Airbnb cancel on us in Japan 1 week before our trip… Won’t be doing that again after seeing how little Airbnb gave a shit
I’ve heard a lot of people having this problem. Airbnb is next to useless, even with their guarantee.
Prices goes up, other hotels are booked solid, there are fewer options and travelers are left in the cold.
A big brand would be less likely to risk their reputation over $50 or $100/night difference if there’s some new big event in the area
Yeah, but on the same token you don’t want to give hotels the monopoly… There is so much price gouging if they know some big event is happening in town. Plus many areas have fuck all for hotel capacity. I do AirBNB because I don’t have $150 every time I want to go to a city. I wish we’d have capsule hotels
Are you implying that AirBNB hosts don’t do this price gouging as well?
What you describe is just another example of poor urban planning + untapped market of public transport.
I feel like the US is far down on the victims list. Look how they massacred my boys Spain and Italy
Prague city center is basically just airbnb flats now
Same in Nashville. It’s a shame. I wish the government would regulate this more.
Any somewhat touristic city that didn’t implement some drastic restrictions has been fucked. In those places you can make from 2 to 10 time as much with airbnb as you can with a normal tenant so it becomes the obvious choice for a property owners. the only way to fix supply is regulation.
Remember back before Airbnb when this was just a free thing called couch surfing?
i mean couch surfing is guest and host being there and interacting with each other.
AirBnB is getting the flat for yourself for the time you rent it.
A big part of Airbnb used to be spending time with a host. It has since turned into just landlord via app.
That’s exactly how airBnB started though. Then they moved to renting out the whole place and now we are where we are.
Uber was originally marketed as ride-sharing, too. Just an app to find people going the same way. Of course, I’m fairly sure that their current iterations was the plan all along as anyone with enough business sense to start those companies must have predicted that there would be people who take on Uber/AirBnB as a primary source of income. But sharing your house or planning a shared trip is much more palatable than “Landlords but Worse”.
http://couchsurfing.com/ Still exists
But i can’t imagine as many people on there when they can just rent out for money
Not really. Couch surfing was only for a certain type of person.
It also doesn’t help housing prices that the landlords are colluding to raise prices:
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fixing-algorithm-still-price-fixing
It isn’t just Airbnb’s fault, it’s landlords wanting to maximize their return, no matter the method (short-term rentals or price fixing collusion).
Then explain why this is a global phenomenon?
Then explain why this is a global phenomenon?
Because the same causes are happening mostly all over the world. Meaning, buying up houses. Driving up rent, etc.
Because often it is a nightmare to evict a tenant that do not pay the rent.
I can speak for where I live where a lot of people gone to the short-rental way exactly because that way they have the certainty that when they want the house back, for every reason, they have it.
To me AirBnB is not the problem, it is the wrong solution to a real problem.
Whole home or dedicated AIRBNB should be banned… If I had a room going unused I’d AirBnb
I agree with you to some extend.
What I do not agree about is the implicit assumption that if AIRBNB is banned then every house that was used for short-term rental would become available on the long-term rental market.
The main advantage of the short-term rental (obvious higher profits aside) is the fact that the owner is sure to be able to get back the house if/when he need it. So many owners saw the possibility to use an house with AirBnB (or other similar ways) a lot more attractive than keeping it empty (paying the taxes on it) and much less risky than having a long-term rental where the tenants could be turn out to be a bad one.
Oopsie doopsie
Oopsie poopsie…
Because everything went to shit
Just gonna leave this here. Pick your favorite city.
edit: guess we killed it. But there are a lot, a lot
Jesus. I can’t find an affordable apartment in Boston but “Blue grounds” is listing fucking 372 of them on Airbnb…
EDIT: so Blueground is the biggest property holder in almost every city? Or one of the top 5 in the places it isn’t #1. What the hell?
There are whole 30 story apartment buildings which are managed and run like a hotel but with units purchased by owners for STRs. Crowd-sourced hotels. So might be that company managing a whole building.
