Or just go to a hotel! I have a condo in a building where most of the units are listed on Airbnb or Booking.com, quality of life for residents like me has been drastically reduced by noisy tourists that come for a weekend trip and have no regard for keeping it quiet or keeping the shared spaces clean. I hope more cities begin to ban Airbnb. Tourists belong in hotels not in buildings where families try to live their daily lives and have to go to work. I've had to call the police on party goers and notoriously have to knock on noisy doors, I seriously hope Airbnb goes bankrupt and that cities ban the whole business model.
This is one of the reasons I don't stay in airbnbs - the system breaks the social contract.
The reason hotels are more expensive is because they have to follow a bunch of rules that makes everyone's life a bit better by having insurance for risks and zoning and so on. However you have to pay a bit more.
So, if you ever find yourself complaining "I wish people did something in a not the absolute cheapest and effortless way" so that society in general would benefit - don't stay in airbnb.
I've been looking into AirBnB for certain situations, and because people tell me they are cheaper than hotels. However, I have found that in a lot of cases, hotels end up being cheaper. The big gotcha is the prices shown are the fee for the room (or house or whatever), but then at the end they tack on exorbitant "cleaning" fees that I have found to be greater than the rental fee. They have taken to using big graphics promoting living wages as a way to justify the extensive cleaning fees. In the end, it is much less hassle for me to just book the hotel. They have dedicated staff that allows me to arrive and check-in whenever, rather than having a small window of time before the "host" goes to bed or what not.
Yeah those cleaning fees are bullshit. I don't want to see the prices of only one item on a list shown on the map, I want to see how much it actually costs to stay there.
tbf you'll see this on a lot of hotel bookings too. We just got back from a week in NYC, and most booking systems (either hotels or airbnbs) were a massive slog. Try to airbnb an okay place in the Bronx for $110/night? Click through and see an $80 cleaning fee. Try to book a hotel in Manhattan? Bam, $100 tourism tax.
Really not loving all these systems that go out of there way to confuse me into paying more money.
Reminds me of those “resort fees” in Vegas, which are not disclosed as part of the room rate when you search/comparison shop, but can actually add up to being more than the room rate [1]. Totally evil. Why can’t we at least agree to regulate hidden fees to extinction? How does hiding the true price of something ever benefit the public?
Really not loving all these systems that go out of there way to confuse me into paying more money.
When you think about it the cleaning fee really does need to be separate because it's a one time fee. So with your scheme it's $190 for one night, but but $121 a night for a week.
That said I used AirBnB for the first time last month, and I was very confused by the different pricing on different pages. The UI did seem to be purposely confusing. It should have been listed as total price for the dates I am searching for.
In at least some cases the tourist tax is only for tourists. Business visitors don't need to pay the tax, if they show some evidence that it's a business trip.
Interesting -- I'll look into that for NYC. I'm CTO at a startup based in Toronto, but we have a tiny space in Manhattan so it's pretty easy for me to schedule some business there and have my family tag along.
I've certainly never heard of hotel taxes only being for tourists in NYC. NYC is worse than most with all the taxes and fees they add. The worst was that for a number of years they had some Javits convention center enhancement fee. This was during a period when it wasn't even clear if the project was going ahead--though it eventually did.
>This is one of the reasons I don't stay in airbnbs - the system breaks the social contract.
But it doesn't. People are breaking the social contract by not respecting the area. If I invite friends from out of town over for the weekend, is that breaking the social contract? If I'm going away for 2 weeks, and I have friends house sit for the duration, is that breaking the social contract? Tourists and visitors existing in a space (unless it's too many) isn't inherently violating the social contract. Their selfish behavior is the issue.
I understand what you mean. I have neighbors down the road who throw a massive family gathering once per year that I'm certain breaks noise, traffic and safety ordinances[0] due to the sound system still going at 10PM and parked cars littering both sides of the streets. That's not due to Airbnb or any other hospitality broker.
If you have an issue with visitors, talk to them. It's possible that they don't even know they're being a nuisance. I have had cops called on me for a noise complaint. It would have been a better use of everyone's time to knock and let us know.
[0]: As far as I know, no one reports the reunion/gathering. I like to think that since we're all very respectful of each other's property and space, breaking the rules for a special event once in a while is no big deal.
> If you have an issue with visitors, talk to them.
This is externalizing a social cost: Normally your neighbor (that you know personally, ideally, so you can discuss any matters with somebody you know) will take care of their visitors' conduct.
When we're away, we sometimes have friends over to house-sit, but we know them, we know their conduct, they know us, and they're not interested in giving us a bad reputation in the neighborhood.
With airbnb, the owner of the apartment likely doesn't know their "visitor" (otherwise, why pay a commission to airbnb?) and often they're not around to enforce standards. It's a huge diffusion of responsibility.
> If I invite friends from out of town over for the weekend, is that breaking the social contract?
That's different. You know your friends. You don't know your airbnb guests, and the reviews are only worth so much. I can't find the article now, but some porn company had an easy time gaming airbnb by getting good reviews in the beginning and using the place for shoots on the 10th stay or whatever.
And, as a person who had I think ~15 airbnbs from 2015-2018, the recent change I don't like is that some houseowners hire an 18 year told (who I have to call and meet outside) and have him give me a hurried 10 minute intro and then leave. I actually _was_ one of those people who enjoyed airbnbs for the reasons they publicize (the 'it's not a hotel' line, the 'feel at home with friends!' type of thing) -- but that seems to have largely disappeared. Last time I was in an airbnb, I would always get these nasty glares from the neighborhoods, who seem to be just screaming "We don't want you here, strange" with their facial expressions. Staying at a hotel is indeed now much more comfortable, and the consistency of services (while not perfect) is better than airbnbs in my recent experiences.
Right, so the owner is potentially breaking the social contract by maybe allowing someone without respect for others to stay in their home (though ratings systems are generally used exactly to allow this type of vetting in advance).
But the guest is not automatically breaking the social contract by staying in an AirBnB, which is what was implied by the OC.
The OC said, "the system breaks the social contract".
> the owner is potentially breaking the social contract by maybe allowing someone without respect for others to stay in their home
And a person walking around the gas station with an open flame is only potentially a fire hazard, because they may very well get lucky and not set any fuel fumes on fire.
Reality doesn't work like that. You drop the "potentially" once the risk becomes predictably high. The owner is breaking the social contract by putting their neighbors at very high risk of dealing with guests who don't respect other people.
> though ratings systems are generally used exactly to allow this type of vetting in advance
Ranking systems are trivially gamed. One would think everyone knows this by now.
> But the guest is not automatically breaking the social contract by staying in an AirBnB
No, they're not. But if they behave as if they were in a hotel while in a residential-area AirBnB, they most likely are. Maybe they should know better than to behave like that. But AirBnB should know better than enabling this problem in the first place.
I guess I feel this way, because I feel a small bit of responsibility towards my neighbors. Renting out a place is not inherently a violation of a social contract.
> Reality doesn't work like that. You drop the "potentially" once the risk becomes predictably high. The owner is breaking the social contract by putting their neighbors at very high risk of dealing with guests who don't respect other people.
A flood of legitimate complaints about poor guest behavior would likely make me stop - i.e. the pattern is now predictably high enough to make a logical conclusion. I hope that my neighbors would be courteous enough to do the same.
> But AirBnB should know better than enabling this problem in the first place.
I think someone else touched on this, but I have a feeling that the location attracts different types of guests. Beaches are a great example. The surrounding area is a good indicator if the beach is a party beach or more oriented for family vacations. The former typically has brighter lights, more bars, clubs, and places open later. Family-friendly beaches usually shut down activity around 10 or 11 save for the corner store that's open later. I bet the Airbnb guest behavior reflect this as well.
I don’t know what a social contract means, but in some cases you are breaking condo/apartment contracts and in other municipalities the owner is breaking the law.
As far as I’ve ever heard, as a guest, the worst that is going to happen is you are going to be thrown out. Municipalities in general don’t want to scare away tourists or visitors, so I would be surprised to see any fines or penalties in that directions.
Some municipalities have very large and escalating fines for listing on AirBnb. Miami Beach is $20,000 for first offense and I believe doubles on the second. Search “Airbnb Miami Beach” on google, and it is going to take you a while to figure that one out. I doubt most visitors have any idea.
> I actually _was_ one of those people who enjoyed airbnbs for the reasons they publicize (the 'it's not a hotel' line, the 'feel at home with friends!' type of thing) -- but that seems to have largely disappeared.
Like many other things (search engine rankings come to mind), quality decreases as everybody figures out how to game the system to extract maximum profit for minimum effort. The rise of "superhosts" who manage dozens of properties from afar, using keypad locks to avoid any human interaction and contracting out cleaning to the lowest bidder, has undoubtedly been bad for the AirBnB experience. Yet AirBnB not only tolerates but actually celebrates them.
I'd also like to see some data on the loud and unruly complaints. Of course those that have had problems are going to be the loudest voices, but it's anecdotal. I have friends in a nearby suburban neighborhood (we live in a heavily seasonal tourist area) where, amazingly, the HOA allows vacation rentals and they have the opposite impression: they have told me that they have always heard that vacation renters are loud and annoying, but have never had a problem in their neighborhood. Also anecdotal of course. But makes me wonder if there's really anything to it.
> It would have been a better use of everyone's time to knock and let us know.
Sadly, too many people now are afraid of conflict, even small conflict, they prefer to call the police rather than deal with others directly. They don’t want to deal with it themselves.
That anxiety I’m sure goes up with unknown Airbnbers, and so raises the likely good that people will probably call the police instead.
Sadly, too many people have become toxic. My first action is usually to talk to people, asking them to turn things down until I can't hear it. It works increasingly less over time. Instead I get people that turn the volume up. I am slowly moving towards calling the police first lately.
> breaking the rules for a special event once in a while is no big deal.
This is the core of the problem. My neighbors across the hall might have a party from time to time and it's of course no big deal (espescially if they take the time to leave me a note with a way to contact them if it's causing a problem). My neighbors above me are always on their "special event once in a while" with 6 people in a 2 bedroom flat because today is their bachelorette, stag do, end of year blow out, holiday, party.
* If I invite friends from out of town over for the weekend, is that breaking the social contract? If I'm going away for 2 weeks, and I have friends house sit for the duration, is that breaking the social contract?*
Do you charge them? I guess not. And it's one of the reasons why they'll do their best to honor your trust and reputation, aside from, obviously, your friendship, given you trust them.
It isn't true that airbnb rooms cost less than a hotel, at least in Central London. The reason they can appear cheaper is that you can cram 8 people into a small flat or even a room.
I was renting a room in a flat in Soho. The other floors slowly got converted to amateur hotels for airbnb/booking. Many a night, I'd see families stuck downstairs with luggage. They would then phone a capricious property manager who would tell them to walk about two miles to the key safe. Many a time, they didn't have a phone that worked in London, and I would lend them my phone. One angry customer checked in to the 5* boutique hotel next door after waiting for an hour. The hotel was about the same price. I wonder if he got his money back. I doubt it.
I don't book airbnbs. Hospitality is not for greedy unregulated amateurs. Of course, there might be some great hosts, but I like consistency.
I avoided the tourists with luggage looking puzzled standing at the front door; if I saw some I'd use the rear door instead.
When they rang my buzzer, I'd tell them AirBnB was banned, and leave the line open so they couldn't buzz anyone else for 2-3 minutes until it disconnected.
I also reported the apartments to the building owner, and they were kicked out after a few months.
I would argue that ‘people’ break the social contract.
These people know where they are, what time it is, and mostly what’s expected of their surroundings. I think they just don’t care. I’m guessing it’s similar to anonymity on the Internet, where people behave differently because they don’t expect to have to face those they harm.
Yes, it's people who break social contract. The sin of AirBnB isn't that they create those people where they didn't exist before. The sin of AirBnB is that they organize those people on a massive scale and put them in a position where breaking the social contract is the default behavior.
Tourists are noisy and careless. That's to some extent forgivable - tourism is a leisure activity. Hotels and other legit tourism-oriented businesses are prepared for it and mostly take care of it (and are appropriately regulated to make sure they do). But take the same tourists doing the same things and sprinkle them around neighborhoods where regular people live and raise families - in that context, their behavior becomes disturbing and destructive to the quality of those neighborhoods. It's breaking social contract.
The sin of AirBnB is that they know they're making the world a worse place, and they don't care. They just keep doing it.
A lot of startup culture is about breaking the social contract for profit. "Value" is locked up in norms, but you can show up to a place, throw those norms away and make lots of money. Cutting down apple orchards to put in tract housing. Making employees contractors and gaming the system so they compete rather than cooperate. This pattern causes others to seek out norms that can bent for profit, so it has spread like a meme.
In Germany, one can openly drink any sort of alcohol one wants. But the social norms as such that jackassery by those consuming alcohol is greatly reduced. The people there are under a stronger social contract.
Yup. That's why for the last few years I've been so outspoken about Uber and (less often) AirBnB - I view those companies not as just poisoning the spaces they work in, but as a general threat to the fundamental underpinnings of societies worldwide. This may sound extreme, but as you correctly pointed out - others see how successful those companies are, how much media praise they're getting, and try to copy them.
I just wanted to leave a comment saying that I thought this link is worth clicking.
I suspect people who regularly “cheat” in business for example are acutely aware of the necessity of finding a constant source new interactions.
I also suspect that the stereotype of people from small towns being more naive than people from cities is also related to this.
It all seems kind of obvious to me as I write this post but I don’t think I’ve actually consciously directly thought about things on those terms until just now.
I would disagree slightly. They treat it like any other hotel. There are always some overtly noisy people at a hotel. There are always people who will leave crap in the breakfast areas because "they are paying" and it is someone else's job. The difference is that someone's apartment isn't employing the same people a hotel is. And like the thread mentions, they are breaking a social contract of the building even if they aren't breaking a legal rule.
I've personally used AirBnb when I've stayed somewhere on my own and just wanted a spare room to crash in, with the added bonus of some company, and also to rent an entire detached house in the French countryside with my family for 2 weeks.
Both of these AirBnb offered something way better than a hotel.
I do agree that that middle ground - a whole apartment in a mixed residential building - is problematic, and I'd feel awkward staying in that setting.
You make a good point - the "rent out my couch" type of thing and "rent out a whole separate house" admittedly break my argument a little bit.
However there are still the questions of things like insurance coverage and other safety related topics. Basically if anything goes wrong in a hotel, there is staff who is required to be trained to be able to deal with it. Again, the cost associated with dealing with the 0.05% corner cases is distributed to everyone in the case of a hotel room, but to the specific person to whom it happens in the airbnb case.
To be fair, if you really want to rent a whole house, the hotel industry doesn't often provide good options ....
A very reasonable point; however, AirBnB & its ilk end up being the only viable option in some cases.
There's a huge bicycling event in Texas every spring, and it overnights in a town that is, most of the time, very very quiet. The meager hotel inventory is sufficient 364 days of the year, but absurdly low for the weekend of the MS150.
& so, homeshare sites make a killing that weekend.
Your example is one of the few edge cases where AirBnB works. The OP is talking about an everyday situation where AirBnB has instead had a detrimental effect on residents as well as would-be residents.
This is the type of NIMBYism that is contributing to the housing policy problems. Instead of using nuance and recognizing the good and bad, only the bad is focused on and the proposals are to throw it all out.
Generally NIMBYism involves push-back on policies that increase housing density to help more (and generally poorer) people live somewhere. AirBNB without regulation (and enforcement) doesn't help more people live in an area - in fact it removes long term residences from the market in favor of generating more revenue for existing property owners. Reducing the long term housing supply increases demand and prices, thus keeping poorer folks out.
Personally I don't mind AirBNB if it's only people renting out rooms in their residences. For instance here in Portland the law requires this. But it's poorly enforced.
NIMBYism isn't only about housing, it refers to any pushback on a change that is generally agreed as good/useful/necessary on the basis that "sure we need this thing, but not where I live".
Currently we hear it a lot regarding housing density, but it's also a factor in locating sewage treatment plants, nuclear waste disposal sites, etc.
In pretty much any small city in developing nations, AirBNB is the only viable option. Many of these cities have experienced rapid growth thanks to EU and Chinese loans, but the hotel infrastructure has not kept up. In one Balkan city I visit frequently, I can pay $150/night in a 40 year old Holiday Inn that was condemned a few years ago for structural reasons (then the decision was reversed), or I can pay $15 a night in an AirBNB some poor schlub making $200/month is renting out to make ends meet.
I'm going to choose door number 2 every time. Any time I am given the choice to buy something, especially a higher-quality experience at a lower price, from a human being versus a corporation, the human gets my money.
Just like I prefer Uber to taxis, I prefer AirBNB to hotels. Even Hostels now, if I go into Amsterdam I will pay $35-$50 per night. If there are two of us, the $50 per night AirBNB is our choice.
These businesses flourish because the social contract is broken. Creating artificial scarcity will harm the community in the long run, preventing tourism and limiting the ability of home owners / tenants to make a couple of extra bucks on under-utilized resources.
Whatever this social contract is, I've never signed it, and I don't really recognize anybody else telling me I must abide by this contract upon which I was given no opportunity to vote or discuss.
Seems to me that this is a logistical issue the event planners should fix. Are there any other towns nearby that would make a better overnight spot now that the event has grown larger?
One way is to say that uberized businesses are all like this: they remove costs from the sticker price and externalize them. It's the ryanair model as applied to other things. Removing insurance and offloading the costs of not having insurance onto the users, removing proper benefits for staff and externalizing the costs from that onto society, removing quality of service items and requiring users to make up the difference (like doing your own housekeeping in an airbnb, or uber drivers having to provide their own vehicles).
The other way of looking at it is these services providing a middle ground. People may not wish the "full option" service, and are prepared to pay less to get less. Someone who wants the full service can still get it, there are now just more options.
Personally, I find the "social contract" to be too biased in favor of homeowners. They control municipal governments and hence zoning laws. If these homeowners decide that they don't want to see visitors in their neighborhoods, they can decide they don't have to. So, in effect, this "contract" was unilaterally imposed by one party to it.
I noticed this particularly in Princeton, NJ. A cute, small, and overly expensive town. Anyway, I was visiting the university on business, and if you stay downtown it is easy to get everywhere without a car.
Except... there are few hotels downtown, and no budget hotels. For those you have to stay near the highway (and hence rent a car).
The "social contract" would require that I view my own presence as a nuisance, even though I was being quiet and going to bed early. I decided that I didn't have any qualms about renting via Airbnb/Craigslist.
>Personally, I find the "social contract" to be too biased in favor of homeowners. They control municipal governments and hence zoning laws. If these homeowners decide that they don't want to see visitors in their neighborhoods, they can decide they don't have to. So, in effect, this "contract" was unilaterally imposed by one party to it.
Are you implying that tourists/visitors/non-locals should have as much say in local rules/policies/etc as the people that actually own property and live in those locations? If so I 100% disagree. While airbnbs are a less extreme example, look at tourist locations all around the world and how they are being destroyed and local populations are being displaced. The "social contract" SHOULD be biased in favor of people that actually live in and contribute to the area
> Are you implying that tourists/visitors/non-locals should have as much say in local rules/policies/etc as the people that actually own property and live in those locations?
As much? No. (However, I do strongly believe that locals who rent should have as much say; often their interests are not aligned with those of homeowners.)
I agree that in some cases, such as locations with huge numbers of tourists where local populations are being driven out, drastic measures are required.
In general, personally, I would favor a compromise involving a lot more regulation (e.g. of AirBnBs in apartment buildings) on the one hand, and making it easier to operate hotels on the other. I support homeowners who don't want informal hotels to be operated out of their apartment buildings; less so, homeowners who don't want hotels (whether formal or not) to be opened anywhere nearby.
So let's say I buy a quiet home in a peaceful neighborhood. I've risked my life savings on this home so I can get work done, meditate, relax and not hear barking dogs, children scream, etc..
So you're saying I don't have the right to want those things? That new people coming into that kind of environment should be allowed to, even though there is nearly literally anywhere else in the f-ing world they can go.
I'm not saying you, in particular, are going to bother me, you sound quiet - but why should I give up on upholding the social contracts the neighborhood has established for decades for a rowdy party animals to blast through every weekend?
I certainly believe you have the right to want those things. And moreover, there are noise ordinances and related laws, and I do believe those should be enforced.
But, I also believe that new people coming into that kind of environment should be allowed to. People step on each other's toes, and it can be annoying. But I still don't believe that people have the right to keep other people out.
> And moreover, there are noise ordinances and related laws, and I do believe those should be enforced.
They generally are. But it's not practical to enforce them in a condition of a lot of short-term rentals, where people rotate on a weekly basis. Before AirBnB, that might not have been a problem, but now that's trivially easy to become a pirate hotel anywhere in the world, people are pushing to ban such rentals in residential areas, because it's the only way to make the problem go away.
That's another negative side effect right here. Occasional vacation sublet by a thoughtful homeowner doesn't hurt anybody. But those cases become collateral damage of the effort to fight off AirBnB's pirate hotels.
You could be right. I would like to think that there is some option which would make everyone more-or-less happy, but it could be that I'm being too optimistic.
How do I get a noise ordinance enforced, when the noise is 2 minutes of people shouting and clattering luggage down the stairs at 4am on Monday, to get their cheap Ryanair flight home?
My neighbours are much more careful at 4am, and each might only leave like this a couple of times a year. An apartment on AirBnB has this pretty much every week.
You don't of course. Anyone shouting at 4am is being exceedingly rude; if there's any social contract in place, then they certainly aren't honoring their end of it.
Under these circumstances, I certainly wouldn't blame you for advocating to your municipal government that they crack down on AirBnBs. I would just hope that that government try to find some way to simultaneously keep the needs of visitors in mind. Maybe there is not a true win-win scenario here, but the status quo doesn't seem to be working well for anyone.
"Hotel cabal" is bullshit. Slightly less bullshit than Uber's "taxi mafia", but still a steaming pile of bovine excrement.
AirBnB is a multinational corporation. It's displacing not just large hotel chains, but also all the local legal forms of short-term accommodation - small hotels, hostels, motels, BnBs, etc.
It really bewilders me that people have fallen for the same reality-inverting marketing propaganda not once, but twice. AirBnB and Uber aren't underdogs fighting cabals, they're SV-money-pumped cabals fighting small local businesses.
If you can’t see the harm in a few companies owning the vast majority of hotel rooms (under many brands) then I don’t know how we can have a productive discussion about this.
Having personally made “status” in the various hotel cabal loyalty programs, and having used AirBnb/VRBO/HomeAway/etc... many many times as well. I say with confidence that the hotel chains have negative externalities that exceed those of the various short term rental sites. I’ll go so far as saying the hotel cabal is a net negative.
> If you can’t see the harm in a few companies owning the vast majority of hotel rooms (under many brands) then I don’t know how we can have a productive discussion about this.
I can see harm in it. But the solution isn't enabling yet another single company to expand and capture even more of the hospitality market.
> I say with confidence that the hotel chains have negative externalities that exceed those of the various short term rental sites.
1. Profits are not retained by the local community
2. Wages are low
3. Architectural blight/reduces walk-ability
AirBnb (of whom I’ve been very critical in the past)
1. Encourages property ownership and wealth building amongst the middle class
2. Enables the middle class to extract the maximum value from their assets
3. Offers a better product at a lower price
4. Keeps profits local
Everyone assumes the hotels are complying with all local statues and are behaving in good faith just because they pay occupancy taxes and carry insurance. Bizarre.
Local city councils can and do enact laws for short term rentals and the short term rental companies have whole departments of developers who program those laws into the system. If those laws are not being followed then the justice department should do its job.
Yeah, I absolutely can see how someone who pays (sometimes living) wage to lots of people, pays taxes, obeys the law, and generally does not push costs on bystanders would be an evil cabal in the VC-fueled SV bubble!
>I still don't understand how society would benefit from AirBnb not existing and us being where we started with the hotel cabal.
Many of the people on this site don't see or experience the downsides, as we are privileged enough to own our own properties or have our own space not impacted by airbnb. However, consider for example a family living in inexpensive housing with parents that work and children that are in school. There have been many cases of wealthy individuals purchasing/renting blocks of cheap apartments/condos and turning them into defacto hotels with no rules leading to partying, destruction of property, increased crime, and other issues. How would you feel if where you lived was suddenly overrun with short term tenants that are having a negative impact on your way of life, and not being able to afford to move?
That is how society would benefit form AIrbnb not existing. It may not benefit engineers making 100k+, but it would positively impact many in lower socioeconomic classes
I find it interesting that this comment initially had 7 upvotes and is now down to 2. There is nothing factually wrong about what I wrote, I guess well off engineers are just upset at the thought of potentially losing their cheap accommodations and convenience despite it having a negative impact on many individuals lives
One thing that's easy to overlook is risk. For example insurance - the hotel is basically liable for things that go wrong there. They also have insurance to make sure they can pay up when needed.
Does your airbnb host have proper insurance? For example you flood the apartment you rented from airbnb and the downstairs apartment owner sues you. IANAL but I'm fairly sure that usually in home insurance cases short term rentals aren't covered.
In Amsterdam you can only AirBnB your house for 30 days a year. So normal residents can rent out their house when they go on holiday, but you can't buy up living space for only renting it out on AirBnB.
Which then in turn isn't really enforced and the commercial guys running multiple appartments as full time rentals find intricate ways around the rules...
There will always be people that find ways around rules, but if the rules exist and are reasonably well enforced, then that is really what is required. This assumes the rule is reasonable, which does appear to be the case here.
There is no time, but a space limit in Berlin. You can rent out as much as you like if it's less than 50% of the space of your apartment you're actually living.
If it's over 50% or you are not living there at all, you need a permit.
It's 90 days, 60 days on small islands and you can only go over that limit if you're low-income. Compliance is a different issue, because Greece, but hopefully AirBnB and the other platforms will help police this.
The owner of the property must get a permit number from the municipality. Airbnb and other similar sites are obliged to require that permit number and limits the amount of nights per year for Amsterdam properties.
That's a cool way of doing it. I wonder if there is a central database for those number of stays. Otherwise you could feasibly rent it out 30 days on AirBnB and then 30 more days on booking.com and then 30 on other platforms etc
Similarly, in Japan, if any of your neighbours complain to the council and they begin an investigation, it's likely that you'll get pushed off the platform.
I associate the Netherlands with pragmatic and sensible, live and let live kind of policies for things like sex, drugs, traffic, squatting. In my mind it's similar to Denmark. I think it's a common association but I don't know how it would hold up to scrutiny.
AirBnb should be responsible for providing a framework for complying with regional regulations of this sort. Why isn't AirBnb liable for facilitating users to break the law?
Those places you're looking for are called hostels. They're cheaper and there's likely more of them than hotels in any given place. They're also legal and don't break the social contract.
EDIT: I'm sorry, I only just realized that "hostel" in Europe means something entirely different from "hostel" in the US. What I mean by "hostel", per how we use this term in Poland, is a cheaper version of a hotel, where you still rent by the room, and rooms are usually 1, 2, and 3-5 people-sized, and usually have kitchen and a bathroom in the room. They're not like dorms, they don't involve shared bunk beds. I don't know what the right term in the US is. Bed&Breakfast?
In principle, hostels have everything. A fridge, a kitchen and so on. In practice, though, you have to label all your food because there is one fridge for 50 people. You need to share the kitchen with everyone else too. Privacy is limited. Noise is biblical. Fucking party dickhead bros everywhere ruining everything. Creaky floorboards and noisy doors. I've done hostels all over Europe, and while there are exceptions, the exceptions tend to cost a bit more too.
Hostels are OK when you're young and broke and very adaptable. I used them a lot, and am grateful they exist. But they do NOT fulfill what the GP is asking about.
I made an edit in my comment. Must be a US/Europe term difference. I don't know what the horror show you described is called in my part of Europe, but over here, hostels have nothing to do with shared fridge for 50 people, or limited privacy. They're just cheaper hotels. Kind of like a motel, except not optimized for cars, and usually in an apartment building.
Hmmm, unless things have changed since I backpacked western Europe, hostels in London|Barcelona|Florence|Paris are dorm-style with shared bathrooms and other facilities. So, it's not a "Europe" thing either. As a 40-something professional, I would never stay in a hostel - I'm too old for that crap. I want a nice bed, a small living room, and a small kitchen.
"apart-hotel" isn't really something that exists in the US. And I had no idea it was a searchable term in some online booking tools.
Somebody mentioned extended-stay hotels elsewhere as the closest analog in the US, but they tend to be focused on business travelers, and not always located in tourist areas. For example, there are a ton of extended-stay hotels near my office, but that's 30 miles outside Washington DC in the heart of the northern VA internet/tech zone (AWS, Google, the remnants of AOL, etc).
Edit - I'm looking at Hotels.com now, searching Inverness UK from the US site. "apart-hotel" is not an option under "Accommodation Type". Apartment is a distinct type from hotel, and it appears to be a mix of what you describe (bocks of apartments managed for vacation lets) and individual apartments (Airbnb-style).
Sometimes I stay at "apart'hotels" in Europe. At least at the chain I've used a number of times, it's really just a hotel with 1.) Some cooking facilities like an extended stay place in the US and 2.) Cleaning is just weekly. They also tend not to have features like bars and gyms that many hotels do. But, really, at least for my uses it's pretty much a hotel with a 24-hour front desk.
In a state of even greater surprise, I accept that the word "hostel" may in general mean something else than what I came to expect from staying in places calling themselves "hostels".
(Curiously, the Talk page of that article suggests that Polish law doesn't even recognize the term "hostel", so all those places - both defined here and the kinds I stayed in - must really be something else.)
People in the US would generally call them "Extended Stays" but they're usually as expensive as hotels but not necessarily located in places where you'd want to be. In my experience they're either in industrial suburbs or just off of a highway exit. They're targeted at people who will be away from home for more than a few days and/or where a hotel room is too small/ill equipped.
> and there's likely more of them than hotels in any given place.
Not in America. You might find a few in & near major cities, but hotels and motels are everywhere, bed & breakfasts are fairly common, and AirBnBs are plentiful.
So what's the correct term for "a cheap hotel, usually without a minibar in the room"? Because that's what we call a "hostel" over where I live, and I assume in the rest of Europe.
Motel. They're usually what you'd expect from the lowest end of hotels, and (at least around here) a great many of them are left over from the '50s through the '70s—the pre-interstate era, where driving to visit somewhere several hours away usually meant stopping in some little town overnight.
I haven't personally stayed in one, because I have enough money that I'd never have to, but the impression I have is that one would contain a bed, a desk, a chair, a not-entirely-spotless bathroom, and not much else.
That's certainly the image that the "motel" term conjures up. TBH, I'm not sure how broadly the term is used any longer. There are certainly more modern hotels/motels, many of them big chains, that are designed around people driving to them so you can usually park near your room.
The quality varies from pretty tired and not so clean, as you say, to--if not upscale exactly--to comfortable, modern, and clean.
Oh, yes; there are certainly many chains like Travelodge and Motel 6 that fit the category of "motel" but are more modern and clean.
However, I can quite assure you that here in rural Upstate New York (and, indeed, even in some of the less-well-off sections of the cities), there are still a great many motels that date to the era I mentioned—very visibly so. (This is why I qualified my statement with "at least around here".)
I have actually stayed in Travelodges a couple of times, and while they were modern, I wouldn't really describe them as "comfortable" (the beds were like tandem canoes) or "clean", at least not universally so.
I'm thinking more things like Comfort Inns or the lower-end Marriott brands. I'd put Travelodge and Motel 6 pretty near the bottom of the national chains. I had the misfortune to have to stay in a Travelodge last year because of a last minute trip.
But, yes, there are also still quite a few non-chains or small chains that aren't... great.
The door isn't there, but many "business traveler" hotel lines are closer to what you describe.
But yeah, if you want to cook, the options are slimmer. There ARE still options -- Extended Stay America, in the US, for example -- but mostly you'd be better off renting a property and not a hotel room.
>The door isn't there, but many "business traveler" hotel lines are closer to what you describe.
Exactly, every business hotel I've ever seen has had a fridge, kitchen-style sink and a microwave. Then touristy locations often have condo rentals on a weekly basis which will have proper kitchens and washer & dryer, if you're travelling long enough to need a kitchen it's probably going to be a week or more.
Worst case people can do what Americans have been doing for decades, travel with a cooler and refill with new ice as needed. We did this all throughout my childhood when we'd go to Florida from Indiana, we'd eat out for dinner and sometimes for breakfast the whole trip but lunch was pretty much always sandwiches made from perishables kept in a cooler. We'd keep drinks in a small igloo and then we'd usually buy a large Styrofoam cooler for the food.
>Exactly, every business hotel I've ever seen has had a fridge, kitchen-style sink and a microwave.
Not really my experience although a small refrigerator that isn't a minibar is more common than it used to be. Outside of extended stay hotels though, I don't see a microwave or other kitchen-related features very often.
I forget the exact chain, but wasn't Embassy Suites or Homewood suites (or some Marriott brand), was an exclusively, living room + dining + kitchen + bedroom setup? They were also much cheaper than typical JW Marriott, regular Marriott and similar hotels.
In many cities apartments are normally owned through some kind of co-op with a board that decides things. If that’s the case then I wouldn’t buy one in a building that allows more than temporary subletting. This is the case at least in Sweden, i.e it’s pretty hard to buy-to-let, and that’s normally a good thing (also for price stability).
Here in Switzerland (once again, sorry for being generally mixed up with Sweden), most buildings are owned by investment funds, life insurance companies, banks, etc..
So the exact opposite of what you describe happens - to maximize profits at close to zero risk. Cities are having a really hard time keeping a lid on companies that restructure whole buildings to use as short-time rentals.
I’m only talking about buildings that are owned by the tenant now, not flats for rent. Rented flats are usually too hard to come by to make a business of subletting them.
A lot of people on my floor did that when I lived in a 6000 sek/month 1 room flat outside Stockholm that required me to be an active student and still required 5 years of being in the queue for apartments which you can't sign up for until age 18.
It was impossible to study most days because of kids to illicit renters running around screaming and biking in the corridors.
Couldn't you ring the bell of suspect apartments, verify the presence of illicit renters and call the police? Aren't there fines or worse for the owner?
No go for the police. Owner has disturbance staff but evicting people takes ages and they seemed to not work very hard on that, still getting that rent income so it's no difference to them.
In the US it's usually a city or county ordinance we're talking about, which can be criminal. Some cities have some kind of code enforcement officers to handle those cases, but a lot of the time this is handled by the police.
I’m sure a significant number of people would just say they booked on AirBnB straight up. Especially if it’s multiple apartments, and there are many, many different people coming and going. You can also find the listing on AirBnB itself. This should be sufficient evidence to do whatever you need to.
I think you are working on assumptions. You shouldn't.
If a person in a building that is not Airbnb-able, trust me, they will tell their tenants to say these things. I have experienced it myself in several Airbnbs i have stayed in.
You can't use the police to enforce policies set by the apartment company. It needs to not only be breaking the rules but also laws (which is hard to do disturbance-wise during daytime)
It is, but I think various forms of condo associations also exist in the US? The question is of course how far reaching their power is, e.g when it comes to violating rules of the association when subletting on Airbnb, can they be “evicted” (the property sold etc)?
The problem is that the city as a whole benefits from the increased tourism (while you and I languish in the noise polution).
My city actually prohibits the use of residential buildings for short-term lets by planning permission. Though as far as I can tell despite the hundreds of air bnb listings nobody has actually applied for it!
I've appealed for enforcement to the local govt and am hopeful that this will resolve my issue. :-)
As someone living in a "touristy" area, and who has close friends, workmates and relatives who have been evicted because of the ridiculous increase of the rent prices in the last 3 or 4 years, I also seriously hope Airbnb's business model gets relentlessly banned everywhere.
I haven't personally experimented sharing a building with an Airbnb rented flat, but I know a few people who have. Saying that they are not happy is an understatement.
I've also heard about tenants (normal tenants, i.e. rented by the month) who rented one of the flat's rooms in Airbnb, which in the end caused complains from the neighbours to the flat owner. IIRC this is illegal in my country, but it's not like that is much of a deterrent, apparently.
Seriously, fuck Airbnb. They are the number one cause of the decrease in purchasing power and quality of life in my area in the latest year, and believe me, that's saying something.
- The noise level is within the reasonable legal limit:
Tourists are exercising their rights to use the condo, in the same way that the owner (main renter) could have done. Whether it's the owner making the noise or the tourists is immaterial.
- The noise levels are above the legal limits, inform them (courtesy) and then call the cops. whether it's the owner, or the tourists it's the same thing.
"I have a right to do everything that's not actually illegal" is an attitude that directly results in all kinds of trivial things being banned. In this case, it's leading to cities trying to ban or restrict AirBNB.
Depends on your definition. Here in Switzerland, the expectations go as far as aksing you NOT to use toilets after a reasonable hour in the evening because the sound through the water pipes can disturb people. Now, it's not as draconian as it sounds, and from time to time you are welcome to use the toilet, obviously.
Similarly, in some villages, you are NOT welcome to tear down an old building and build a modern monstrosity in its place. Facade changes often need to be approved by the local authorities. The advantage is that villages look more homogeneous and thus more beautiful.
On the one hand, such a society means the Swiss will sometimes call the cops if you're noisy, or if you parked your car wrong etc. And it DOES get infuriating no doubt.
However, such things tend to load to a society where everyone has a baseline level of self-awareness and sensitivity towards those around you. It translates to all sort of good things like the 'zipper' approach to intersections, where you let someone in, and then the next car lets you in, and the virtuous cycle continues.
Ultimately, if I had to choose, I'd much prefer such a seciety, even if it errs on too much strictness. The quality of life is amazing.
Sure. There's an escalation process in this; going round to ask people not to do something. But if that doesn't work? Or results in aggression? Or actual violence? Or, because of the character of the neigbourhood and people's fears, they worry it might? People turn to the police to mediate their disputes.
And the problem with AirBnb is that every new set of guests re-rolls the dice on how they're likely to react.
Except that generally doesn't happen, and illegal AirBnB sublets absolutely do deserve to be reported to police in every single instance, because they're instances of antisocial individual behavior coordinated by a multinational corporation that profits off it.
Your wording is a little over the top but I generally agree.
You know how many fucks I give about my neighbor's power tools at odd hours or my other neighbor's loud birds or my other neighbor who's always smoking weed, or my other neighbor who's always getting loud and drunk with his buddies and all the other things people around me do that some find disagreeable?
Zero.
Those things are what a free society sounds and smells like. The people who want everyone around them to abide by an upper middle class standard of behavior where everyone keeps their lawn just the right height, ensures non-running cars are parked out of view and (practically) never makes any noise can move to an upper middle class neighborhood.
Edit:
I'm being serious. People need to care less what their neighbors do. Caring what your neighbors do and slowly codifying that over time is what gave us the affordable and walk-able utopias of SF, LA, DMV, etc.
I have lived in probably 15 apartments and never ran into one neighbor I couldn't handle, and you somehow have 3 at once? I would say that the problem is probably you. If not, and you have just hit the bad neighbor lottery, you are free to do what I have done so many times and move.
> "I have a right to do everything that's not actually illegal" is an attitude that directly results in all kinds of trivial things being banned.
You say that, like it's something surprising. A Priori, a person will do anything as long as it does not violate his own self imposed code of conduct.
That code of conduct need not be the same for everyone.
Laws, religion, moral codes are used to codify parts that are shared by a group of people.
In a civil state, the only part that you can force people to abide to, is that of the law in the general sense. (because they have a right to have a different religion, different moral doctorines etc..).
of course, people can self impose stricter rules on themselves but they can't impose rules stricter than the law on others.
> In this case, it's leading to cities trying to ban or restrict AirBNB
yeah, they can. I agree with you here. And I'm sure there is many valid reasons to do so.
My point is noise,in my opinion, is not one.
Inacceptable levels of noise should be banned regardless of the type of the rental contract.
for example, increased demand on housing making long term renting too expensive, is a valid one. Because it's a necessary result of airbnb.
My general point of view, is that one should ban / disadvantage X because of undesirable property Y, only if Y is an essential property/consequence of X.
I like this principal because it's general enough to be equivalent to "one shouldn't punish the innocent"
and prohibition of racism directly follows from it.
The point is that "acceptable levels of noise" depends on frequency of high noise levels, not just volume on a given instance. I accept that my neighbors use a chainsaw on occasion, and they accepted it just fine when I used a jackhammer in the garden to break up some concrete, despite very high volume in both cases, it happens so rarely that it's fine.
But far lower volume noise every evening would be far more disruptive.
You can get that with long term renters too, but typically it tends to be a bigger problem with certain types of use, such as vacation rentals, than others, and with long term renters you have more ability to try to resolve the issue before someone new moves in.
In this case increased average noise level is an observable property of short term/vacation rentals in a lot of locations. If the people renting out does not want it to be banned, then it is on them to ensure the people they rent to are considerate enough that residents are happy for it to continue.
If I call the police the owners of the condo do not suffer any repercussions, the tourists making the noise might get fined and maybe they learn a lesson maybe not, either way a new batch of tourists arrives a few days later and I have to go through the same ordeal. If the owners were the ones making the noise I could call the cops on them, they would get fined repeatedly and after sometime a judge might get fed up and put them in jail, see the difference?
The tourists will leave negative reviews causing that listing to become unviable. They might also complain to AirBnB who might remove the listing (though this seems unlikely..)
This could actually be pretty effective. Airbnb is very quick about disappearing anything from their platform with a less than perfect rating.
I discovered this after stumbling across some darkly funny bad reviews and then diving into their API to look for more of the same.
..Not that I am neither condoning nor condemning finding a way to dock the property a star over time. Personally I'm pretty tolerant of happy neighbourly noise - I like to feel like I have life around me, and I have a fairly good memory of how loud a neighbor I was when I was younger.
- my point, it's easier to attack a group of people , if you can put a label on them. Noise is a problem regardless of its source.
A noisy long term neighbour is at least as annoying as a noisy tourist. And a calm tourist is less annoying. Being noisy is not an essential property of airbnb rentals.
Those who are noisy should suffer the consequences of their actions. Those who are not, should not.
The second part of my argument, is "my rights start where your rights end".
if the tourists/owner/ whatever has a right to make that noise, then you don't have the right to prevent them from doing that noise.
If they don't have the right to make that noise level, then they don't have that right regardless of who they are.
Because something disadvantages you, it doesn't mean that others don't have the right to do it.
Do you want to live somewhere where you have to regularly call the police on your neighbors?
For a permanent neighbor at least you may be able to take some action against them but with Airbnb the people will change every few days or weeks.
When I lived next to several Airbnbs the problem was non stop. Sometimes I could talk to people and they would begrudgingly quiet down but in a few days they would be replaced by someone else and the whole thing would repeat.
For tourists they are only there for a few days or weeks but for the people living there it is their whole life.
In my experience as well it's a lot more common to find bad tourists then bad permanent residents. A lot of tourists will be gone in a short time so a lot wont care how much noise they make or by the time they are told or realize they are being too loud you may get a few days of quite before someone new turns up. Most permanent residents have to see each other a lot more and the repercussions for upsetting their neighbor are much more likely.
This is going to be a pretty blow-below-the-belt suggestion for our (Polish) sensibilities, but since I have very little charity for antisocial behavior - especially of the "I profit, I don't care" kind, and doubly so when coordinated by a multinational corp pretending to be a hip tech company: I wonder if the owner is paying correct taxes on the money made from AirBnB leases. It would be a shame if the Revenue Service came and checked.
Yes and no. Are regular AirBnB hosts actually forming businesses, or are they reporting this as private income and hope the tax man doesn't have time to notice?
Have you never heard of common courtesy? I'm not by law required to do a lot of things I do but I do them because they make the world that little bit better for everyone, same goes for things I avoid doing.
Sure, you can get pedantic about the cultural nuances of courtsey but I'd say that it generally boils down to don't be an inconsiderate a-hole. I live in a country where it's not illegal to take up-skirts I'd say it would be pretty universal to say it's common courtesy not to do that.
An example is not a definition. Like i said, what is common courtesy and where? What is an a-hole? You mention these terms as if they have a universal definition, they don't. Chewing gum in Singapore could be an a-hole move. Is it in the USA? So what gives?
And thanks to all my know-better self-righteous downvoters. I didn't know questions were inappropriate.
Yes, what is common courtesy varies by location. That's a given. And it's another example of why short term rentals can be problematic; the people staying there don't have time to learn the local customs.
Read up on law sometime. You'll see terms like "reasonable" everywhere, which merely offloads the critical components of the law to, well, people you'd hope are reasonable (capable of reason).
If you can't rigorously define something, you certainly still can work with it, pursue it, use it, regulate it, etc. Consider: art, love, health, happiness, pregnancy, ...
Not being a jerk includes having some measure of sensitivity regarding what is considered jerk-like behaviour in the situation you find yourself in, informing yourself, and erring on the side of caution in unknown situations. Of course, mistakes will be made, but that doesn't invalidate the principle.
This is the very essence of the tragedy of the commons; a behaviour that is not illegal but degrades the commons and continues to happen because of the selfish nature of the users. You are defending peoples right to degrade the commons in multiple comments in this thread so I'm unsure why are you asking for expansion; you've made your position quite clear.
"You are not wrong, Walter, you are just an asshole!"
Sure, you can go and ask your neighbors to be quiet. How will you feel when you have to do it every night?
That's great for the people who have an easy time affording their units and can pay a premium for the peace and quiet. I bought in a building that banned airbnb 2 weeks after my purchase. We go away often on weekends or for a 1-month stint each year (my wife's family is overseas), and that extra income would've really helped us make ends meet. Our floor still has to listen to the couple in an abusive marriage scream at each other at 2am several times a week, but at least we don't have strangers asking for sugar or directions to the grocery store, right?
I feel like AirBnB has largely escaped the public uproar that Uber/Lyft have experienced, perhaps because workers rights are more tangible/relatable than the second order effects of crowding out housing stock for full-time Airbnbs despite the more serious socioeconomic consequences Airbnb can have on housing prices/available rental stock as well as safety and quality of life for anyone that has to live near one.
Is Airbnb not penalizing unruly renters booking through their platform as part of their policy? There should be some way to record if cops are called out for disturbances against their future use of the platform. Platform users should be held accountable for unreasonably disturbing the peace of neighbors period.
Random idea: internet connected decibel meter in ceiling or Alexa type device that tracks noise levels above a certain threshold and doesn't record any conversations, just measures decibel levels (100% legal). If consistently above city noise ordinances, renters get fined by Airbnb and ultimately banned if it keeps occurring across bookings. Is this too intrusive? I bet smart speakers can already achieve this functionality. Neighbors should have peaceful enjoyment is my motivation behind the system. Thoughts?
I heard somewhere the going rate was like 300/bucks per 10 minutes of solid voyeur film when uploaded to certain websites. Plenty of incentive for the small=time airBnB host to set up sketchy cams.
Sure, cameras happen in hotels too, but there is a gigantic liability machine -- the hotel company -- which has its ass on the line if there is a camera found; plus it makes their brand look like shit and is a hashtag away from trouble. It also means there is an org to go after with grievances if you find something in a hotel.
What's definitely not the answer is leaving valuable real estate empty. I'm out of town a couple weekends a month, and travel to visit the wife's family overseas for around a month every year. No way to do short term rentals (our building has a 6mo minimum), so a property that could be generating almost $9k/y for us is instead a liability. Extremely frustrating when we're new parents just getting by, and a bunch of wealthy old people or young people who inherited their big ~$800k+ units have made this decision for us.
Not saying any complaints about guests are baseless, but they're balancing a small amount of comfort for them against what would be life-changing value for us.
The problem being solved by a 6mo minimum isn't you renting out your spot for a month every year to help make ends meet. The problem is your slightly wealthier neighbor buying a spare apartment or two in your building in order to run a pirate hotel in it all year long. Unfortunately, it's hard to prevent the latter without blocking the former...
... at least legally. I assume you could work something out for your case with people you know who are in need of a place to stay for vacation, or - at a higher risk - with second-degree connections, or even complete strangers. It's not a perfect solution but it does place the risk where it belongs - on you. You have to make absolutely sure that the guests you invite aren't causing problems, or else someone will rat you out.
Same here in Berlin, although it's mostly illegal there are many AirBnB flats because there are no controls. Having drunken students making party all the time isn't very fun.
I agree, except for when you’re staying in someone’s spare room. That seems like a genuinely good idea, and I’ve met some great people and had formative experiences through that.
But booking out entire apartments is the problem. My friend lives in London and the block is being overtaken by Airbnb, and it’s making him miserable. Too much noise, too little sleep.
I think buildings and certain communities should definitely ban Airbnb, at least for instances when the host is not staying there with you.
Having the city ban it entirely is extreme. There are plenty of locations in (almost?) every city where a B&B could operate without bothering anyone. Why ban something everywhere when it is only a problem in certain places?
Wouldn't it be better to find some way to incentivise good behaviour from people instead of banning something which often allows cheaper, more comfortable stays than hotels, whilst also providing homeowners with a way of making money efficiently from their property?
It's hard to make people behave well (for any definition of "well"), and the way it's usually done involves community - a social structure composed of people who spend significant time together, and which evolves and maintains its own code of conduct.
It's easier to mitigate bad behavior. That's why legit hospitality businesses are structured and regulated in a way that "eats" the consequences of bad conduct and doesn't let them leak out. AirBnB did nothing to "find some way to incentivise good behaviour from people"[0], but unleashed those people onto communities that were unprepared to handle the bad behaviour.
It's kind of like - wouldn't it be better to find a way to neuter nuclear waste so that it's not dangerous? Yes, it would. But we don't know how to do that, so the next best alternative is to box it up in designated storage locations. AirBnB is essentially letting anyone with a house become a nuclear storage facility, with no care for safe storage.
--
[0] - well, they made a rating system, but I think that in 2019, it's universally recognized that rating systems are trivially gameable and generally don't work too well.
Why is your HOA/condo board allowing this? That should be spelled out in the terms of your ownership agreements. Most should disallow short-term rentals.
- Hotel rooms are more uniform (and just have less stuff) so a camera is easier to identify or harder to hide.
- Hotel rooms are visited not just by many guests but by many staff. If you place a camera you are sort of rolling the dice that no one that works in the hotel (and for example, cleans dozens of nearly identical rooms every day) is going to notice or won't care if they do notice.
- Hotels usually have management that cares about their reputation and hence would take direct and indirect measures to prevent someone from placing a camera in one of the rooms (e.g., scrutiny when hiring, limiting access to rooms, acting swiftly and severely when anything like this happens). (AirBnB does not seem to be interested in this sort of policing in particular.)
- Many hotels are part of a large chain, which does everything that individual managers do but on a larger and more systematic scale.
- It is almost certainly a crime to place an undisclosed camera in a hotel room (while inside someone's AirBnB it may be more of a gray area). This is both a deterrent and (by removing such people from the employee pool) a mitigation strategy.
- Beyond being a crime, hotel management and hotel chains are probably subject to lawsuits in the event one of their employees (or an outsider for that matter) successfully plants a camera in one of their rooms. This is also a deterrent and mitigation strategy.
I don't really have anything against AirBnB (in moderation) but I do think it is reasonable to assert that an AirBnB room is more likely to contain hidden cameras than the typical reputable hotel room.
I'm sorry but there is something inherently wrong about letting a stranger (that isn't a professional, like CDL/chauffeur license/pilot license at a minimum) drive you around and staying in a stranger's home. I'm not at all shocked when people go "I was recorded in an Airbnb!" as, well, yeah it's someone's house... I wouldn't trust anything about it, I'm actually surprised someone hasn't been caught running a voyeurism pay site for their Airbnb yet.
And as far as the car services, we already have multiple acts of violence to varying levels. A friend in the past few weeks had to report a driver after he offered her lotion upon picking her up and then before dropping her off started telling her how beautiful she was and how he gives massages at which point she cancelled the ride and got out and a co-worker of mine took an older couple home race weekend (May) and they invited her to come in and use their hot tub... I imagine stuff like this, and far far worse, is quite common and largely unreported.
I had a couple of situations where airbnb was a life saver (victim of abusive relationship). There are not many places where a male can seek a shelter as most of them are being targeted towards women and children. In my city hotels are extremely expensive so airbnb was a good option to have. I understand that tourists can be nuisance but I wouldn't like it to be banned.
What about hostels? Sure you're in a share room, but you can often tell by reviews if a hostel is a "party hostel" or more all ages. And if it's not, just book for one or two nights.
I practically lived out of different hostels, and one a few peoples' couches, for about 11 months once:
Depending on the city/hostel, they might not allow a city resident to stay in their hostel. Aside from that, in dealing with a difficult situation like the parent comment mentions I don’t think many people would enjoy being in a many-person bunk room with zero privacy.
Anecdotally, I’ve had to stay in a hostel due to relationship issues and it was awful, more expensive than an airbnb, but was the only thing I could find last minute.
I'll second the hostels, and don't dismiss them just because apparently in the US they imply bunk beds in large rooms. I've stayed in hostels quite a bit, and every one had places rented by the room, not by bed, and plenty of single and double rooms.
Hostels, at least in (most of?) Europe, are essentially cheaper hotels, usually without a minibar and with much less upselling. Or, in terms I know from US cinema, they're like motels without the car culture aspect.
From my experience in Europe: hostels imply a bunk bed in shared room here too. I just made a quick search on booking.com for a hostel in Warsaw and nearly all of the offers were shared dormitories.
Interesting. Could be that booking.com uses the US meaning of the term?
I must have stayed in something like 30 different hostels in Poland over the course of last decade; it was always in single bed or two-bed rooms, with the whole room rented for me. I never used booking.com, though, but always did a Google search for "hostele w $city", and reserved room via phone or web form.
Shouldn't we fix that by acknowledging that men can be the victims of abuse instead of forcing those in lower income areas to deal with the downsides of tourists?
If you are concerned about cameras in Airbnbs, consider picking up a camera detector off Amazon for ~$30.
They are basically a ring of super bright LEDs with a colored lens in the middle you put up to your eye and scan around the room. The light reflects off the curved glass of the lens and the filter helps you see it.
The less effective but impromptu version of this is just holding a super bright flashlight between your eyes (facing out), but you kinda need to have to done it before to know what to look for.
These work if the camera manufacturer really doesn't care and puts the lens on the outside. However, if they do care and put a circular polarizer with an anti-reflective film on top... like your OLED phone has, then that will cut the reflection >100x. You probably won't see them and they'll only lose 50% of the light.
No, unfortunately circular polarizers kill any specular reflection that goes in. To do them you need a wide spectrum 45 deg phase delay film on top of the polarizer. You can buy the circular polarizer film, but note that it has a front/back (it's not symmetric).
Another confusing attack is to put a camera behind a much larger half-slivered mirror... that does the job too because everything reflects... add a circular polarizer to that :^\
That will basically pick up every piece of electronic equipment in the room. Given that cameras can be hidden in them too, and that you'd have to take apart each one to be sure, I don't think a NLJD will tell you much.
They were developed at a time when electronic equipment was far less common, so the presence of electronics was more suspicious; now, you can come across things like deeply embedded RFID tags (only used for inventory tracking) in otherwise completely non-electronic products.
You are correct, they pick up a lot. But depending on the type of engagement, you just end up taking apart every single thing with a circuit in it anyway.
There are defeats for nonlinear detectors, like a three port circulator with a resistor. In turn there are more advanced detection methods, but now you are getting in to tools not publicly available.
Could this be improved creating an app for smartphones? They have light source and camera with zoom, so suspicious reflections can be identified for manual inspection later. Probably integrated WiFi scanner also doable. Is there market for this?
There was a video clip the other day showing just this - it was basically a plastic sheet / filter you could hold over your phone's camera and flashlight that made camera lenses stand out.
IIRC, most smartphone cameras can clearly detect IR, so another option is to wait til dusk, or darken the room, then scan it through your smartphone camera looking for pinpoints of light that show the IR bulb.
Ofc, doesn't work with cameras that don't have IR.
Most smartphones have an IR filter on the back camera, but don't on the front camera.
A good way to test that is by using an old-fashioned TV remote with an IR emitter and look for it to glow when pressing a button. It's a good way to test the batteries too!
Airbnb is not evil. Tourists that don't care or follow the rules are. Without Airbnb, they will bring the same problems just to other people in other places.
Many hotels do charge unjustified amounts of money, so I am personally happy there is an option to pay reasonable money for good service. Also, it's not like hotels don't have their share of problems. Many hotels in many countries offer you pure garbage when you arrive, mix rooms, bad food, etc. And in many hotels, you can't sleep because of loud tourists or your hotel neighbors. With Airbnb when you find a listing with 30+ 5star reviews, at least you are sure it matches pictures and description.
So obviously, Airbnb has its flaws, just like any other service. But hotels are definitely not the solution to them, at least from a tourist's point of view, though I absolutely see how they are for some local residents.
Airbnb is evil, because it facilitates and profits from rule and lawbreaking, up to and including turning whole apartment buildings into pirate hotels, while spinning the tale that it's all about individuals occasionally renting out their primary place of residence for a couple of days. It's evil because while occasional random temporary sublets aren't a problem, they become a problem when they stop being random and instead become a coordinated, frequent phenomenon.
It's evil because its whole business model is making money by encouraging people to break social contract and do wrong against their neighbors.
Sure, hotels, motels, hostels, and all other legit accomodations aren't perfect. But this isn't the way to fix them.
I agree with this, and I think there is an interesting generalisation that can be pulled out of it: something’s which are fine (harmless, neutral, or even good) at a small individual scale become problematic or terrible when done at the scale that modern software and the internet can provide.
VRBO isn’t inherently bad, hijacking VRBO into a stealth hotel business and breaking the social contract of residential neighbourhoods is.
And what's extra sad here is that once a company like Uber or AirBnB gains large-scale success, there are only two things that happen. Some places accept it and eat the social externalities. Others try to ban the practice, but legislation is expensive, enforcement is expensive, and it also hurts the society by making illegal what was previously just fine on a small scale.
I think societies need to learn to recognize this pattern ASAP, because the best outcome is nipping such companies in the bud, before they grow and leave only two bad options on the table.
It calls "sharing economy" a locust economy - an economy based on making money off leading masses of people to destroy other businesses, and ultimately each other.
> and it also hurts the society by making illegal what was previously just fine on a small scale.
This is the other thing that leaves me feeling salty. Wholesale abuse of prerogatives usually results in those being taken away from everyone.
The other thing I'm saly about is when I started in tech you had two 'prongs'. One was defense companies. Which also served as tech incubators and dual use tech companies. And then mostly commercial tech companieswhich was focused on products people wanted. I feel like now a lot of tech is about enabling exploitation. Providing no benefit to ordinary people at all. And worse these companies produce zero low to minimal skill jobs.
>> “I think societies need to learn to recognize this pattern ASAP, because the best outcome is nipping such companies in the bud, before they grow and leave only two bad options on the table..”
Who are you specificities referring to when you say ‘societies’? Government? Consumers?
There is also the consequence of removing rental inventory from residents of that city because renting to tourists is more profitable if you don't have to meet any of the other conditions of running a legal hotel.
Unlafwul in no way implies evil. For every reason that AirBnB is "evil" for breaking the law, you could come up with a reason that the law is "evil" for existing in the first place.
Not always, but typically it does, as one usually breaks laws to benefit themselves at the expense of others, either direct or through second-order effects.
> For every reason that AirBnB is "evil" for breaking the law, you could come up with a reason that the law is "evil" for existing in the first place.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Whether or not the laws need changing doesn't justify breaking them (or encouraging people to do so), especially not when that act of disobedience has well-understood and well-documented negative consequences to society at large. It's not like AirBnB (or Uber) are doing this to make the world a better place - they figured out a business model that's essentially burning social trust and cohesion as if it was a fuel.
I don't necessarily agree or disagree with your argument.
But I think the use of the world "evil" here is really bad - it's both wrong, in my mind, and is also hurting your case, because people who can be convinced of it might be put off by insisting that "no, it's evil".
I mean, evil implies a lot of things - it implies this is done intentionally. It implies that anyone working at Airbnb is by association evil. It implies that there is no working with Airbnb.
Whereas if we thought about it more neutrally, we'd have both much clearer remedies, and a much more appealing argument. Instead of "Airbnb is evil, because is facilitates...", we could say "Airbnb causes problems, because it facilitates...". Therefore the solution could be to regulate it in some way. It sounds a lot more silly to say "X is evil, so the solution is to regulate it".
EDIT: I know that you were using the word evil because of the gp, and I disagree with their use of it just as much. I also disagree with gp's point, that it's an "either/or" on who is really evil in this situation.
It is evil the same way eBay is evil because some people lie in the description or send you bad products.
Airbnb is just a platform. Its users break laws. Just like there are bad landlords for long term rent, same is here only for the short term. The problem is landlords that break laws and turn homes into hotels etc.
That's a cop out. AirBnB as a platform introduces systemic problems that weren't there before (effect of scale matters), exploits them in full knowledge of their impact on people, and does nothing to stop them.
I agree that they should not exploit the problems and fix them, but saying that they should go broke is not a solution, as it will often do more harm than good.
> because it facilitates and profits from rule and lawbreaking,
Every business profits from grey areas, and even from regulations which give them advantages. Hotels are also big offenders to this (regulate against their competitors/barrier to entry even before airbnb).
> they become a problem when they stop being random
When there is demand, people find supply. People want ways to live temporarily, and airbnb accelerates this trend. People believing their neighborhoods should never change by tourism/immigration/gentrification are not necessarily less evil
> by encouraging people to break social contract
the social contract may need an update? It's not like anyone ever signs those anyway. People move a lot nowadays, and maybe the idea of an idyllic quiet downtown neighborhood cannot exist without paying premium anymore. There are trends like digital nomading and remote work which are in a steady rise for a decade, and it will only keep rising. Airbnb is perfectly positioned to serve this alternative social contract
Basically it's the understanding that we're all in this together and we shouldn't mess things in some way for other people purely for our own benefit. Think of it as avoiding negative-sum situations. More formally:
an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, for example by sacrificing some individual freedom for state protection. Theories of a social contract became popular in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries among theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a means of explaining the origin of government and the obligations of subjects.
I think I'm probably more pro-revolution that most, but c'mon, really? You really think that basic rules of human courtesy are the boot on the neck of humanity?
We're talking about something much more fundamental than social norms you might call patriarchal or cis-/hetero-normative or anything like that. This is the kind of behavior that keeps you from getting punched. And most people are explicitly taught these behaviors as children, whether in pre-school / kindergarten or just by being around other children at all.
Surely we can identify much more important factors propping up the current social order.
It's both, really. A part of the social contract is that, unless there are strong extenuating circumstances, everyone is expected to obey the law of the land.
It's kind of like with sports. Both football and basketball are perfectly fine disciplines on their own, but the most fundamental rule of any game is that all players play by the same rulebook. You can't have a game if every player thinks they're playing a different sport.
The current order? I think you're overthinking things here. Were talking about social etiquette that says you should not leave your messes for other people to clean up.
The problem is, at least for noise, that a city doesn't have any laws on the books to police noise or, even if they do, don't actually have enforcement officers working during the time that most noise complaints are made.
Take Toronto where the by-laws are too strict (11pm cutoff) but the enforcement is lax. It should be reversed.
"""
After Hours noise complaints
At this time ML&S officers do not work at night/shifts. However, in some instances (when warranted as part of an investigation) an ML&S officer will make arrangements to conduct an inspection during the evening/early morning/weekends. These arrangements are generally made after direct contact with the complainant and/or submission of noise logs.
"""
