
 Krueger Statement on Use of Airbnb for Floating Brothels - parsley
http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=6cc9e13b2caab006f927d6a06&id=98b3694402&e=dbc169a064
======
brownbat
We have some inconsistent intuitions about what the government should be
allowed to regulate.

It seems like I should be able to give a neighbor's kid a 20 to pick up some
leaves without getting the government involved. It seems like I should be able
to give a friend a dollar for running and grabbing me a coke without
consulting minimum wage laws or local sales taxes. I should be able to lend my
cousin some money without registering as a bank.

A business hiring leafblowers or messengers with a "no questions asked"
policy, or even an individual loan shark, seems like the law should get
involved.

The internet as a communication platform blurs these lines. It lowers the
barriers between strangers and acquaintances and friends. It lets private
individuals behave like businesses some of the time. It lets small
transactions rapidly scale.

I don't think one set of intuitions is necessarily right or wrong. But I think
these conflicting intuitions make some people libertarians towards businesses
like airbnb and uber, and other people think those businesses are just
profiting off of skirting regulations.

------
tpeng
The issue is not between AirBNB and its customers; its customers can evaluate
the risks of renting on AirBNB, and factor that into their rental price, as
well as insure for adverse outcomes.

The real issue is that AirBNB also imposes these risks on communities (i.e.,
AirBNB's customers' neighbors) by exposing them to, in the worst case,
criminal elements, but even in a normal case, temporary renters who lack
incentive to follow social norms or respect communal property.

This doesn't mean that AirBNB's business can't work, but it does mean that
AirBNB needs to work with regulators to find a solution acceptable to the
communities in which it operates. Such a solution would most likely be a
combination of technical solutions to minimize bad outcomes and perhaps a tax
on AirBNB, the proceeds of which could compensate communities for the
externality imposed by AirBNB.

~~~
tetrep
>AirBNB also imposes these risks on communities...

The person renting to AirBNB is the one imposing the risks. If communities are
being put at risk it is by the willful actions of their own members.

>...AirBNB needs to work with regulators...

Why involve more parties than needed? How do communities currently deal with
"bad apples?"

If we assume the community is functionally equipped to handle permanent
residents who are undesirable, but not temporary ones, why not just apply the
same rules to temporary residents? The permanent resident would bear
responsibility for their guest(s). This would keep the solution in the same
domain as the problem, the community.

~~~
tpeng
Would you say that oil companies do not impose environmental externalities,
but that the guilt solely falls on drivers who consume gasoline? No, the
company bears some responsibility.

As to your second question, this is a public policy issue, and there will be a
policy response whether AirBNB likes it or not. I think it would be smart for
AirBNB to engage in the policy conversation.

~~~
blake8086
Replace "AirBNB" with "a bulletin board" and try to make the same argument.

~~~
zaidf
If there was a bulletin board that was primarily used for activities not
permitted by local law, the board would likely be taken down. For example, if
there is a bulletin board in a dorm that is used to advertise different drug
delivery services in town, either the board will be taken down or a new
requirement would be placed requiring all postings to be preapproved.

Craigslist is an Internet bulletin board that chose to remove a few categories
due to pressure from law enforcement and the community.

~~~
xerophtye
ok who tried to down vote this guy? he made a really fair point.

------
rch
> we need to protect the limited housing stock we have from being arbitraged
> into other uses

This seems like a more compelling point than the title topic.

~~~
moron4hire
So basically, she's admitting that the property is more valuable than its
current use, and the city is actively denying itself tax revenue because of
it.

~~~
ddt
I think she's taking the position that there's inherent value in providing
affordable residential property in New York which exceeds the value in
extracting maximum tax revenue from every square inch of the city. At the very
least, I find that to be a defensible position.

~~~
moron4hire
Yeah, I get that, but it seems pretty tenuous. All this talk about the "value"
of the property with regards to it being used for one thing over another, when
price _is_ the way in which we quantify value.

Who gets to decide what the value of a piece of property to The People should
be? Should it be elected officials, who probably only represent the interests
of the people on even numbered days, or should it be The People themselves,
through price movement?

~~~
bmm6o
It's a common belief - especially on the internet - that whatever the
unfettered free market decides (or would decide) is good and correct. You may
believe this, and you may even take it as axiomatic, but you should be aware
that very many people disagree, and will reject any argument with this as its
foundation.

------
RV86
The runaway success of AirBnB has to largely be viewed as a reaction to the
alarming trend of increased % of income spent on rent.

What used to be a standard of 25% has approached 45%+ in a very short amount
of time in cities like NYC, San Fran, LA, and more. Wages have stagnated and
tenants are doing everything they possibly can to afford to live in their city
of choice. For politicians to go after AirBnB is to miss the underlying
problem.

~~~
dkuebric
It could even be fueling the increased rent in a small way. With residential
apartments occupied as hotels, there's fewer on the market. I've hosted on
airbnb to defray the cost of my apartment; viewed from another angle, that's
helping keep the market's costs up through my increased willingness to pay the
prices.

------
001sky
This is the NY Post'a article which the kreuger text references, it's in the
headline article

but for those skimming the comments or who missed the hyperlink:

[http://nypost.com/2014/04/14/hookers-using-airbnb-to-use-
apa...](http://nypost.com/2014/04/14/hookers-using-airbnb-to-use-apartments-
for-sex-sessions/)

~~~
darklajid
That article is .. not helpful. So baby swipes and 'at least ten condoms' is a
proof of prostitution? That .. doesn't quite add up. I mean, you actually buy
condoms in packs of 10-12 here and the baby swipe thing is inconclusive.

Maybe the claim in the headline is right, probably the story is backed by real
facts. That article though? That's really useless.

~~~
001sky
_" Says a 21-year-old call girl who works for the illicit business.[...]

“It’s more discreet and much cheaper than The Waldorf,”_

\--> Apparently, this is from an interview. But, YMMV.

------
dkarapetyan
Wait. Isn't this a problem with motels and other temporary housing situations
as well? What makes Airbnb so special?

~~~
zymhan
Because Airbnb is used to rent out rooms or houses that aren't in areas zoned
for hotel/motel purposes. No one can reasonably expect that living in a motel
room and living in an apartment are similar. The other tenants in the building
of the Airbnb user can be reasonably expected not to have to deal with
tourists being discourteous or annoying in their building.

------
frandroid
I was expecting a story about airbnb getting to the waterborne rental market.

------
mturmon
From the press release:

"Prostitution wasn't really at the top of our minds when we passed the 2010
law helping NYC enforce against illegal short-term rentals, but in hindsight
it seems kind of obvious."

You have to admit, I think the enterprising minds here at HN also failed to
foresee this.

~~~
sadfaceunread
The retroactive obviousness of it does seem quite incredible. People get hotel
rooms to do things they don't want to do at home. AirBnB is a hotel
substitute.

I wonder if AirBnB internally had some risk assessment of this.

~~~
Terr_
Or to quote Terry Pratchett in _Going Postal_ :

> Everyone knew it happened. Actually, the new management probably didn't, but
> wouldn't have done anything about it if they'd found out, apart from
> _carefully forgetting_ that they'd known.

------
jhonovich
Let's demand her resignation!

------
moron4hire
Clutch those purse strings! Clutch them tiiiiiiiight. Lest some ne'erdowell
slip something like DRUGS into your bag. And then you might accidentally take
them, and LORD KNOWS one dose is enough to make you so addicted to the
marijuana shots that you will be shooting cops and blowing judges for your
next hit.

------
pbiggar
So is every apartment. In buildings near where I lived in Dublin there were
known brothels in rented residential apartments. Long before there was Airbnb,
obviously.

This is a standard part of success: criminals hack the system. Much like AWS
being used for bitcoin mining, and every cash-in-cash-out system being used
for money laundering.

------
honksillet
> Real estate is an extremely _well-developed industry_ here in New York City
> Should read over-regulated industry

------
maxwell2022
Hotels have so much to lose they won't let it happen and this is an
opportunity to give them a bad publicity.

------
aalpbalkan
> (underlined) Today it's a prostitution ring, tomorrow it could be an illegal
> gambling ring, and maybe next week it could be a drug operation.

This is textbook 'slippery slope' fallacy.
[https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-
slope](https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope) You said that if we
allow A to happen, then Z will eventually happen too, therefore A should not
happen.

~~~
tptacek
A slippery slope is fallacious if there's no argument for the the progression
down the slope. Lots of valid arguments take the form of a slippery slope.

In this case, there _is_ in fact an escalating progression of bad things
happening in Airbnb rentals; in rough order:

* Criminal enterprises buying entire buildings and turning them into unlawful hotels

* Renters trashing Airbnb rentals

* Floating brothels

The leap from here to "gambling" doesn't sound too crazy; in fact, gambling
seems more innocuous than a floating brothel.

~~~
fleitz
Yes, it's a good thing we've solved all the crimes with actual victims so we
can move on to regulating behavior between consenting adults.

~~~
tptacek
I'm guessing the neighbors of these short term rental properties didn't
consent to Airbnb's customers rezoning their neighborhoods for them.

~~~
fleitz
I'm guessing that since the person in the article was informed by the police
and not her neighbors, that no one had any clue.

~~~
teacup50
How does that conclusion make even the smallest bit of sense to you?

~~~
PeterisP
The point is that any inconvenience to neighbours from such a 'brothel' is
hypothetical - nobody even noticed that it was there, so they definitely
weren't harmed in any way.

~~~
teacup50
There isn't anywhere near enough information to ascertain whether neighbors
noticed.

I have no idea who my neighbors are. If they weren't actually here, in the
building, I'd have no way to contact them whatsoever. That doesn't mean I
don't notice Airbnb tenants.

------
vijayboyapati
It's always painful to watch luddite bureaucrats pontificate on technology and
how it needs to be controlled to "protect" the population. I remember when I
was at Google in 2003 there was a California politician who demanded that
Google be regulated like a utility company because it was so important. That
was when it was still a private company! Or when another California bureaucrat
wanted to ban gmail because it violated people's privacy by showing targeted
ads next to emails. Listening to people like this requires a perma-facepalm.

~~~
md224
I sympathize with your position, but I want to point out that it's equally
foolish to assume that technological progress poses _no_ dangers to society
and that no control is necessary. It isn't really about controlling the
technology either; it's about controlling how that technology is operated by
human beings, people who are fallible and who can be dangerous when given a
certain level of power.

There's definitely a continuum from "radical luddite" to "techno-utopian," and
I think striking a balance between caution and optimism is the way to go.

