
Los Angeles is suing a landlord for evicting tenants to rent units on Airbnb - prostoalex
http://qz.com/712533/los-angeles-is-suing-an-apartment-owner-for-allegedly-evicting-tenants-to-rent-units-on-airbnb/
======
jseliger
If L.A. is worried about housing affordability, the real solution is to build
more housing: [http://la.curbed.com/2015/3/18/9979526/housing-crisis-los-
an...](http://la.curbed.com/2015/3/18/9979526/housing-crisis-los-angeles-
construction):

 _While Los Angeles County built the most out of any California county in the
years between 1980 and 2010, it was waaaay less than it needed to keep housing
prices from getting ridiculous. For comparison, in the same 30-year period,
"the number of housing units in the typical U.S. metro grew by 54 percent,
compared with 32 percent for the state's coastal metros. Home building was
even slower in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where the housing stock grew by
only around 20 percent."_

We have the technologies to increase housing supply, but we've collectively
made deploying them illegal.

~~~
Tiktaalik
What happens when you build more supply, but increasing amounts of people just
buy up the units not to live or rent out, but in order to run virtual hotel
businesses on Airbnb?

The better supply side solution to increase available housing stock is to
build more purpose built rental. This would eliminate the possibility of new
rental supply turning into short term rental.

~~~
davidw
If you keep adding supply, the bottom will fall out of that market as they
compete with one another, and the market will balance out as they sell, or
seek long term tenants.

~~~
sbov
The question is, is it feasible to build enough supply for this to happen?

I mean, if SF ever hit "affordable" on a median family income, the population
would probably be tens of millions.

Keep in mind that tearing down old housing and building new is not very cost
efficient: you are paying for land, and the old structure (which you are
tearing down), and the demo of the old structure. I live in LA, and my
structure, which was built in the 70s, is still valued at more than the land
it's built on.

~~~
davidw
> The question is, is it feasible to build enough supply for this to happen?

Given current market prices? Absolutely.

------
pyrophane
It seems like there has been a growing body of "bad news" for Airbnb lately.
Several major European cities (Paris, Berlin) are tightening regulations and
limiting short-term rentals. NY, one of Airbnb's largest single markets, if
not the largest, stands ready to essentially ban "whole apartment" rentals
entirely as other cities seem to be gearing up to consider their own measures.

I'm not saying that any or all of this threatens what Airbnb is trying to do,
and in fact I think such restrictions will make model better and more
sustainable in the long run. Still, for a company that is, out of the
necessity of their valuation, as bent on maintaining growth as Airbnb, the
skies appear to be darkening.

------
FussyZeus
So a landlord pulled an illegal dick move and is being sued for it by the city
in accordance with their laws. Why is this newsworthy?

Oh right, because putting "sued" and "airbnb" in the title equals clicks,
despite Airbnb having jack shit to do with this case beyond being the
unfortunate 3rd party.

~~~
randyrand
It not illegal potentially. He left the rental market and entered the hotel
one.

The courts have to decide if that is legal or not.

~~~
FussyZeus
As I understood it, the violation was because they re-rented the property
without notifying the former tenants and giving them whatever the legal term
of art is for "dibs." I could be wrong, not a lawyer.

------
youngButEager
Supply and Demand.

If demand rises -- and it does, the population of LA is increasing by roughly
20,000 annually (from [http://www.clrsearch.com/Los-Angeles-
Demographics/CA/Populat...](http://www.clrsearch.com/Los-Angeles-
Demographics/CA/Population-Growth-and-Population-Statistics))

\-- if 20,000 per year are added to LA's population, you need more rental
units.

Here's a potential SAT question in the 'Logical Reasoning' part:

"A large city experiences 20,000 population growth per year. Because
restaurants, doctors, barbers, dentists, and other service providers are not
growing fast enough in the city to accommodate this large growth in citizens,
should the city:

[A] Provide incentives for new restaurants, doctors, barbers, dentists, etc.
to move into the city and start operating to meet the need?

[B] Or should the city impose caps/limits on the fees/charges of those
restaurants, doctors, barbers, dentists, etc. who already operate in the city,
which will create disincentives for new operators to move to the city to
satisfy increasing demand?

Supply and Demand. The demand for EVERYTHING is affected by 20,000 new
citizens in LA each year.

In 10 years there 100,000 to 200,000 more citizens in LA.

With the disincentives for new landlords to enter the LA market, there will be
an even more severe shortage of units.

"Shortage of willing landlords."

The old adage is this:

"You cannot price-limit, and regulate, and tax your way to an over-supply of
housing."

It's really, REALLY _awful_ that city leaders don't understand that.

Guess which cities have the greatest shortage of landlords?

Los Angeles San Francisco New York City San Jose

(those are the U.S. cities with the longest period of landlord-reducing Rent
control laws, by the way)

Can we PLEASE INCREASE THE FREAKING _SUPPLY_ of willing landlords.

PLEASE.

$3500+ for a 1 bedroom apartment is just pyscho.

~~~
hueving
The number of people even on HN that don't seem to grasp supply and demand is
shocking. If HN is a relatively intelligent group, imagine how much of the
general population will think just price limiting housing will work?

~~~
st3v3r
We grasp it just fine. We also take a dim view of asshole landlords that
decide to skirt the law.

~~~
mamon
If the law is stupid it is your patriotic duty to ignore it :)

~~~
st3v3r
No, it is your duty to work to get it changed. I imagine there are a number of
industrial companies that feel workplace safety laws and laws banning the
dumping of waste in waterways to be stupid, would you be ok if they ignored
those?

------
chatman
With so much regulations around what you can or cannot do with your own
property, this sounds like a socialist state.

~~~
IDanceOnAPole
Urban areas always have laws about what you can do with your property.

~~~
chatman
That is surprising. I live in India, and there's no regulation around renting
it out or asking tenants to vacate. As long as both landlord and tenant adhere
to the agreement document, all is good. No government interference.

Government enforcing regulations asking a landlord that he can or cannot use
his home for letting out to a person of his choice seems very regressive to
me.

------
a_small_island
That title needs work, I had no idea what it meant until I clicked the
article.

~~~
rewrew
Yup -- it's missing the word "landlords" after the word suing

~~~
dang
Ok, we'll add that.

------
randyrand
It seems as though he did leave the rental market and went into the hotel
market.

so I think they have a good legal argument and IAML.

------
B1FF_PSUVM
> "[...] abuse platforms like ours in search of a quick buck,” Airbnb says in
> a statement.

Ah, the verb conjugation game, always fun:

\- I dare. (or disrupt, usage varies.)

\- You transgress.

\- He abuses.

~~~
eric_h
You omitted the plural in your [...]

\- He abuses

\- They (real estate speculator _s_ ) abuse.

~~~
thedufer
I don't think parent was pointing out a conjugation mistake. Rather, the point
is how we will use different words to describe the same event depending on
perspective - in order from least to most harsh, first-, second-, and third-
person.

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univalent
What are they complaining about. Under the new 'sharing' economy, you don't
need to rent one place anymore. You can simply hop week to week from one
AirBnB rental to another without being tied down. And you can also hop between
jobs as you like without being tied down. This is all in your benefit. Isn't
the new 'sharing economy' great?

~~~
Spooky23
Why get a job? The world is moving to gigs man. Solve the oft-cited zoning
crisis that is preventing tall building from low density places like Manhattan
and build massive apartment blocks.

Then you'll just need a few fiverr gigs a week and boom, you can rent a
different, exciting new apartment every day!

------
beedogs
Good. The sooner Airbnb goes away forever, the better.

------
HillaryBriss
The only noteworthy aspect of this story is that the city attorney is actually
taking this particular rent-control law seriously enough to sue a landlord.

A lot of other laws are violated and the city attorney (and law enforcement
agencies in general) just ignore the violations. So this tells us a bit about
prosecutorial discretion in LA at the current time.

