You know what though? "The pitchforks" are never coming. At least not in any meaningful way for the people who might deserve them.
The wealthy and powerful have figured this out. They are operating under the assumption of zero/negligible pitchfork risk. Externalities? Just ignore them. If regulation looks like it might interfere with your business, capture the regulatory environment. If that doesn't work, just ignore the laws until governments can get their act together to enforce them (if they even bother).
If the government can't get its act together, people's recourse is to use the sluggish mechanisms of democracy to achieve incremental change. Meanwhile, you're moving fast and breaking things! Breaking whole economic sectors while the city council debates proposed legislation for a 0.25% surcharge.
"But eventually people will get fed up!" Maybe. But what are they going to do about it? They're not literally going to burn your corporate headquarters down. They're not going to pelt you with rocks. The few impulsive types who do commit violence and destruction will be dealt with. The rest of us will just go on the internet and complain.
If the government is sluggish and defanged (as it is in much of the U.S.), and there's no other realistic threat to business as usual, why SHOULD any of these powerful jerks change their ways?
Which sounds good. But who around here is quitting their job making $150,000+ to go make $40,000 working in government?
Giant democracies seem like an inefficiency waiting to happen. Too many people, too many interests, too much muck in the machine. We need more local government.
A reason for skepticism about this piece: the author includes the claim that the average house will cost $10 million dollars in 50 years. The source of the prediction is another medium piece he wrote.
Personally, I think that is a hilariously awful prediction with effectively zero chance of coming true and I would love to take the other side of a bet about it.
A little skepticism of his other claims is warranted.
Is there anything beyond the 'app' experience that makes Airbnb fundamentally different than VRBO, which was more or less in the same industry since the 90's?
All I know is that I can't stand hotels and resorts, and would really miss it if something like Airbnb wasn't available when travelling.
What are the costs of housing in Europe? I heard once that everyone rents because buying is extraordinarily expensive. I assumed it was old money cartels or all the prime real estate is inherited through centuries.
Airbnb needs to do something about its fraud problem--my wife and I rented a place recently in a city ~3 hours away from our house to stay at while our master bathroom is renovated. We've used Airbnb many, many times over the year with no terrible stories (some odd things, but nothing terrible). The pre-arrival stuff with the host went well until about an hour before our arrival--suddenly, a phone call. There's a problem with the house, it'll be resolved tonight, so sorry for the inconvenience, please let us put you up in an apartment we just happen to have free instead. A classic Airbnb scam. We did everything right--we immediately said no and reported it to Airbnb. This is where everything fell apart. Airbnb messed up every single interaction and customer service interaction with us. It took 2 weeks to get our $5k back and Airbnb tried to dodge us with constant 'oh we'll call you back! only another department can do that!'. Several of the phone reps indicated that it was a common pattern. We had to threaten to sue before they finally acknowledged the obvious scam was a scam.
During this time Airbnb was STILL letting the host (with 40 properties!) continue to rent. We were monitoring the reviews and it was clear that they were scamming people continuously. The reviews were constantly reporting being moved at the last minute to other houses/apartments than what the people payed for. In our case we were lucky because we were driving and could just turn around and drive home. Airbnb is riddled with scams and the company is complicit.
Yeap. Dealt with Airbnb mishandling my issue over a one night $50 stay.
Owner of room apparently leaves the door key in a mailbox. Previous renter apparently took it with him when he left leaving no way of getting in. Owner obviously did not live nearby. I eventually waited for someone to exit the complex so I could get in. The door to the apartment had a computerized lock but that basically meant I could not leave the room at all. Room of course was also not cleaned from the previous customer since all the towels didn't appear to be thoroughly washed if at all. After waking up at 4AM to bug bites I basically frantically made sure none of them got into my luggage for the last 3 hours or so I was there.
What did airbnb do? They "refunded" my cleaning bill and ended it at that. For 2 weeks I had to go through their support on the website only to be stonewalled or ignored. I sent them pictures of my hand that had bug bites, I sent them the text messages the owner sent, even though it was on the Airbnb platform. No dice. Finally I ended up getting through to someone via their Twitter account and was eventually able to get a refund for the night.
Of course I left a negative review on their page warning others about the possibility of being stranded if the previous guest forgets the key and also their lack of cleaning, but it got immediately buried by their algorithms.
That was about 4-5 years ago, never used Airbnb again.
This. Last summer, we rented a space due to wildfires going on and too much smoke in our area. We saw the pictures on the listing with more than 100 guests giving 4.5+ rating in total for cleanliness and that convinced us to stay there for a few days until the smoke clears up in our area. When we visited the apartment, we just put our stuff there and went out for dinner and spend evening out and when we came back slowly we realized how dirty, bug and mold infested that place was. After checking with Airbnb they kept telling us to deal with host and all they did at the end was...you guessed it right...refunded the cleaning fees ($20). terrible customer service!
One simple fact Airbnb does not understand is: vacation rental biz is built on repeat customers coming back to the platform often. If folks like us get such a bad experience in staying first and then dealing constantly for weeks with AirBnb customer reps, that experience would make sure we would never rent again on Airbnb. This is the biggest problem with their business right now...their customer service is just terrible.
Customer service doesn't matter to the FAANG-like companies. They've run the numbers and they know that if 10% of their customers never return it will cost them $x (which they'll make up for in new customers anyway), and keeping those 10% happy by hiring enough customer service reps will cost them $100x.
"Good customer service interferes with our exponential growth plans and makes our investors nervous, so we ain't gonna do it."
Three years ago this happened to us at midnight before the check-in day for an AirBnB in Bucharest. I had to spend a couple of hours in the middle of the night with AirBnB support messaging back and forth. But AirBnB handled it near perfectly for us, with an decent accepted place after a couple of hours, full refund, etc. Otherwise it would have really sucked to be on a bus the next day, out of both cell and wifi range.
The fact that they f'd this up in the US is... not good.
Well everything rots in the end. Thank you google for that pixel that I paid for on a CC that went 1:1 to AirBnB credit, we had a lot of fun burning through that.
Other than that we've had exactly one bummer AirBnB, in Queretaro MX. Our place on the penultimate floor of a very US looking apartment complex apparently was located under some sort of factory on the top floor, and produced vibrations all night long that I kid you not caused eg various phones to walk along whatever surface they were placed on.
I'm glad they straightened things out for you. We were furious at first, but were really glad that we had our car and spoke the language of the place we were. There's no way we can trust Airbnb in the future when visiting places where we CAN'T just turn around and drive home to our house.
I guess even that kind of surprises me, unless Columbus is particularly expensive, but I suppose that sort of justifies the author's point. Should there be full houses on AirBnB for multiple weeks at a rate very favourable compared to a typical mortage?
Columbus is cheap compared to many places but not super cheap. It’s more so that’s just the going rate to rent a house that allows dogs for a few weeks. Go look at what a hotel costs each night.
If they rented for 21 days and paid $5,000 total, that’s $250/night which will get you a decent hotel in Columbus but no dogs, no yard, living in a hotel versus a house…
So I’d say the price is about spot on for what I’d expect.
Exactly--during the pandemic we've gotten used to traveling with our dog and can't imagine leaving him behind anymore. Its crazy how expensive places are when you bring the dog. And we want a yard and clothes washer.
Ya I don't have one, so that's a world I'm unaware of, but normally just sleep in a car or something anyway and skip renting a room entirely because it's too much.
You can get a cheaper one and you can actually negotiate long-term rates too. But yea generally they’re not that cheap especially b/c the price shown never includes things like occupancy tax and “resort fees”.
Honestly, there shouldn't be full houses/empty apartments on AirBnB period. All that does is eat up local supply and force the externalities onto locals of the area, screwing them over for (in most cases) tourists. Like pretty much everything AirBnB does.
The disparity is shocking, but exposure to outside viewpoints of those in other walks of life is so important. I've not sold a start-up (yet), but exposure to millionaires, and how they approach spending money (some thriftily, some with reckless abandon) has been fascinating. I didn't properly grock the phrase "penny-wise and pound foolish" until after I'd seen how expensive, in time, or emotional labor, or otherwise, some "free" options (eg borrowing someone's truck vs renting a uhaul) really are.
Agreed. There's an area of my city that I only recently visited for the first time, but have heard is quite wealthy. Well, everywhere in Vancouver is hilariously out of reach, so what could wealthy mean? It means that the average home spans half of an entire block, costs $10-30m dollars, and these people park their cars (if they're lazy) in a space that's twice the size of my home.
Pro tip: pay using a credit card with a good record of handling disputes. I only ever use my American Express card when traveling, because every single time I've had an issue I just call AMEX support and they put a hold on all charges and then figure this stuff out for me. Not once have I had to pay for something (hotel, rental car, whatever) that didn't do what it says on the tin, and since I'm not risking my own money I'm not in a hole if shit hits the fan.
I stayed at a supposedly four star hotel in Memphis once that not only gave me the wrong room where the faucets and most everything else was broken, and didn't care to change it, they also got in an accident with my rental car when the valet was going to park it. They didn't want to deduct any charges and didn't much care about any of it, so I called Amex and they put a hold on all charges. Four or five weeks later they told me I didn't have to pay for any of my stay, and since there was a hold on the charges I obviously didn't have to pay that part of the credit card bill either so I was never out of pocket in the meantime either.
Most of the time traveling I've never really had any issues, but when I have it's been a god send not to have to deal with any of it myself.
Fun question? What's the difference between the ABNB customer service and google's customer service, you know, a "real" corporation with massive and established revenue?
Oh right, google has no customer service. No one to call.
What does it mean that customer service is so terrible in the disruption/replacement companies? That it's hard? Or that customer service is soooo old economy?
I fear for when all companies with semi-functioning terrible customer service are replaced with even more "disruptive" dystopian service models.
Airbnb customers shouldn't have to read reviews to detect scams. I mean, you can book some crappy hotels through, say, booking.com, but I think you'd have to try quite hard to book a hotel that didn't actually exist.
The whole argument of this article seems misplaced.
There is enormous demand for both temporary and permanent housing in many places, and to some degree it is fungible. If it wasn't Airbnb, some other agency or company would be servicing the need.
The only solution to the underlying problem is to allow construction to meet the underlying demand.
And the author's premise that short-term housing is more ethical than long-term housing just makes me think he has an axe to grind.
> The only solution to the underlying problem is to allow construction to meet the underlying demand.
While I do think that allowing more construction would be great, there's probably other things that could help alleviate the problem.
1. Limit the number of units that can be rented by a single landlord in an area
2. Limit the proportion of units in an area which can be rented (maybe creates a sort of taxi-shield problem which might be it's own weird thing, but that's a problem for multi-property landowners, not single family homeowners).
3. (as OP suggests) limit the number of nights/year which can be rented to some number which would be very reasonable for a resident-owner who's out of town sometimes but very unreasonable for owner-investors.
4. Maybe some kind of hybrid approach - you can rent out space in your primary residence all you want, but your nth residence is only rentable 1/f(n)% of the time (for some reasonable f(n))
All of the above are presumably best implemented by governments rather than a well-meaning airbnb (who, even if they existed could presumably be overpowered by a less-well-meaning competitor)
It'd probably work better to tax rentals (with higher taxes on short term) than to try to keep track of whether a wholly owned LLC counts as a separate landlord or not, or which owner in an area gets to rent and which one gets to eat their losses (or how to split the rent nights up).
Those taxes get paid by the renters, but they also reduce the profitability of the rentals (at least if they are competing with options that don't have those taxes).
Where I live an AirBNB was being used as a brothel. Neighbors really didn’t care for that and they appealed to the local Planning department who gave the property owner a Morton’s Fork: cease operations of the AirBNB or rezone your residential property to match the use (subject to public comment and a hostile board). That ended the matter. It’s a good action model for our modern legal framework, where property rights basically don’t exist and the law is whatever an administrator says it is.
Another option may be abolition of all commercial use of or non-private ownership of residential property in toto. Renting is illegal. Using it for your business is illegal. Apartments are illegal. Speculative ownership of housing is illegal. Housing prices implode, but you don’t have AirBNB tycoons.
I’m not serious, but “stop being greedy AirBNB or, boy, you’ll be sorry” isn’t much of a serious argument.
I had a similar sentiment reading the article. It seems the author’s primary beef is investors buying up houses and renting them for Airbnb’s taking up available housing stock. Isn’t then the more straightforward solution for the problem just instead to lobby governments to tax the hell out of any house not occupied by its owner in some way? Doing so didn’t completely solve Vancouver’s issue, but it definitely seemed to help.
Vancouver taxes owners that have unoccupied units, and foreign buyers, the owner doesn't need to live in the place. I fully agree with the article. Having seennthe inside of buildings that allow AirBnBs, and the tire tracks leading up to the door with a keypad. I spoke to one person who was able to identify the Airbnb units based on the noise levels on adjacent floors. It's fine to incentivise owner's renting their place long term, or an extra room, but not buying up places to rent on AirBnB. Real bed and breakfasts don't even do that.
Short term housing is more ethical for temporary renters, because long term housing forms the foundation of a community by allowing more people to have access to stable shelters, neighbors, and everything else the author alluded to.
The problem with AirBnB is that they're taking up the long term housing and giving it all to temporary renters. And this is a huge issue as it forces a lot of the long term renters, the people who need to live in a city, out.
You (probably purposefully) make no distinction between the long term / residential rental market and the short-term / holiday let one. That is what Airbnb trades on (and the point of the article): they muscle in on the role traditionally filled by hotels and guesthouses except that they do not face the same regulations and costs. You have to apply and be regulated (you know, to stop guests being burned to death in unsafe properties) to be an actual B & B; to open a house as a... B&B on Airbnb you simply have to list the property. And you can do the same thing over and over again.
Anyway now the people that actually live in these locations can no longer afford to rent, let alone buy (again, the point of the article). If you don't see the problems with that (starting with airy concepts of 'community' and ending with your anger that there are no longer any nurses or teachers in your town) then you are even more of a wilfully ignorant passive-aggressive libertarian dork than the hacker news average (a bar which is set extremely high).
If that is a problem in your community then have you considered running for office? Ralph Nader's Raiders is a historical example of what could happen if people stood for candidacy, regardless of the party in power. AOC showed that it can be done if one is willing to try.
I stopped using Airbnb in 2015 after my account and card was used to rent a place in Guangzhou, China for a month. I live in America, and have never been (or planned) to travel to China.
Airbnb's response was okay, and implied this was a "common scam". After that, I bailed. Not staying on a platform that can't implement basic security (at the time) like 2FA.
Hearing about all of the other problems people are experiencing on Airbnb now makes me glad I stopped using Airbnb. I guess I got lucky with the customer support on my issue.
These companies that disrupt industries seem to all have a common arc to them. At some point, the benefit they provided stops, and they start causing more harm than good.
The same thing happened to me except the person who was using my account changed the email and password and Airbnb refused to help. The only “resolution” was for me to change bank cards. For all I know the account in my name is still in use!
The article makes many valid points but..why is that Airbnb's problem? Why not city, state, and local governments whose jobs it is to resolve the very issues the article raises? That logic is not one that I am able to follow, other than it is a big, easy name with money.
It's not. In general this sort of opinion seems to very much be in the current zeitgeist. Amazon should just be nicer and stop exploiting workers! AirBnB should solve the housing issues in major cities for them! Etc etc.
It just... doesn't make sense. On some level I think people want to think this way because it avoids blaming ourselves for failing to elect representatives and pass legislature that would've prevented these problems. Or even do that now. That's hard, though! It'd be so much easier if companies just "Did the right thing™".
Of course, they won't, they never have, and we should never expect they will. Organizations will almost always seek to do whatever is best for them, everyone else be damned, and we as a society need to plan for that. Turns out it's just not so easy.
It's too easy to point the finger at some specific entity rather than our structural issues. Pet peeve of mine.
People are selfish, including government entities. Electing different people won't work, because they'll still be selfish (ever wonder why politicians always seem to get rich after being elected?).
The solution is to construct a system where selfishness is harnessed for the betterment of society. People will work 10x harder for themselves than for others. Fortunately, we know what such a system is - free markets. Free markets in America produced the highest living standard in the world.
A free market where selfishness is completely unleashed will not stay free, however. That leads to concentration, and then entrenchment, of power. A base set of rules for what constitutes fair play, and commensurate punishment of cheaters is essential to maintaining freedom.
>On some level I think people want to think this way because it avoids blaming ourselves for failing to elect representatives and pass legislature that would've prevented these problems. Or even do that now. That's hard, though! It'd be so much easier if companies just "Did the right thing™".
As someone who wasted a lot of 2018 and 2019 trying to get uncorrupted Democrats into office the problem is that huge swaths of the population in the US have just given up. They are so overworked, barely able to stay above water and cannot get any simple break. Of the ~10-15% of a district that comes out to vote for a primary they always heavily lean towards a known brand unless that incumbent has royally screwed up or did not truly fight for his seat to begin with.
Examples:
AOC (NY-14): Joe Crowley was given the seat through a loophole and because he was THE top dog in terms of his connections to Wall Street, the Democrats would give him whatever he wanted. It took someone like AOC who better represents the community working extremely hard to unseat him. And he lost because he never really understood how to win an election so she ran circles around him.
Cenk Uygur (CA-25): This very red district was won by Katie Hill in an amazing victory only after an enormous amount of voter outreach. She had to build a massive amount of voter recognition very quickly and it was still a tough race. When the election came around to vote her replacement after her resignation, voters went with a party loyalist who had been on the ballot more than 5 times already and had been seen around the district vs someone who had pledged no lobbyist money and aligned with Bernie Sanders. I watched firsthand how we managed to convert Trump and old school Republicans (the Ronald Reagan library is in this district) to be for the policies of Bernie Sanders. In the end, we just couldn't overcome that threshold to convince enough of that 10-15% of the voters to vote for us over the person who was familiar.
There are other stories but they all follow the same format. Crushing losses because these all these districts with 700k people just have such poor turnout for elections. Even elections like 2020 had ~66% turnout and typically it is is mid 50s. So many people just have checked out.
I agree with the author that there will be a reckoning not only for AirBNB but for the rest of the elite. A vast swath of the country is sinking further and further and something will eventually have to give.
But in the meantime, it is not entirely the populations fault. When you whole life has been being lied to by previous politicians eventually you will think the system is too far gone.
Without flogging corporations, the public won't be able to act on their bad behaviors.
Imagine if there were no articles written about Amazon, or Airbnb, and instead there were only article written about exploitation of workers or skirting the hotel laws as bad things that are happening (either in theory or out there in the wild). In that case, the public won't actualize it or internalize it enough to take action with who they vote for, and in turn elected officials won't bother taking action because their constituents don't know/don't care and so it's not important for them either.
Not sure I buy that. The articles could be framed as "We need to pass legislation to prevent behavior like X, which for example Amazon participates in"
But that just doesn't generate the clicks like "Amazon is evil" does.
Fair enough. I would extend not generating clicks as an example of my point but I do think I tried to too narrowly explain why things are the way they are without reflecting on other alternatives too much.
You can flog governments by highlighting how companies like Amazon exploit people and the rules. You could write the exact same article and then instead of demanding AirBnB change, demand the government to change.
I believe the author addresses that when he discusses how Airbnb pours money into lobbying and lawsuits against city and local governments seeking to rein them in. The issue is not just that Airbnb/PE are eating the housing supply, it’s that they can do so by writing the rules that govern them
The article points out that Airbnb is constantly trying to undermine local laws that are trying to provide affordable housing. A couple of links in you'll find this quote from the NY City Council:
"Airbnb consistently undermines the City's efforts to preserve affordable housing, and regularly attempts to thwart regulations put in place to protect New York City residents... Despite claims to self-regulate and crack down on illegal listings, Airbnb continues to be complacent in the illegal practices of over half of their hosts."
I agree that it's probably pointless to appeal to a company that has no interest in following laws that impact the bottom line, but at some point externalizing the costs of regulation shouldn't be a business model.
San Francisco, Napa County and most of Sonoma County have fairly effectively banned short term whole house rentals, with these laws mostly predating AirBnB. It's not that difficult for local governments to address the "problem" before the industry grows. South Lake Tahoe is trying to put the genie back in the bottle after short term rentals became common, which I presume is much more difficult because homeowners don't want the value of their property going down. I suspect that in many places there isn't a majority consensus that this is bad for the citizenry.
I dislike these mega-platforms like Airbnb and Uber as much as the next guy or gal, but asking them to change is silly. Regardless of how much we try to tame these beasts nothing can change the fact that any relationship they're in is going to suffer from an enormous power differential.
If you're a business and you embrace something like uber eats or Airbnb, you're giving away the most valuable thing your business has - your direct relationship with your customers. Once they start going through and intermediary platform, they're no longer your customers, they're the platform's customers. You now have exactly one customer, the platform. And that's a really nasty place to be since your one customer now has control over 100% of your revenue.
I understand that it's tough to not be part of these platforms, and you'll definitely make less money in the short-term. But if you embrace them, sooner or later you're going to get screwed big time.
> It’s when an investor outbids a family for a second property and turns it into a full-time Airbnb. Or worse, when a holiday rental company does so. Or worse, when a highly-leveraged hedge fund buys a swath of holiday rental companies. Or worse, when a sovereign wealth fund buys a portfolio of hedge funds.
This is all caused by investments no longer offering the same yield. Yields and interest rates have dropped artificially, due to the Fed and government pouring liquidity into the market.
The abnormally cheap credit then flows through the system into whatever is left to buy, including housing, stocks, and CryptoPunks.
However, we might just get a tapering soon, because even the powers that be are deeming the situation risky, and hopefully prices return to a reasonable level.
I'm sorry to be that guy but why do people keep using Medium? Was ok a few years back when everything was publicly readable but now you need an account to read anything.
(well I now remember that Twitter is thinking about doing the same [1] so I guess that's just how Internet works in 2021)
I recently rented an airbnb in France. The place straight up lied about its amenities. But because those lies sent me scrambling for two days to purchase the things rhe space was lacking I didn't report it until my 3rd day ( on a one month stay and I brought it up with the host on the first day)
Airbnbs response: tough luck. You only have 1 day to report if the host lies. After that, it doesn't matter how much they lied, it's your responsibility.
And it's not worth the credit card challenge if you are a frequent traveler because you will get banned from the platform and they have an almost total monopoly on a certain type of property.
Thanks for stranding me in a foreign country where I had no support network airbnb.
The "Surviving Tomorrow" logo in the upper left of the About bar (below the Medium logo) is tiny. What could possibly be the point of even including that if it's barely readable? Terrible design and UX.
I don't buy this. Lets assume in city X investors start buying houses for Airbnb in a scale that moves the market. Now, you have tons of open Airbnb houses in that area. Also, since investors has to pay more to buy property, they also need to rent it for more. However, with too much competition prices are going to fall, and it would no longer make sense to Airbnb a house. I think in medium term this problem will resolve by itself.
There is another issue in US, not related to the Airbnb, which is zoning law that makes houses artificially low inventory. With or without Airbnb, investors and funds are going to buy those houses becuase long term the price is going up as long as zoning law is in effect.
> I think in medium term this problem will resolve by itself.
It doesn't. There's always more tourists coming into a city than AirBnBs can handle, especially in big cities. I currently live in Dublin, and AirBnB is a huge issue here. And these people know they can keep charging their prices and raising them because tourists will keep coming. In doing so, they've taken over a thousand units (and probably several thousands, honestly; 1600 is the number that went back on the market when the pandemic hit) off the long term rent market, making the housing crisis here even worse.
This article is ridiculous and makes me think the author doesn't understand the way the world works.
Do they really think airbnb will self-regulate and solve the affordable housing problem? Just because the author asked them to?
These problems need to be tackled by local and state governments. We should never trust a corporation to act in the people's best interest. The goal is to make money.
Hotel chains are also bad. They buy land and erect huge for-profit properties. I mean, I could have lived downtown if it wasn’t for Radisson. Where pitchforks at?
Hotels operate under strict rules with regards to licensing and zoning, and are accounted for in city planning and other regulations. AirBnB doesn't operate under any of those rules, and so displaces long-term housing that already exists in the city whereas the space for hotels wasn't included in that to begin with. Huge false dichotomy.
> How many million houses has Airbnb taken off the market so far, and how many more are being stolen each month?
I don't know, and it's clear the author doesn't, as he didn't tell us.
Stuff like this really turns me off from an article. The author is not sincere in asking. He wants to put an idea into your head subversively, while keeping the option of saying "I didn't claim it - I was just asking!"
The other interesting part is that he's drawing a line of convenience: He's OK with people owning houses and renting them out (as he lives in one and wants to keep it that way) - just not OK with short term rentals. As someone who follows the RE market, I know that in higher COL areas, people who buy houses and rent them out are considered to be part of the problem and are lumped in with the AirBnB folks.
At the end of the day, he just wants what is convenient for him, but is trying to couch it as a moral problem.
These are all the valid questions though? Aren't they? Author is raising these Qs to bring the awareness that Airbnb is not transparent and willing to share these data with us and that is the point.
The questions are all valid. My beef is that he's not asking to get the answers, but to plant notions in our head.
> How many million houses has Airbnb taken off the market so far
Is AirBnB expected to know which houses are owner occupied, and which are only occasionally listed? I mean, they can likely infer it from how often a unit is listed as available, but I doubt they make people disclose that. Same point for the other one.
This person seems to be on a crusade to eliminate all landlords and have everyone own there own house. While this sounds good, there are a ton of reasons someone would rent and not own. (less permanent, don't want to be responsible for maintenance ...) And if it is just smaller landlords, who don't do the amount of leverage available only to big corporations. The market will work itself out in terms of affordability. I.E. rents get too high people will buy house prices get too high people will rent. Of course, more houses will and better zoning laws, it something everyone can agree will make houses more affordable.
The author seems to be going overboard in terms of house ownership.
Also, he seems to think that because house construction has been in lull for the last decade it will be slow forever, if house price get very high, it will attract home builders. As they say "The best cure for high prices is high prices"
In addition, most real estate is developed by developers who raise (other people's) money to purchase the property and redevelop it. These funds come from several places, but some of ultimate sources of such funds are... public pension funds (and possibly university endowments), who place their money with real estate lending groups.
I'm not saying that ours is a good system, nor am I saying that it is well-executed. But an honest discussion of renting should include the fact that some of the "felt squeeze" of rent ultimately reaches back to pension funds that want to disburse regular payments to pensioners. (Regular payments come from having a certain percentage return on the money in the fund. The percentage return comes, in part, from investing in real estate redevelopment deals, which increase in value when the value/profit from a property is increased. Value/profit are increased via more units and higher rents.)
This being said, the medium author does make some good points after accounting for the performative open letter tone, like about AirBnb's suing-cities-as-a-service as a business model, and the effect of Airbnb on local markets.
There are also second order political implications to widespread home ownership. You greatly increase the number of land owners, which greatly increases their power as a political block. This leads to policies that drive up the value/cost of land.
The dynamics here are actually backwards from most markets. Normally by diffusing ownership over a large population you decrease the power of the owner lobby, since no individual cares enough to vote on it; whereas the concentrated owners have the resources and motivation to be a powerful special interest group.
However, for housing, even with individual ownership the house would still be most people's largest asset. Further, in the concentrated ownership situation the class of renters is still motivated to vote on the issue because housing is such a major portion of their lives.
the British-historical system is to require an address and license from every adult. A version of that land ownership system is what succeeded in colonizing North America USA, against many active, competing systems over time. Is it a shock that the same system that competes well at an earlier stage, becomes toxic and moribund in later stages? Well, the diffuse ownership you mention delays the changes to re-adjust, and here we are.
this person seems to be "ABC THINGS I SAY THEY ARE SAYING" is exactly not-constructive .. do you understand that in a debate, you can always start by restating the opposite party's position in negative and extreme terms? It gets no points.
The wealthy and powerful have figured this out. They are operating under the assumption of zero/negligible pitchfork risk. Externalities? Just ignore them. If regulation looks like it might interfere with your business, capture the regulatory environment. If that doesn't work, just ignore the laws until governments can get their act together to enforce them (if they even bother).
If the government can't get its act together, people's recourse is to use the sluggish mechanisms of democracy to achieve incremental change. Meanwhile, you're moving fast and breaking things! Breaking whole economic sectors while the city council debates proposed legislation for a 0.25% surcharge.
"But eventually people will get fed up!" Maybe. But what are they going to do about it? They're not literally going to burn your corporate headquarters down. They're not going to pelt you with rocks. The few impulsive types who do commit violence and destruction will be dealt with. The rest of us will just go on the internet and complain.
If the government is sluggish and defanged (as it is in much of the U.S.), and there's no other realistic threat to business as usual, why SHOULD any of these powerful jerks change their ways?