They didn’t accidentally do shit. They ignored the consequences of their decisions for profit at the expense of everyone else. You don’t get to make $100 billion dollars and feign ignorance about how you got it and the damage you caused to obtain it.
They are a company with zero morals and the goal to maximize profits. That’s what capitalism is for and were it’s good at.
The government needs to create rules and laws to make sure that this profit maximizing doesn’t happen on the back of ordinary people, but since corporate america is allowed to control the government through money, this doesn’t happen.
Capitalism is a tool, can we please start to use it like that again?!
Oopsie doopsie
Oopsie poopsie…
Because everything went to shit
I can’t believe people trust others enough to rent their house out like a hotel. I’ve already seen so many problems from this I can’t believe it’s still legal. My neighbor moved and they turned it into an AirBnB, some kids threw a party and left some trash out that poisoned my other neighbors dog. There’s a lawsuit, but the dog is still fucking dead.
What does some kids leaving trash out have to do with air bnb?
Edit: didn’t read about how Airbnb insured property damage. But still, it’s hard to be responsible for the actions of others.
Yeah that’s why inviting strangers into your home unsupervised is stupid.
I don’t think it was accidental
Remember back before Airbnb when this was just a free thing called couch surfing?
why free when you can make money?
Not really. Couch surfing was only for a certain type of person.
US policymakers screwed themselves with crappy urban planning, leading to insufficient housing supply and bad transit options. Blaming AirBnB for high housing prices is like setting up a chain of dominos, and criticizing a guy who comes by and knocks it over. If it wasn’t him, it would have been someone else, or the wind.
Air BnB effectively pitted average renters and homeowners against the luxury hotel market. From a supply/demand standpoint its basically moving something like 10% of the rental market to the hotel market.
What this does is it means luxury long term rentals slot out the next lower tier of housing at higher pricing it slides down the economic ladder until a percent of people at the bottom is simply outbid for the reduced normal rental housing stock.
Its not airbnb’s fault the market shifted but it is a problem with the market as a result of blending the luxury hotel market with residential housing.
Updoot for wind because Mother Nature doesn’t give a fuck :)
It also doesn’t help housing prices that the landlords are colluding to raise prices:
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fixing-algorithm-still-price-fixing
It isn’t just Airbnb’s fault, it’s landlords wanting to maximize their return, no matter the method (short-term rentals or price fixing collusion).
Then explain why this is a global phenomenon?
Then explain why this is a global phenomenon?
Because the same causes are happening mostly all over the world. Meaning, buying up houses. Driving up rent, etc.
Because often it is a nightmare to evict a tenant that do not pay the rent.
I can speak for where I live where a lot of people gone to the short-rental way exactly because that way they have the certainty that when they want the house back, for every reason, they have it.
To me AirBnB is not the problem, it is the wrong solution to a real problem.
Whole home or dedicated AIRBNB should be banned… If I had a room going unused I’d AirBnb
I agree with you to some extend.
What I do not agree about is the implicit assumption that if AIRBNB is banned then every house that was used for short-term rental would become available on the long-term rental market.
The main advantage of the short-term rental (obvious higher profits aside) is the fact that the owner is sure to be able to get back the house if/when he need it. So many owners saw the possibility to use an house with AirBnB (or other similar ways) a lot more attractive than keeping it empty (paying the taxes on it) and much less risky than having a long-term rental where the tenants could be turn out to be a bad one.
This is a stupid light take, starting with the flowery version of their early 2010-ish “good intentions”.
Their “guarantee” insurance was notoriously difficult to actually access if needed. This was typical enshitification from the start, they just had to do a bit more early to gain public trust, until they reached critical mass and then flipped the switch.
The drug dealer gives you the first baggie for free, not because they are good dudes that care about you saving money…
The drug dealer gives you the first baggie for free
We should kill this urban legend, this simply doesn’t happen in the real world
Not an urban legend, just not in your first hand POV - Many examples around crack in the 80s, Molly at raves, a bump of coke at a party… All followed by, “and hey man, if you ever want more, hit me up”
When you’re making definitive statements try to add “doesn’t happen TO ME…” or “IMO/IME”, otherwise you just sound like you base the truth of the entire world solely on your own hyper limited, lived experience.
Having some free drugs at a party isn’t the same thing as “the first baggie being free”.
I would be very surprised if you could just walk up to drug dealers on the street and get free drugs like the urban / astroturf / DARE / LEO myth suggests.
Can confirm this happened to me a few times, especially with dope, you don’t know what you’re talking about
I actually was talking to a neighbor at my apartments 20 some-odd years ago. We got to talking about coke and he asked if I’d ever smoked it before.
“No…” So I followed him across the hall to his apartment and took a hit. “Whoa, this is fucking great! …Wait, when you smoke it isn’t it crack?”
“Yeah, it’s awesome isn’t it!? You know, if you want more I can probably find some…”
So, yup. I got my first hit of crack for free. I never thought that happened in real life before, either, and I’ve never had or heard of it happening since. Additionally, about six months later I stopped smoking crack.
It also never happened to me.
Or maybe it has happened to me a dozen times but I’d shout, “No way man! Drugs are for losers!” And hand him a DARE pamphlet and then I gained a reputation.
Just a little fucksy wucksy :3
There are a few things humans (and thus a healthy society) require for survival. Water, food, shelter.
When we start to point unadulterated VC backed capitalism at those resources, I think we give up something in our society and culture that we don’t actually want to give away.
I travel a lot worldwide and have used Airbnb quite a few times. However I’m now on the side of “Airbnb is evil”.
A couple years ago had a horrific experience in a villa and Airbnb customer support didn’t give a rats ass. Fortunately, my bank did and my credit card chargeback for $4,000 was successful. While I was going through that experience I came across a multitude of communities of travelers who have had equally horrific, oftentimes more horrific experiences with Airbnb where they’ve failed to step in and assist in any way.
Random dudes who own houses are on average unqualified in the hospitality business and not incentivized by maintaining a brand reputation. There are so many issues caused by shitty Airbnb hosts that hotels - real hotels - just don’t suffer from.
So now we have this situation where a lot of spaces are allocated to hotel businesses, more space is allocated to residential housing, And any random dude who can qualify for a mortgage can take a house off the market, fill it for 10 or 15 days out of the month, and keep both a domicile unused for a resident and a hotel room empty.
This is one of the few areas where I think hotel regulations are smart.
Yeah, but on the same token you don’t want to give hotels the monopoly… There is so much price gouging if they know some big event is happening in town. Plus many areas have fuck all for hotel capacity. I do AirBNB because I don’t have $150 every time I want to go to a city. I wish we’d have capsule hotels
Are you implying that AirBNB hosts don’t do this price gouging as well?
What you describe is just another example of poor urban planning + untapped market of public transport.
‘Company that made bank deliberately flouting zoning, renting and subleting laws claims it was all an accident’
Hotels were a nightmare, cabs were a nightmare. These companies indisputably changed the game in the favour of the consumer all around the world.
Where we are now having an issue is large swaths of housing taken over by companies and investors wanting a return. As long as housing and renting are attractive for investment over and about housing and transitory renting, it will attract lots of money.
Supply must be improved to improve the housing market. This should be a continuous government function at least at the low and middle income level not just a private endeavour.
Density and public transport is the answer - not killing something that absolutely changed the game and took the hotel and cab market back to their customers begging for a chance.
Sure, but AirBnB and Uber didn’t improve the hotel and taxi markets, they just joined them. They each took advantage of a tech debt and then lowered the barriers for entry to the market. In doing so, they made a shit ton of money by carving out market share from the fucked up systems you described.
Seriously? Not sure about airbnb since I use booking, but Uber was so much better than cabs it wasn’t even close. They didn’t even make that much money. They lost money last quarter
What wasn’t a nightmare was bed and breakfasts. They also weren’t an excuse to keep property off the housing rental market at scale.
These companies aren’t saviours, they’re businesses who rode public tech optimism and common frustration at established industries in the same fields to stay ahead of regulation and have the public demand it. Surprise, they’re the same businesses.
They also weren’t an excuse to keep property off the housing rental market at scale.
True. But given that houses were off the market even before, I don’t think it is exclusively their fault.
For example Milano historically always had about 30% of the available homes empty, and that even before Airbnb.
“Accident” fkn lol
Maybe they should ban whole home AirBNB… i only ever do rooms.
Theyd part out a hous into multiple rooms. I stayed at one airbnb that were 3 stories and each one was another airbnb, with a kitchen on the main level that had to be shared. No one used it for the 3 days i was there, but still.
You can easily regulate against that.
How
Through the tax code. If you have a short term rental property that’s not a primary residence: shazam busted. You’d need some kind of policing for it but you could force airbnb to make a filing on it as well which would make it possible to automate.
