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Comment by mrchicity | Hacker News Reader

Zoning regulations deal with a classic "tragedy of the commons" problem. Nobody wants to live next to transients, but each person individually benefits from renting their property to them while they're away on business or vacation. If everyone agrees not to do this, and the rule is enforced, they are all better off.

If you believe this is just a "socialist" thing, what about commercial contract agreements between property owners in a co-op? Should they be allowed to all agree to not engage in short-term rentals? Many condo and co-op board contracts have provisions for this, not enforced by some maladaptive government, but by negotiations between equals. It's a common desire and short-term renters aren't a protected class.

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> Nobody wants to live next to transients, but each person individually benefits from renting their property to them while they're away on business or vacation.

I've lived in actual full-time hotels in Asia for months at a time and never encountered any of these "transient" problems people keep whining about. Maybe once a month there was some noise at night. And these weren't high-end hotels either.

Fine, you don't want neighbors. This is probably true of many people who choose to live in "full-time hotels in Asia."

Many people move to residential zones because they are interested in having neighbors, and they are understandably perturbed when an entity encourages law-breaking behavior that destroys their neighborhood.

The article is about SF and NYC. People live for years in residential neighborhoods in SF and NYC without befriending their neighbors.

Anyways, having transients for neighbors actually reduces your risk (variance) with respect to your neighbors. Any given day you're likely to have a normal respectful neighbor. If they're not, they'll soon be gone. Whereas with permanent neighbors you're stuck with them for a long time if they're inconsiderate assholes.

So your opinion is that people who want neighbors should consider seeing random strangers next door an improvement over people with whom they can develop long-term relationships?

> People live for years in residential neighborhoods in SF and NYC without befriending their neighbors.

The data doesn't back this up. In fact, NYC and SF are two of the best places to befriend neighbors based on the shared walkable living areas that are rare in most US cities. Here's a recent article on the phenomenon:

- http://www.vox.com/2015/10/28/9622920/housing-adult-friendsh...

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