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Comment by Symbiote | Hacker News Reader

Tourists before AirBnB would simply not visit somewhere if the hotel price was beyond what they could afford.

Is there any justification at all that could prioritise tourists over residents for living space?

Tourists are seen as a way to generate revenue for a city while not incurring the sorts of costs in services that residents do. Similar motivations cause cities to build office buildings without corresponding homes.

Empirically it seems like cities value tourists over residents -- if cities actually wanted residents, they'd approve construction of housing for them.

And in many cases they HAVE approved construction of housing for them but the new (very slight and only relative) market slack is being eaten up by commercial operators on Airbnb.

> Tourists are seen as a way to generate revenue for a city while not incurring the sorts of costs in services that residents do.

How does that work? Don't tourists use the same infrastructure?

Tourists don't usually use schools or social services. This page suggests those make up 50% of the budget:

http://gothamist.com/2013/04/11/interactive_chart_nycs_budge...

(I'm assuming "debt" and "pensions" are allocated proportionally.)

Tourism still incurs some costs, and a common solution to this is hotel taxes to pay for those costs. AirBNB dodges those taxes. Also, since AirBNB converts housing constructed for residents into tourist housing regardless of legality, it doesn't matter much which cities value more.

I can't help but think this whole thing could be solved by charging hotel taxes on AirBNB room nights. Can someone explain why it's not that simple?

AirBnB does not share who's renting rooms. A significant share of the hosts use that to dodge taxes. Now AirBnB could collect and forward those taxes but well, they have no incentive to.

I assume that hotel/car rental/occupancy taxes are just an easy way to generate revenue for the government without affecting local voters. Is there any relation between hotel tax and government services consumed by hotel guests? I'd be surprised if there were.

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