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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

The idea that there is an arbitrary split between hotels or other rentals is, well, arbitrary.

This is the same nonsense as NYC's yellow cab vs black car licensing and regulations.

Let people make businesses how they choose.

The split would be zoning and operating a business in a residence. Hotels usually have fire escapes, inspections, etc. Also parking, expected noise, any number of things my house doesn't conform to, and doubtful most of the Airbnb's do either.

I've lived across from nightly rentals at a resort, I expected it, so no complaints to the late night partying etc. But my current neighborhood I have no expectation the house next door is going to suddenly start hosting huge gatherings every weekend, and I expect it to stay that way.

Anecdotally I see the opposite. My long-standing neighbors that own houses throw insane, loud, all the way until 5am parties and since they've lived there forever they know the police, code enforcement etc and can get away with anything. They magically have everything trimmed, cars moved etc exactly 1 day before inspectors come so that nothing bad ever happens to them. Short term renters in the neighborhood don't have such connections and can't get away with such things, someone calls for a noise complaint and they're fucked.

This sounds similar to what I hear when people oppose building housing in general: people expect their neighborhood to stay exactly the same as when they bought it. That's not how the real world works, though.

If you live in a city, you have to deal with noise, full stop. That's one of the trade offs of dense, urban living. Certainly there are limits to what you should have to put up with, and that's what noise complaints to the police are for. Police aren't doing their job? Well, maybe you should find a way to force them to, instead of trying to restrict what other people want to do with their property. Or move to a building or area or whatever with a neighborhood association that disallows short-term rentals.

Why should a business property with a bed be any more or less safe for human life than a residential property with a bed?

If fire escapes are necessary, they should be required in both cases. If they are not, they shouldn't be. Are hotel guest lives (or resident lives) worth more or less than the other?

Generally, commercial code is stricter than residential code, in everything from plumbing to electrical. I think the idea is that heavier use and providing service to others make the tougher scrutiny worthwhile.

Apartments are generally bigger than hotel rooms -> there's more people in an equivalent size building that is a hotel -> need better fire exits.

These make sense but how much of it is just retcon? I think "this is the way we have always done it" that got enshrined in code is much more likely.

Condo buildings aren't that much different than hotels in terms of density and usage.

Quick google says

> The average size of a newly built apartment in the United States, as of 2018, is 882 square feet. https://getflex.com/blog/average-apartment-size/

> The average hotel room size in the US is 300 square feet (around 28 square metres). https://www.siteminder.com/r/hotel-room-sizes/

The problem with ignoring hotel regulations and renting out residential units is the existing tax, zoning, and building codes don't account for AirBnB. It should be ruinously expensive in tax terms to rent out a residential unit full time. Those units should be used to house people, not to literally extract rent. Residents should have a choice to say what they want to be surrounded by.

Are you saying that the tenants in an Airbnb doesn’t constitute “housing people”? Where do you draw the line then?

Airbnb has many problems and is a disgraceful company especially nowadays, but one thing they did well is to add significant flexibility to a legacy industry full of gatekeepers.

I draw the line at long-term housing of local residents. Anything else is a hotel.

A vacation rental is not housing people.

AirBnB adds flexibility for new rent-seekers. It doesn’t address housing affordability and in some cases actually makes it worse.

Except that Airbnb hosts are indeed required to pay hotel taxes (or taxes enacted specifically for short-term rentals) in some jurisdictions, and yet... it's still worth it, financially. And, what do you know, prices are often still better than staying at a hotel.

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