Short-term rentals are hollowing out communities with loose restrictions | Hacker News Reader

Short-term rentals are hollowing out communities with loose restrictions

nextcity.org

58 pointsrntn137 comments

Even before we had the big companies doing it an HOA I lived in put in a lot of work to ban short term rentals and establish some rules for subletting.

We had two condos that were constantly some kind of party house folks would rent, a few others that were more occasional. Visitors would leave trash out, park in other people's spots, loud at all hours. They didn't care, none of their mess had any impact on the visitors so they did whatever they wanted. The handful of folks renting out what were all of 6 or so units were very vocal trying to lower HOA fees and so on ... they didn't care about long term sustainability of the road in our neighborhood or maintaining the lawn or even insurance coverage.

Had to go through a lot of work establishing new rules and getting everyone to vote on it but it was worth it.

HN users love to complain about HOAs being overly restrictive but they can play a valuable role in keeping AirBnB trash out of residential communities. I'm glad that my HOA has banned short-term rentals from the start.

> keeping AirBnB trash out of residential communities

Why not ban the activities you would classify as “trash” (presumably obnoxious behaviour) which can come from owners or short or long term renters, rather than focus on short term renters only?

It seems akin to banning driving from bars, rather than banning drunk driving.

The mere existence of short term rentals is a societal and neighborhood-level problems.

Banning the behaviors requires enforcement every time. It means someone has to sit around, suffer the problem, document it, go through processes to create a violation, maybe fine the owner (who will likely contest it and waste more time and money), and then still probably be unable to collect.

Then the short term renter leaves, a new one comes in, and all the neighbors get the same problem over and over. Endless suffering and endless work.

In Washington state, our HOA has talked to multiple management firms familiar with the case law who say that unless an owner is behind on dues, and unless unpaid fines are in the high thousands of dollars, there is no consequence for the homeowners not paying the fines and we have no way to collect.

Obnoxious behavior is already banned but it's a huge hassle to have to call the police about littering or excessive noise, and often the police don't even respond. Much easier to just keep the trashy people out in the first place by banning short-term rentals. They can go stay in a hotel instead.

Because the activities are often being done by people who aren't there long and don't care if it is not allowed or not. Speeding, noise, trash left out or just littering, illegal parking is all already against the rules, but enforcement for nuisance stuff is never strong enough to really even impact someone who does it ... and knows they'll be gone soon.

Because it's far more enforceable.

As someone who has been running a short term rental in an apartment building for over 6 years, I would ask: were there any genuine attempts to reconcile from either parties?

I myself had some troubles as well, but it didn't look impossible to run a short stay and keep the peace at the same time.

The argument in the article seems to be that supply-side arguments (there aren't enough homes) don't explain housing prices, but would it not make sense that in this case there aren't enough hotels/short term condos, etc?

I admit I am biased, I usually hate staying in hotels and when I'm traveling I often want to be near family, so a house or apartment nearby where I can walk is better than a hotel where I have to drive.

I’m a full time nomad and stay in airbnbs and similar almost full time going on four years now. I used to rent my house but finally sold it so I figure I’m a net zero on the housing issue. I also like to spend a few weeks to a month in a walkable residential neighborhood and get to know it a bit. You can’t usually do that in hotels.

You’re quite literally exemplifying the issue described in the article which is homes being used for short term rentals rather than people who are there for the long term and form communities.

build more housing to "form communities" then. You can't have it both ways. NIMBYs crying about airbnbs is the most ironic thing in this whole "debate".

Yes, you’re quite literally describing the solution described in the article: "There needs to be an express focus on building for people who actually live in a place. Once you give the market free rein to build for anyone, then you’re just hoping that it trickles down to people. But increasingly, housing is seen as a commodity."

That you agree would make you one of the crying NIMBYs, it would seem.

I've never been part of a community where I've lived. The activity-specific communities I participate in are miles from where I live.

> I’m a full time nomad

> a walkable residential neighborhood

You see the contradiction in your logic right?

As someone who owns a house in one of those "walkable residential neighborhoods" the reason they feel so pleasant is precisely because virtually all the people living there have lived their a long time (most people on my block have been here ~20 years). This means there is a community that keeps the local shops alive, people know each other so that they know who does and doesn't belong which keeps them those places safe (I can't overstate how important this is), people raise their children there so they remain active in local politics and work to ensure policies that continue to make these areas nice, and, because they have invested a lot in that area, their homes are all beautiful.

The houses in my neighborhood that are AirBnBs is painfully obvious, and thankfully remain quite few in number. The parts of my city that contain higher density of housing for "full time nomads" are notably worse, and often have much higher number of other "nomads" (mainly itinerant homeless). I've lived in other cities in some beautiful, historic neighborhoods, that are effectively ghosts of what they were given that a critical number of the apartments don't have permanent residents. Still pleasant for a stroll, but you can feel the void of a living community of residents.

> As someone who owns a house in one of those "walkable residential neighborhoods" the reason they feel so pleasant is precisely because virtually all the people living there have lived their a long time (most people on my block have been here ~20 years). This means there is a community that keeps the local shops alive, people know each other so that they know who does and doesn't belong which keeps them those places safe (I can't overstate how important this is), people raise their children there so they remain active in local politics and work to ensure policies that continue to make these areas nice, and, because they have invested a lot in that area, their homes are all beautiful.

I can give you plenty of examples of places where people owned their houses for decades and it’s still crappy.

I think more relevant examples would be places with a lot of transient residents (airbnbs, etc) that are still walkable and have a neighborhood vibe

most of the Netherlands

Rhymes with another story (https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/notes-on-china) on the front page

> It’s funny how China has basically the inverse problem as America. We subsidize demand and restrict supply. They subsidize supply and restrict demand.

We really should reconsider how we structure our policies

I mean the obvious solution is a reasonable process for opening a B&B or inn in different areas of town.

The issue with short term rentals is that they are self-reinforcing on the upside, where large deltas in housing prices disincentivizes long term leases, which encourages more short term rentals, which raises housing prices by perpetuating the shortage.

I think people should be allowed to operate a B&B if they want to, but they should be in the business of operating a B&B, not of side income while waiting for an appreciating real estate asset to mature.

Housing should be used as housing, and when it has become traded as a HODL asset, the market is not serving the public.

The way to solve the solution is to legalize density. Scarcity business models collapse when the marginal return approaches the marginal cost of production.

Since that’s not happening, we ought to not let people just jump in and out of the short term rental business, because it is self-reinforcing on the way up and on the way down. I think it’s good policy to reduce bubble prone industries where possible because the downside risks are non-trivial to the community.

Tangentially, a big reason I dislike hotels particularly the UK is the trend of removing windows that open and generally getting sick from the rooms. Lots of fire retardants, plus the residual cleaning chemicals in the sheets. The more modern or renovated a hotel, the more likely this is

I often get chest pains and watery eyes from hotel rooms, compounded by the lack of fresh air

All because the hotel wants to save a few £ in case someone leaves the window open with the aircon on

And the reason fire retardants are so heavily used is because the chemical companies heavily lobbied for it years ago, plus manufacturers love being able to use cheaper materials and methods then just dousing in a cheap chemical to achieve the specification

> If we want to address the many environmental crises that we’re in right now, housing is one of the best ways to do that—to stand up and say that housing is a human right and that empty properties shouldn’t be investment properties. All the things that make a community run should be accessible within walking distance, biking distance, transit distance.

That's nice I guess. Zero mention of zoning or any structural forces. Let's just make housing a human right and that'll do it.

I wonder if making it a human right would allow court challenges to zoning, parking minimums, draconian architectural rules, etc.

I want to invoke my human right to live in a place with the population density of the late great Kowloon Walled City.

Less glibly, just by cutting regulations I’m sure you could get affordable housing in a place like Toronto, but wow the people who think housing is a human right would howl and scream about 10m^2 apartment high rises.

I got the 10m^2 number from the size of some Tokyo apartments. The average apartment size in Toronto, by contrast is ~60m^2.

“Cutting regulations” implies the current rules are intended to produce good outcomes, for instance, abundant large apartments for all. If that were true, I would agree with your skepticism, but I would urge you to consider that they might not be. The history of land use suggests that they were explicitly designed to exclude, and designed to raise housing costs. Early boosters in the 1920’s were not shy about saying that increasing housing costs was the goal. We should celebrate ridding ourselves of such “regulations”

Achieving this by cutting regulation would get you the other aspects of Kowloon Walled City too, the more horrifying ones.

2-3 tatami mats (95 sqf, < 9 sqm) sized apartments would be a great idea for kids who just need housing. Most people in the USA would still demand heat and bathroom in the apartment, or maybe just in the same building. There are apartments in Tokyo that lack heat and a shower in the same building, shared toilet, you go to the local bath house if you want to take a shower. This kind of housing could prevent lots of single people from falling into homelessness and probably drugs (but they can't keep a dog or cohabitate, and it doesn't really work for families).

That’s exactly what’s meant by “make housing a human right”—the law, at all levels, would need to comport with its protection.

It doesn't need to be a human right, we just need to regulate housing to be owned by individuals and mandate a limit for how many residences one has.

This is because due to the scarcity of homes and that they cannot be manipulated or printed out of thin air and lent short on a computer, they have become tools of speculation, so the regulation is justified.

> Let's just make housing a human right and that'll do it.

How would that right read? Maybe “Every Canadian has the right to housing in the desirable neighborhoods of Toronto”? I’m not sure if that is really feasible.

"Dignity for minimum wage" may be a more realistic tagline. It's not particularly good faith to say it's a detached house in Toronto.

We're sliding towards workhouses of the 1800s. Policy should lean towards a one bedroom apartment being achievable for all of the working class.

OP is a little ambiguous, but I think they're being sarcastic.

It’s a two parter:

“Every Canadian has a right to negotiate to rent or buy housing in any neighbourhood in Canada”

“Every Canadian has the right to build as much housing as they want in any neighborhood in Canada.”

More pithily, if we want housing to be a human right, then building housing also has to be a human right, one that cannot be vetoed away because your neighbours don’t like it.

Ofc not everyone gets what they want, and not everyone can live in Shaughnessy or Mount Royal. But it does not follow from this that it makes sense to ban all forms of buildings except houses, like we do now, on most land in all cities in North America.

How do they build as much housing as they want without land and utilities to support that? Are you suggesting some sort of libertarian slum that grows without support from the government?

More density is great, I’m not against that. Making the government support that is also a good idea (via transit and utility build out). But after it’s done, Toronto will probably only be as affordable as Hong Kong where that’s already done, where even a substandard cafe will set you back. Or maybe Tokyo, which is more sane (you can get a 2 tatami unheated room for $500/month, FYI I would love to live in Tokyo).

Hong Kong has very little land. Toronto has plenty.

There are all sorts of reasons we might want to coordinate infrastructure with building, and I invite smart urban planners to focus on exactly that, on equitable ways to do that, rather than aligning with anti-city forces to block hauling that people want to live in.

Very little of today’s zoning was design to align housing with infrastructure. Most if it was simply designed to exclude and to keep housing expensive.

We can ditch the latter and keep the former.

But OP talks about unrestricted building in specific neighborhoods, not in a sprawling Houston-like flat land (where SFHs are still common).

I’m still for it (I personally like living in dense cities), but I don’t think it will help housing affordability. It’s like expanding a highway to reduce traffic, but it doesn’t because it induces more demand instead (I’m not the only one who likes living in dense cities).

IMO the point is not for OP or me or anyone to dictate where buildings should go. If a lot of people want to live in Shaughnessy then there will be a strong incentive for Shaughnessy property owners to build. Ofc not everyone will build and that’s fine too. In other areas whether fewer people want to live there be little or no incentive to build, which is also fine imo. Sfh, whether in Houston or Toronto are also fine imo, so long as they are voluntary. It’s the mandatory ones I’m concerned with.

Re: housing and freeways - this only works up to a point. Cars and freeways have strong negative externalities - they destroy the very notion of what a city is, they make it miserable, noisy, unsafe, and expensive. Buildings don’t do any of that, they just sit there quietly, so there’s much less reason to try to keep the supply of buildings small, unlike freeway infrastructure.

Ofc some ppl who dislike cities may suggest that a single small apartment building destroys the thing they like most - the lack of people, which is understandable to a certain extent, but difficult to defend. If we are go there then we just end up with an endless circle of people pointing at each other saying, “I’m allowed to live here but you aren’t”

Overbuilding is a huge problem: buildings don’t just sit there quietly if they are empty, they rot. I’ve seen plenty of abandoned buildings in China to be against going that route. They will eventually be torn down if unused, which is why Buffalo has a housing crisis right now even if it has half the population it used to have. But that isn’t the problem for Seattle or San Francisco.

There is something to be said for a city with extra housing as well as desirability at the same time, like Berlin a decade or two ago. But that never lasts, and eventually an equilibrium is reached, equilibriums always occur in the long run.

An equilibrium would be great. Status quo zoning rules in Toronto and other cities in North America are designed to guarantee a shortage well below any kind of equilibrium.

They create equilibriums for the constraints involved, so now relax some of those constraints (zoning, utility infrastructure, schools, transit) to raise them.

Hong Kong has plenty of undeveloped land[1]. New development is intentionally restricted by the government, which owns most of the land, with the full support of a large part of the (home owning) middle class.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Hong-Kong-have-so-much-undeve...

Yes ofc, but by any measure, Toronto faces fewer constraints on raw land than HK. HK’s total area, including water, is 1100 sq km. Greater Toronto is 7,123. Beyond HK boundaries there is only the sea, beyond Greater Toronto boundaries there is room for dozens or hundreds more Torontos. TBC I am not arguing for sprawl or for actually using all that land - as per your oringal pint, we should link infra with building - but simply that “lack of land” won’t be a binding constraint in any Canadian city for hundreds of years if ever.

"housing a human right" epitomises a feel good do nothing platitude that won't fix the problem.

Fixing the problem involves building more so supply isn't an issue and accepting tha tin some areas housing is unfortunately just going to be pricier. Wish economic literacy was more widespread :/

I agree. I don't think my sarcasm carrier over text.

I think owner-operated mother-in-law suites and similar allow neighborhoods to strike a nice balance between long-term community commitment and supporting reasonable amounts of of tourism.

My wife and I host an Airbnb just outside the city limits of Flagstaff. We have two houses on the property and live in one. Our listing makes it clear that we live on the property. Our neighbors never complain. There is an Airbnb two doors down that regularly generates complaints due to a remote owner.

The problem I often see in these discussions is a lack of conversation around key areas:

1. Why are short-term rental units so popular with the renters? Why has the traditional market in this space fallen off and what can they do to adjust to new expectations by consumers.

2. Why are short-term rental units so popular with the owners? In the Toronto area for example I've heard from several unit owners that they would rather lose money than rent in the trad manner due to how far the rental laws have swung that makes evictions nearly impossible.

3. Specifically here in Canada these sorts of conversations always feel like a smoke screen or a way to find a useful idiot to get the masses angry with rather than addressing the core problem. In Canada our core issue is immigration policies that over the last 2 decades haven't been linked in anyway with capacity of housing, schools, healthcare etc.

I use it because they have kitchen. It lets me eat healthy food on my travel for resonable cost.

Same. I’m traveling with our family of four tonight to visit an elderly relative, we’re meeting halfway. If we stayed in a hotel, we’d need two rooms, we’d have to pay for restaurant food.

My wife has a Walmart grocery pickup order we’ll grab when we get there. We’ll eat good food and not break the bank.

Also, although we looked, there’s no obvious “third space” we could meet at and hang out for 8 hours or so. The Airbnb is the best value hands down. We get to live in another city for two days.

> The Airbnb is the best value hands down. We get to live in another city for two days.

Don't y'all have stuff like legit short term rental apartments in the US?! Here in Europe, almost every tourist destination will have such places, you can find and book them on the aptly named website. Hell in a pinch there's also what we call "Monteurzimmer", basically a hostel with a few shared kitchens, they're aimed for tradespeople from out of town during the week, and on weekends they're a cheap stay for travelers on a budget. All of these are legitimate licensed operations that pay taxes, have to follow fire and general safety codes, and don't annoy their neighbors.

I've stayed at hostels too. Harder with kids though.

It’s crazy though, why can’t hotels do this? I have stayed in apartment hotels, kitchen, living room, bed room. Nothing fancy, but so much better than a hotel precisely for the reasons you listed.

1. They’re popular because they’re often better than hotels. You get a kitchen, more space, often dog-friendly. I much prefer a STR for weeklong trips for those reasons.

2. More revenue. A STR might go for $200/night. So 10-15 nights to clear the same as a monthly lease.

Plus the legal difficulty dealing with a bad tenant, as you note.

I know people who live in airbnbs because bad/no credit or can't afford first + last + security.

Isn't that a lot more expensive?

wait until you hear about payday loans...

Sure, but a lot of poor people get stuck in situations where they pay far more over time because they either can't get good loan terms or can't save up enough money (like rental deposits) to avoid higher-cost rental items. See also: "rent to own", the trailer park industry, payday loans, buy-here/pay-here car lots, etc. Being poor can be very expensive.

Yes and so are payday loans. Once you're financially wounded the vultures begin to circle.

It’s extremely expensive to be poor. Often you wind up paying a lot more over time because you never accumulate the necessary up-front capital to pick the option that will cost less over the long term. Terry Pratchett had a perfect example of this involving boots, look it up.

In the United States, it used to be that only the poorest people lived paycheck-to-paycheck, but now most people do. This means ever more people are subject to this “poverty trap” at every level of society: They can’t make rational long-term choices because they only have the capital and credit to make rational short-term choices.

Of course, since the least expensive options in most spending categories provide the least value for the money, someone is getting that surplus value—which Wall Street just loves, since it makes numbers go up.

The majority of people aren't living paycheck to paycheck. Consumer surveys that purport to show that conflate those who are actually poor with those who are affluent but choose not to save any money because they prefer to spend it on investments or luxury car leases or private school tuition.

The ultimate effect is the same.

There are better options than airbnb if money is the concern, though - it just seems really dumb. Airbnb is like eating out at restaurants instead of buying from the grocery store and preparing your own food. There's subletting, crashing at friend/relative, sleeping in the car, etc. Personally, I'd choose van life over blowing all my money on over priced accommodation.

Anecdotally I used a short-term rental because I was staying in a foreign country on a 6-month visa.

Short-term rentals jacking up prices are a problem for that country and many others, and I was contributing to the problem, but it was important for me to go and AFAIK there aren’t other options.

I wouldn’t have minded staying in the country longer but the visa and my contract don’t work that way.

EDIT: I also looked at hotels. I would’ve been fine with a half-decent hotel room that had a kitchen, but all hotels I saw were more expensive than the rental.

Doesn't the income for the jacked up prices also accrue to that community though? IMO it is not respectable to take someones money and give them a visa then act like they are a problem or unwelcome.

Short term rentals are so popular because the operators aren’t in the business of operating a short term rental.

They are in the business of asset appreciation, and a short term rental is a twofer: you increase the housing shortage by removing a unit from the market, while maintaining an revenue stream to offset the cost of depreciation.

The business model is completely built on rent seeking and would collapse rapidly if it was just legal to let housing supply meet demand.

Instead, there are no voters in the jurisdiction to change the laws, because the vast majority of the electorate all gains from the rent seeking behavior.

The people who suffer are the minority who literally were not alive when the housing shortage began.

The fix is to require residential properties be owned by individuals and place a limit on how many homes one household can own (3?) without incurring luxury taxation.

Then we can let the short/long term rental market sort itself out and also allow people to invest in real estate at a reasonable rate.

It doesn't matter if one person owns 20 properties in a neighborhood to engage in rent seeking behavior or if 10 people own two properties. The result is the same. The problem is that the market is broken, there is a shortage, and the shortage is perpetuated by cartel-like behavior by the local homeowning electorate.

Given that we probably won't fix that, I think that if you want to operate a B&B, you should be allowed to operate a B&B, but if you are going to get out of the business of operating a B&B, you should have a cool down period of 3-5 years (enough for the operator to take on real market risk).

That means that the business must only be in the business of operating as a B&B and until that cool down period ends, and then can be converted back into a residence. This is a non-trivial amount of time, and it means that people in the business of short-term rentals can't necessarily just causally operate them, because if there is a housing slump, they won't be able to exit their position quickly.

This is a massive disincentive to folks trying to operate a B&B to facilitate asset appreciation, but is not a significant impediment for people who want to operate a B&B as a going concern.

This solution invites all kinds of problems, like black and grey markets for housing, but that's because this isn't a real solution. The real solution is to just legalize density and let people build as many residences as they want on property they own. It also helps to have a property tax that incentivizes maximal utility of real estate and disincentivizes hoarding.

It obviously matters because then demand for housing speculation will be bounded by population density instead of greed, and corporations will not be able to do things like own double digits of the housing supply in some large metro areas:

https://www.coreysdigs.com/real-estate/who-really-owns-the-u...

These estimates are for entities owning more than 1000 homes.

My point isn't that I don't think a luxury tax isn't a horrible idea, I just don't think it'll solve the problem. If there is a profitable way to remove housing to create a shortage, there is an economic incentive for everyone who is able to participate to do so. So, it doesn't matter if one entity owns 1000 house or 500 people own 2 houses, the incentives are there to remove housing from the market.

Sure it does since luxury tax can be 10%-25% of property value. Let's see who wants to hold on to property then. And if they do they are paying their dues to society.

When they are "removed" and owned by more people, presumably this is a more efficient allocation of the same amount of houses to more people, which is a solution for the housing problem.

Again, it doesn't matter if one person owns 1000 houses or 500 people own two and rent one of them. The incentive system is to increase the shortage, and without addressing that incentive then the population of homeowners (most of the electorate) will not support increased development.

I wonder why STRs are so popular with lessors. All I have heard is that the unit economics are tough and the market is saturated in many places. I also expect a history as an STR to reduce resale value as it's sort of like buying a used rental car with more wear and tear.

I would caution anyone with a sweet, sweet mortgage rate looking to trade up their personal residence and hold onto the original as an STR to do the math before going down that route.

The areas that he mentioned are touristy places, with low density, low land prices, and low regulatory burdens. It's _easy_ to build more there. If you're desperate, you can just buy a plot of land and put a mobile home there.

But it turns out that 50-60% of people in these locations are renters. And about a half of them are overburdened (more than 30% of income goes to rent).

The reality is that the short-term rentals expose dirt-poor communities to people with higher incomes. And the way to fix this is NOT to ban higher incomes from moving into low-income communities. Quite the opposite. We need to make more opportunities in these kinds of communities.

Promote remote work, give tax breaks to companies that want to build offices in these areas, etc.

Maybe, but there is a lot of bad logic and fuzzy thinking blended into this article. Describing rents as "above-market rates" is one of the dead giveaways of a nonsense political/economic mental model.

Our area restrictions and homesteader tax exemptions. But there's plenty of places where "government regulations" aren't the order of the day. Also if an area is economically depressed, the government isn't going to engage in sweeping reforms if the owners are one or two property owner types. The government is planning on deporting 11 million people, so this could open up some housing vacancies.

While also crippling the home construction and renovation industries which are already extremely constrained on labor.

I am doubtful this will net out to positive change on housing supply, especially considering the size of families that recent migrants typically cohabitate with.

> The government is planning on deporting 11 million people

I don't know much about the USA, but I thought the whole deportation thing is some kind of meme/joke, people really think that's going to actually happen?

Seems unlikely and catastrophic in many ways but it's Trump so who knows? Quite a few of his picks seem to be willing to at the very least give it a try.

Apartments are for living in, not for "unregulated hotels". I don't want a new group of partying people every few days in my apartment building, with the loud music and yelling at 3 in the morning. With long-term neigbors, you can argue a few times and then reach some middle ground, with someone there for 2, 3 days, you can't.

Move the tourists to hotels, let hotel security deal with them.

There are many reasons for housing problems, and airbnb is one of them... not the largest, but banning short-term rentals in residential apartment buildings would solve other problems too.

Thats what HOAs are for. If you live in no hoa house then its none of your business whats happening in neghbibors house.

This is far from true.

There are many things you cannot do in residential neigborhoods, if nothing else, it's a residential not a commercial property, so a house, not a hotel (or a store, chemical factory etc.)

People will do anything other than the solution - remove zoning entirely. Build. The end.

Developers will not spend money building things that will not be successfully rented out, interests on this issue are already aligned. People whining about hypothetical ugly buildings or improper structures ignore reality in the USA.

The handwringing on affordable housing, short term rentals are just silly distractions.

More and more I’m reminded of “The Good Place”, where the main character goes to the (actual) Good Place and turns out no one goes there due to endless bickering…

We could also mass-produce beautiful buildings. The Brooklyn Heights brownstones, quintessential beautiful urbanism, were mass-produced for cheap.

Euclidean zoning is an unmitigated disaster. Pushing for developers to build enjoyable environments for humans is not.

Beautiful buildings…? Enjoy your fantasies while little gets done in the real world, then.

Endless committee meetings blocking viable developments while people bicker that proposals are not beautiful enough. Sigh.

The attitude here around conditional housing is exactly why we’re in this predicament. Luckily for myself and others on here we already own housing, but if you don’t and agree with the parent you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Absolute goofball stuff buddy.

You, “realist”: the solution to people successfully blocking development is to convince them buildings cannot and should not be beautiful

Me, in fantasy land: Here’s a specific example of a cost-effective, mass-produced neighborhood that is considered one of the most beautiful in the entire country, we should do more of that.

The more you perpetuate the myth that cost-effective building needs to be ugly, the more resistance you’re going to produce… obviously.

An imperative to build beautiful doesn’t actually necessitate committee after committee. Stop propagating myths that are destructive to your own priorities, lol.

Perhaps you should read - I didn’t say buildings should not be beautiful, nor that they would be ugly.

How is one to interpret the sentence (which was the entirety of your original comment):

“Beautiful buildings…? Enjoy your fantasies while little gets done in the real world, then.“

Please answer specifically what you meant by this statement.

The inherent subjectivity of beauty in a building will needlessly delay a project as it is evaluated and contested - should be clear with “little gets done in the real world…” as well as the rest of the post…

Nope. Beauty (especially in architecture) is not nearly as subjective as pedants want to make it out to be.

The overwhelming majority of Americans who have any interest in city life find Brooklyn Heights, Prospect Heights, Carroll Gardens, Beacon Hill (Boston) and Rittenhouse Square (Philadelphia) to be beautiful.

What actually needs to happen is a cultural revamp of our architecture schools which have perpetuated this “subjective beauty” myth and turned architecture into an academic pissing contest instead of a system to build for human beings.

It is your specific viewpoint that perpetuates hideous building. It has infected every major architecture school in the nation except Notre Dame.

Go ahead and find me ONE person who prefers the beauty of a strip mall suburb to Brooklyn Heights. If it’s so subjective that oughta be easy!

> Nope. Beauty (especially in architecture) is not nearly as subjective as pedants want to make it out to be. The overwhelming majority of Americans who have any interest in city life find Brooklyn Heights, Prospect Heights, Carroll Gardens, Beacon Hill (Boston) and Rittenhouse Square (Philadelphia) to be beautiful. What actually needs to happen is a cultural revamp of our architecture schools which have perpetuated this “subjective beauty” myth and turned architecture into an academic pissing contest instead of a system to build for human beings. It is your specific viewpoint that perpetuates hideous building. It has infected every major architecture school in the nation except Notre Dame. Go ahead and find me ONE person who prefers the beauty of a strip mall suburb to Brooklyn Heights. If it’s so subjective that oughta be easy!

This entire comment epitomizes my original point. Thanks for the laugh.

Here, let’s put it in data.

What are the highest $/sqft (read: desirable) neighborhoods in every mature city in the country (old enough to have traditional local vernacular)?

Shockingly, they’re all the ones with traditional, local vernacular architecture!

Where’s your data that demonstrates beauty is subjective? Surely you can back up that claim, right?

> Where’s your data that demonstrates beauty is subjective?

lol only on HN would someone demand data to demonstrate that beauty is subjective.

I suppose in the presence of overwhelming data to the contrary we just oughta take your word for it :)

Have fun in your fantasy where nothing gets built!

I’ll be fine, I already own a few houses :). Enjoy the objective beauty in which no one disagrees!

Huh? What’s the relevance?

I suspect this is just a super awkward brag in place of an argument but I ought to be sure.

The OP is correct. In the real world, bad faith NIMBYs will reject any and all buildings as ‘not beautiful enough’. The reason is that they really don’t want new construction period. It’s not about beauty. In other words, you’re the one living in the fantasy world if you think we can just sit down, decide on what is beautiful, and then build, build, build. This will never happen. Zoning must be majorly reformed, and if you think it will be easier to reform zoning if we incorporate aesthetic standards, you are wrong. People simply don’t want new buildings in their neighborhood.

You fall into the same trap that so many people do, which is arguing against the most extreme version of your opponent instead of trying to build a coalition against them by winning over the much larger, much less extreme portions of the opposition.

We can de-fang the most extreme by weakening zoning and we ought to build a broad pro-development consensus by building fantastic environments (which is absolutely, demonstrably possible to do in a cost-effective manner).

To put it more directly: we need to politically disempower the bad faith NIMBYs via zoning reform and we need to win over the people who are (justifiably) tired of their built environment becoming more and more insulting to the human senses and local culture.

https://ourbuiltenvironment.substack.com/p/why-everywhere-lo...

Extremely sad how paralyzed you’ll be in agitating for change with this fatalistic “the presence of extremists means I don’t need to win over moderates” attitude.

Oh hush. You’re the barking up the wrong tree with this ‘beautiful housing’ thing.

If we want to reform zoning, it’s not going to be by winning over NIMBYs about beauty standards. The way to reform zoning is to win over younger, upwardly mobile folks who are currently priced out of the housing market. There are many, many of them. They need to be educated that too little construction leads to supply shortages, and thus high prices. We also stand a chance of winning over labor/blue collar workers who will benefit from plentiful construction. Business owners, both small and large, are also natural allies as high home prices make it difficult to find and keep employees. All these people care about something much nearer and dearer to their hearts than pretty architecture: MONEY.

The focus on aesthetics is a distraction at best. In practice, it plays straight into NIMBY hands by granting that beauty standards is a hurdle that must be overcome in order to build.

And yet… here we are with all those incentives aligned and nothing getting built… curious ain’t it?

By the way, you are aware that development nearby increases a current landowner’s value, right?

The “money-monomaniac” theory is disprovable through basic observation of what prices do during and after development.

Yes I am aware that new development/upzoning often increases nearby land values while at the same time putting downward pressure on market rents. See Mast et al’s work from the Upjohn Institute. I am very aware that homeowners (at least those that outright own the land underneath their house i.e not condo owners) stand to financially benefit by selling to developers who put in higher density housing. My remarks about money were not directed at them. Existing homeowners simply oppose new housing of all sorts. Please reread.

Look, I live in Boston. I have also lived in Rittenhouse square. I know the buildings you speak of intimately. I suggest you do something that I have personally have done several times: go to local city council meeting about a beautiful new housing development proposal. Observe how vehemently neighbors oppose the construction of this gorgeous new multifamily housing development. They complain about parking, too much traffic, too much noise, a burden on the school system, the wrong sort of people, blah, blah, blah… it never ends. These people simply don’t want new homes near them. See Katherine Einstein’s “Neighborhood Defenders” to get an overview of this phenomena.

As I said, your focus on aesthetics is a distraction. The road forward is either to appeal to the personal economic interests of the three groups I mentioned, or pray the SCOTUS overturns Euclid vs. Ambler.

Are you deliberately ignoring the content of my comments?

I am not denying that these people exist and they hold outsized power. I am claiming that we need to build a coalition to defeat them, and that is impossible to achieve when we keep building hideous bullshit. The people we actually need to activate are the vast majority of people who have no equity stake in their neighborhoods but have significant stake in the lifestyle their neighborhoods support.

Appealing to the personal economic interests of those three groups has demonstrably not worked. The masses (with no equity stakes) are more easily mobilized by NIMBYs/landed interests against big evil developers because big "evil" developers visibly degrade neighborhoods.

The non-equity-growth argument for more development is totally nonexistent, so non-equity holders (again the vast majority of people in high COL areas) have zero motivation to join your side.

+1 on overturning Euclid, but I don't see a path to that.

You obviously I have not been very involved in the housing discourse over the last two decades. Good night, I ending this discussion.

Seems to me you’ve perfectly illustrated my point.

“The most extreme people go to planning meetings and successfully overrule several aligned interests against them, but no we don’t need a broader coalition.”

You don’t need to convince the people at the planning meetings. You need to convince the people who are not at the planning meetings.

Anyway, excellent work over the last two decades, I guess.

While I agree with Zoning being an issue in large cities, the zoning argument doesn't make sense in a city like Flagstaff or St George (which is what the book is about).

These are smallish towns with a largely transient population of tourists.

Housing is viewed as an investment in these communities, and most natives will simply never be able to afford purchasing even with expanded zoning because a SWE or Accountsnt working in San Francisco or Phoenix looking for a side hustle will always outcompete a local working in the service industry who's earning $14-20 an hour.

The zoning argument makes sense in a city with a large long term population - which is not the type of city Flagstaff, St George, Sedona, or Ojai are.

Already if you go to Flagstaff you'll see plenty of massive housing complexes being built, but they are priced at $400-600k and targeted at out-of-state investors (eg. Techies in the Bay Area looking for a side hustle, a holiday home for the winter, etc).

At the end of the day, most people on HN are part of the problem, as salaries in tech (even with layoffs and outsourcing) remain miles ahead of other white collar roles, let alone the blue collar or service jobs most Americans ACTUALLY work.

If there is demand to rent, there’s demand to buy, if there’s demand to buy there’s demand to build. Time and deprecation will do the rest as long as constructions begins now.

> Housing is viewed as an investment

Found the problem!

Unironically it’s the solution. The problem is that no one can make the investment.

If housing wasn’t an investment that would imply no returns, and thus no incentive to build and thus far less housing.

Housing would still be built, but not as an asset for which appreciation would be expected. Your argument is like saying that unless cars appreciate in value, no cars would be built.

Cars do not have land which is inherently scarce. A better comparison is an RV, which is indeed rare.

Also, I did not say houses wouldn’t be built - I said there would be fewer which is just the truth.

All else being equal, lower return on houses would result in fewer being built.

But all else wouldn't be equal, since regulatory barriers would be removed.

Indeed, your notion that houses would be spoiled as an investment, and fewer would be built, are contradictory. The former requires so many are built the market would be saturated, preventing appreciation.

> will always outcompete a local working in the service industry

I think non-resident owners should pay something like 10X the taxes a resident owner pays.

This whole housing as an "investment" thing is destroying society

In some countries with less of a housing crisis than ours, it's the opposite. If you buy a house to occupy, you pay a large VAT. If you buy a house to let, you don't. Fetishizing owner-occupancy is the root cause of the American housing crisis. We need to get over the weird belief that something about living in a house you own is morally superior.

I'm not talking (just) about the USA. In my buble people often hoard properties to let but many just hoard them because they can and taxes are (too) low.

Someone has an advantage in income, access to financing, reaches a threshold and 10 years later they flip 10 houses, all payed by not so fortunate tenants, and the owner thinks he's some kind of rightous capitalist.

The whole rent-seeking behavior is a scourge on society.

We don't need a baroque system to fix this, though. Simply taxing rents would do the job.

Your assertion is that housing demand is insatiable in Flagstaff? How would we know? Like all other American cities the planning code of Flagstaff virtually forbids construction of anything, so it's not as if they've tried to build on the margin and it didn't help. Why does the law of Flagstaff reserve the huge portion of town directly east of downtown for low-density, "R-1" uses where almost nobody lives?

> housing demand is insatiable in Flagstaff

As long as the Grand Canyon, Coconico National Forest, Meteor Crater, and Red Rock State Park remain major tourist destinations absolutely.

> Like all other American cities the planning code of Flagstaff virtually forbids construction of anything, so it's not as if they've tried to build on the margin and it didn't help.

Flagstaff and Coconico County changed their zoning code as part of the Flagstaff 2045 initiative [0].

Furthermore, much of the CDP land surrounding Flagstaff has been converted into housing - the Kachina Wetlands area, Flagstaff Ranch, Presidio Park, the area around Floxglenn Park, Pine Canyon, etc.

These are all recentish expansions (past 10 years) and there are further expansions that have been zoned by Coconico County.

Furthermore, within Flagstaff City, multi-unit housing is being developed now using the stick-frame format.

All these units are a significant expansion for a small regional town in the middle of nowhere (amazingly beautiful but nowhere nonetheless).

All these units are priced at the $400k and above range - which is unaffordable for service workers who tend to earn $14-20/hr and tend to commute significant distances.

-----------

Fundamentally, zoning has been simplified but the costs of construction (labor, financing, and of course land) incentivize high value/high margin real estate development.

One of my former sparring buddies is MD track (hence no more time to spar) for Real Estate/Construction financing at one of the bulge brackets, and in our conversations, much of the deal flow over the past few years has been flowing towards infra construction because of better margins and significant subsidization by state, local, and federal governments.

Commercial and Residential Real Estate just cannot compete with the margins that come with building a fab for Intel or TSMC, as wages, margins, and RoI is much higher.

Zoning can help to a certain extent in some highly sought after markets, but in much of America, financing for residential construction just cannot compete with infra financing.

[0] - https://flagstaff-regional-plan-2045-flagstaff.hub.arcgis.co...

We live in the UK, in our own home, though we’re still paying off the mortgage. I’m a software developer working in a hybrid arrangement (part office, part home), and I live here with my partner and our daughter.

A few years ago, the family next door were evicted with just a few weeks’ notice after the landlord sold the property to an "investor"—it was his second house on our street. The investor spent 10 months renovating the house himself and turned it into a short-term rental. For us, those 10 months were a nightmare: drilling, hammering, and building noise from early mornings to midnight, seven days a week. Despite this, we didn’t complain, as we wanted to establish a good relationship with the new owner. He reassured us that the property would only be rented out to families.

But then the first guests arrived—on the night before New Year’s Eve. It was a group of people ready to party. That first night, they partied until 4am. We thought, “Alright, they’ll have their New Year’s Eve celebration and move on.” But no, the parties continued on New Year’s Eve and beyond. From then on, it’s been one group after another—loud, late-night parties and noisy families. We’ve lost countless nights of sleep. My partner, my daughter, and I were all constantly exhausted.

For eight months, we tried dealing with this directly with the owner. We asked him to soundproof the walls, even offering to soundproof ours to help. I spent my own money soundproofing one room in our house. But after I told him what we’d done, he refused to do anything on his side, saying that my soundproofing solved the issue—when it clearly hadn’t. We could still hear everything, especially as there’s a hot tub in the garden, which guests often use late into the night.

When it became clear that the owner wasn’t going to help, I filed a complaint with the council. I explained that the property was being run without proper planning permission and causing significant disruption to us and other neighbours. Unfortunately, the owner found out about the complaint and started sending us offensive messages, targeting both us and other neighbours.

Despite reporting this to the council, nothing has changed. Two years ago, we bought a campervan, and now, whenever we see a large group of people arriving next door, we leave and sleep in the campervan. Imagine that—being forced out of your own home just to get a proper night’s sleep. Even now, the council says they’ll “look into it,” but we’re still waiting for action.

We even left our house over Christmas this year just to get some peace and quiet.

This is what life is like living next to an unregulated short-term rental. For us, it’s not just about the noise—it’s about the mental and emotional toll it’s taken on our family. It’s hard to explain this to people who’ve never experienced it themselves, but I hope this sheds some light on the reality of these situations.

Investors and short-term lets are about more than money—they can have a devastating impact on the lives of the people around them.

This sounds terrible.

If the council isn't going to do anything, you might consider:

- keeping as much documentation and evidence (e.g. date stamped video or audio recordings), and

- searching Google for 'taking your own action under Section 82 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990'

That's awful! That landlord sounds like a total see you next Tuesday. I hate how little responsibility landlords have for tenants in England. I totally sympathise

Some ideas:

- Call the police if the noise is after 11 or before 7. At least so it logged so you can tell the council

- Talk to a solicitor

- watch out for drug deliveries. Report to the police

Try to generate bad reviews:

- Get friends to book and stay on the cheapest nights and leave bad reviews

- Play loud music at 7am when they're hungover in bed. The bassy kind against the wall

- Obstruct their parking

- Put up flyers about the damage they're doing to the community. Act like a crazy person if you can "welcome" them when they arrive

- Knock on their door at 7am

You have the upper hand that their retaliation will be temporary as they don't live there

If the landlord continues to harass you that's a separate charge for the police to deal with

That's just usual xenophobic nonsense. Did those bad hombres turistos eat all the dogs in your town?

Alternate title: Lack of Government Interference Allows Properties to be put to Highest and Best Use

Edit: More for discussion: For those who have long lived in locations that are now desirable, should it be illegal for them to profit from their good luck and/or foresight? Should desirable locations be limited to the exclusive use of those who were there first? Shouldn't more people get the opportunity to visit Bozeman Montana and have somewhere to stay?

Are short term lets the 'best' use, or the one that allows the owner of a scarce commodity to make as much money as possible to the detriment of the community in which the commodity is located?

This is HN: there is a large class of users who do not see a distinction between "best" and "most extractive."

If short term letting is more profitable that necessarily implies it's the best use. Part of the issue seems to be that owners might accept lower profits from short term rentals to avoid the hassles of long term renting though (like a shitty tenant that becomes a nightmare)

Highest, maybe.

Best? Debatable. For the owner? For society?

Often-illegal hotels which largely circumvent taxes to enrich some landlords and possibly the local tourism industry (at the expense of everyone in the community who requires housing) is almost certainly not the best use of limited housing resources.

> Highest and Best Use

"Most profitable" != "best for society at large". Ignoring (or denying) that is the core issue with all these MBA programs, McKinsey and the other consultant vampires. They all preach short-term benefits exclusively while ignoring that without a sizable mass of people who actually have the money to buy things, enough time on their hand to have a reason to buy things and children to keep up the economy, eventually the economy will just crash and burn.

I don't see why the person who wants a short term rental has any less right than the longer term tenant. They express their desire via willingness to pay.

The issue is the housing market is becoming so disconnected from a free market that huge supply imbalances are opening up without supply providers having the ability to close the gap (because of laws and regulations)

> I don't see why the person who wants a short term rental has any less right than the longer term tenant.

That's because you only look at the individual people, which is precisely my point.

For society at large, for the GDP, short term tourists are not what society / the economy needs (unless your entire society is based on tourism, which is a dangerous path on its own as many countries like Croatia discovered during Covid). Short term tourists contribute barely anything to the economy outside of eating out, museum entrance fees and where the law allows for it dedicated taxes (which many AirBnBs just skip on). In contrast, actual economic activity needs people and these people need long term stays.

Society isn't about producing the maximum GDP though, it's about producing things people want. Sure, going on a vacation doesn't produce lasting value, but that's not the point. The person on vacation wanted to do it and that's sufficient reason on its own.

Yes, towns obviously need a long term population, but this isn't usually the problem outside of smaller rural tourist towns.

parties and homeless people or an equitable housed community hmm

Not when the price doesn't capture hundreds of externalities.

If it was totally frictionless for everyone else to collect "impaired sleep" and punitive damages from the party-animals renting a unit, that would be in a fundamentally different economic/legal/technological universe than this one.

Only if you consider “Highest and Best Use” to be that which is most profitable for the property owners, rather than that which is in society’s long-term interest.

Of course, capitalist economists work very, very hard to conflate “economic efficiency” with “society’s long-term interest” in peoples’ minds—to make people forget that an economy is just part of a society that should serve that society’s goals. They’d prefer if you thought an economy was a society and that all other things were subordinate to it.

> Alternate title: Lack of Government Interference Allows Properties to be put to Highest and Best Use

From the article:

> Arizona even passed a law in 2016 making it illegal to regulate short-term rentals at the local level

Does state government interfering with local government count as “Lack of Government Interference”?

I somehow question these "community vibes", they certainly benefit from the presence of the tourist/nomad economically, but they also want to project a wholesome higher moral ground that's only attainable to "those in it for the long term".

Is it really about a sense of community or just that it's easier to redirect anger at housing affordability to "people who are new or won't stay around long enough" than to address issues like corporations buying up housing supply or unrestricted monetary policy making home ownership impossible for almost everyone.

I lived in a place that had short term rentals.

The visitors don't give a damn about the people living there. They left out trash, speed through the neighborhood, were loud at all hours ... because it didn't matter if they upset the neighbors, they'd never see them again.

The folks renting out the places wanted the most profit possible so they did not care about paying their fees or maintenance and etc.

The incentives for someone invested in living there and someone just there for a weekend / week creates different incentives.

Why don't all these long term community people have a talk with the long term owner and have them not rent their place? To be honest, it sounds like there is no community whatsoever to begin with, at least not one that the long term community members get any say in what happens.

I wonder if all the people who were renting their vacation homes out stopped doing it, what would happen to the restaurant traffic in the area and who would shop at the souvenir shop?

In fact I greatly wonder what the source of economic activity would be in such "destination towns" if we cut off tourism.

Rental owners didn’t care, it was a business for them, I know because talking to them is easier than the hassle we went through and we tried.

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