> we need to protect the limited housing stock we have from being arbitraged into other uses
This seems like a more compelling point than the title topic.
This seems like a more compelling point than the title topic.
In the beginning, Airbnb was for homeowners and renters to provide a spare bedroom to travelers. In that case, they're facilitating a private transaction between two individuals to exchange money for a place to crash. By the residents staying at the home for the duration of the guest's stay, it's hard to call that a sublet, and there's a very strong argument to be made that it's just a communications platform to link either side of a marketplace.
But the case of whole-home rentals gets murkier. I don't see how letting someone stay in your home while you're living somewhere else is anything but a sublet. And if it is a sublet, why should it not have to conform to the established rules for sublets?
I find it disappointing that the Airbnb team hasn't done much in the way of explaining this point. When they do address the legality of Airbnb, they almost always refer to the first case. It's understandable, as it's a much more easily defensible position. I'd be interested to hear someone from Airbnb directly address the possibility of their service being used to turn residential spaces into commercial spaces (in the form of hotels).
Its actually quite easy: you are renting out space in a unit you are renting from a landlord -- so its a sublet. That you are present is irrelevant to whether it is a sublet (it may, OTOH, be relevant to whether it is prohibited by law independent of lease conditions even aside from considering whether it is a sublet, but that's a different issue.)
I agree. If a large number of residential spaces start getting occupied for AirBnB usage, that makes the housing stock that much shorter. And that would actually increase price of housing in the city. As another commenter posted, it was harmless when people were letting travelers stay the night in their currently occupied homes, as that didn't decrease the housing stock. But when people start using residential properties as fully functioning motels, that's when we see society adversely affected.
And this is a far more logical argument than the Brothrel one as not everyone agrees how bad that is.
Which is certainly a political opinion that some people endorse, of course, but when you do that it's generally a contributing factor towards a housing shortage, like you see in places such as New York and San Francisco... go figure :b
I guess property rights don't mean anything anymore.
But that doesn't mean that the residents of a city are obligated to just sit around until a problem, say gang violence or murder-for-hire, corrects itself. "Society" is about taking action to, uh, "proactively" correct these things.
There are many things that would increase short term government revenue but which would be terrible public policy.
Investors in NYC given the choice of building hotels, office buildings, or residential properties are generally building residential properties. In fact a lot of the rezoning has been turning commercial space into residential space over the last 5-10 years. The market is clearly demanding residential space (specifically luxury units) first and foremost.
To answer the question, I think it's the city government's job to balance the interests of people and businesses that reside in the city. In a perfect world, every side effect and externality would be neatly quantifiable, and municipal leadership would be fair and evenhanded. For now, we have to trust that the feedback loop of election will produce pretty good solutions to problems. I can't think of a better way to approach things in the current system.
Who gets to decide what the value of a piece of property to The People should be? Should it be elected officials, who probably only represent the interests of the people on even numbered days, or should it be The People themselves, through price movement?