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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

I'm really torn here. On one hand, as a homeowner, I would be pretty upset if my neighbors turned their houses into "hotels". There would be a lot of noise and a lot of people who don't care much about the neighbors since they are only here for a few days.

On the other hand, I just got back from traveling to Europe, where all of the bookings we made were AirBnB. My wife and I were traveling with our 4 month old baby, and there weren't any hotels that could really meet our needs as well as the apartments that we rented. The trip would have been much harder without AirBnB.

I think Santa Monica went too far here -- they should have left some wiggle room for folks who want to rent out their place on weekends and such, like the folks we rented from in Vienna.

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When your family was travelling, did you make extra noise at the houses and apartments you rented? Why do you expect most people to disrespect the people around them if they are only there temporarily?

No, because I'm respectful of others. But I definitely know people who have the attitude of "well I'll never see these people again!".

Also, when I stay in a real hotel, there have been many times when folks were noisy and disrespectful.

And when you are at a hotel and people are acting up.. You can go to the manager.

What happens when your neighbor decides to rent their place via Air BNB, And folks are noisy and disrespectful.. Who do you complain to?? The home owner?? Do you think he's going to kick the people out? They are a revenue stream, and you are not.

Well.. you may say. I'll call the cops. Ok. Your neighbor gets a warning.. then eventually a 300 dollar fine.. Your neighbor can afford a few fines a month from a few random loud nights as long as the air bnb money keeps coming in. In fact your neighbor will need to make sure their place is full more nights if you start calling the cops.

> you can go to the manager

That's an ugly workaround. I want a solution.

Party Hotels and Shut the Fuck Up Hotels, where walls are not paper thin.

AirBnB can throw a few checkboxes there to manage this, and figure out if a place is in a residental condominum with a lot of non bnb neighbors, or it's in the middle of downtown next to all the bars.

So this actually brings up an interesting point: There are many of us that use AirBNB, like you, and are quiet, respectful, and essentially good actors.

The problems that almost everyone seems to talk about are the (rare) bad actors -- the loud, disrespectful, messy, troublesome guests who ruin the residential experience for others.

So I wonder if the solution is in the platform itself -- it's not AirBNB that people don't like, it's bad AirBNB'ers. And maybe if AirBNB puts some real effort into cracking down / banning / preventing bad AirBNB'ers, a lot of the bigger issues & externalities go away...?

Until JerkSleepers starts, with the goal of disrupting that evil incumbent AirBNB by letting people exercise their freedoms and do what they want. I mean...HomeAway is already what you want AirBNB to do.

The rating system on Airbnb is supposed to discourage rude behavior though, right? If a guest is a prick, at least in theory, they get reviewed as such, giving future potential hosts the ability to screen them. I wonder if there is any parallel with hotels where they maintain any kind of shared blacklist.

The only thing I can agree with and makes any rational sense is that this is grotesque government over reach because some degenerate officials don't like something.

I think this will need to be settled in court, but it is absolutely disgusting to try an apply a hotel tax to someone who is renting out a single place. Sure, classify a company that owns and rents out several places as a hotel, because they are at that point, but don't fucking tell me what I can do with my house on my land. It's disgusting.

I realize that it might upset you to live in a civil society, but the act of doing so does behoove you to adhere at least cursorily to the social contracts that have existed since long before you were born. Part of that social contract is "don't be a shithead neighbor." We tell you you can't have loud parties at 3AM when it affects other people, too. If the people engaging in short-term rentals are enough of a problem--and, when I've encountered them, they certainly have been, so I'm sympathetic--then, yes, we as a society, that thing you live in, will act to curtail the cause of the symptom that hurts us.

You can move to the backwoods of Idaho and rent anything you want. If you want to live amongst people, then act like it.

(I have a theory that a large part of why the Valley wants to put so much of civil society to the torch is because there isn't much of one there, now that very large corporate interests have a stranglehold, but I cannot prove it.)

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