- cross-posted to:
- technology
- cross-posted to:
- technology
Under the new restrictions, short-term renters will need to register with the city and must be present in the home for the duration of the rental
Home-sharing company Airbnb said it had to stop accepting some reservations in New York City after new regulations on short-term rentals went into effect.
The new rules are intended to effectively end a free-for-all in which landlords and residents have been renting out their apartments by the week or the night to tourists or others in the city for short stays. Advocates say the practice has driven a rise in demand for housing in already scarce neighbourhoods in the city.
Under the new system, rentals shorter than 30 days are only allowed if hosts register with the city. Hosts must also commit to being physically present in the home for the duration of the rental, sharing living quarters with their guest. More than two guests at a time are not allowed, either, meaning families are effectively barred.
…which makes you a business. You’re making income from rentals. A landlord who has 500 units but can’t seem to fill them but once or twice per year for a weekend doesn’t suddenly stop being a landlord. And if they told me “I’m just supplementing my income” in order to get around installing fire alarms, I’d laugh in their face.
If you’re providing a commercial service to strangers, you should be able to ensure their safety, full stop. If you can’t afford to do that, you can’t afford to provide the commercial service.
I find it so weird that your take is “only the wealthy deserve a home, period.” Like that’s such a hellish thing to say.
What a cockamamie take! We’re not kicking these people out of their homes by forcing them to follow simple rules to ensure they don’t burn families of random strangers in a raging inferno. They’re still free to…y’know…have and live in their home.
… that they can’t afford.
By your exact same logic, if someone is making and selling meth out of their home in order to make supplemental income and bridge payment gaps, then by telling them to stop we’re effectively telling them “only the wealthy deserve a home, period.”
Is “people can’t afford to live” your “get out of jail free” card?
I don’t think that’s an ideal analogy. No-one sells meth legally.
It’s more like selling people food prepared in your uninspected and potentially unsanitary kitchen, and complaining about being told to comply with the food hygiene regulations that every licensed business is required to adhere to.
It is when the decision being made negatively impacts housing availability.
Lots of people on this site are radicals in one way or another and my radicalization is zoning policy and the housing market disruption is has caused.
So people should be able to do whatever they want as long as it helps them pay rent, because them making rental payments ipso facto impacts housing availability?
No, because it turns out there is a whole spectrum of regulation that is possible, and some regulations are more oppressive than others.
Same basic principle as hair stylists in the US needing more schooling than police, by law, which is similarly insane.
Oppressive regulations such as fire safety compliance?
Well given that AirBnB availability inflates property values (2, 3, 4), increases rental rates (2), and decreases the availability of long-term rental units (2), I’m comfortable with big cities severely curtailing them in order to improve housing affordability and reduce pressure on low income renters. Whether they will couple that restriction with zoning relaxations that increase homebuilding and density is another matter altogether and something for them to discuss in the future.
Should a hair stylist require schooling and training? Yes, they put caustic chemicals on people’s heads which can cause sever harm.
Should police have more training? Yes.
This isn’t a good argument because the lack of police training has no bearing on the licensing and training of hair stylists.
Here’s the take you are trying to get people to say, if you cannot afford to own a home without supplementing income by provided room rentals which are potentially unsafe and do not meet the bare minimum of fire code, then you cannot afford that house. It doesn’t mean you don’t afford a house. Just that you cannot afford THAT house. And I make no mention of “deserve housing” because all humans deserve housing.
Putting people’s lives at risk to make a few extra dollars is unacceptable. You have no right to gamble with other people’s lives.
I find this viewpoint fascinating. Like arguing that trying to put out a burning building will hurt poor people trying to keep warm.
The housing market as a whole is the problem, one which AirBnB is exacerbating. That it locally enriches those renters able to find people willing to rent out their homes – which I’m guessing is disproportionately going to be people without elderly family members & kids – doesn’t mean it isn’t detrimental to the housing market as a whole, particularly at the lower end, and to everyone who rents.