I run a vacation rental in a small town in the mountains of Colorado. I'm quite happy to pay the taxes the town demands. Our place is busy, and our guests make a significant impact on the town, spending <i>a lot</i> of money in local shops and restaurants. On the other hand, there is increased wear on city and county roads (many of which are gravel), and increased load on water, sewer, and sanitation services.<p>Cities and counties need money to provide us with the services we depend on to run our little business. Reasonable taxes and fees are a fair, expected, and necessary price. The little town we're in has struck a decent balance price-wise, and they also have a decent regulatory system set up that's designed to ensure that neighbors' complaints about parking, noise, and trash are addressed.<p>We're very by-the-book operators. I want the city to see money from me because I want them to have an interest in protecting my business.<p>There are a couple of hotels under construction in town, which makes me nervous. Hotels hate vacation rentals. I'm not fond of AirBNB as a corporate citizen, but the Hoteliers cartel is dirtier. I wouldn't be surprised if the new hotels lobby the town to ban vacation rentals outright, or craft lethal regulations like those in Tennessee recently that require all vacation rentals to install fire-suppression sprinklers [<a href="https://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2015/jan/3/cities-acro..." rel="nofollow">https://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2015/jan/3/cities-acro...</a>].
Nashville resident here.<p>A drunk airbnb user tried to break into a neighbor's house around 11 pm last week while the residents were inside. He was lost and thought he was at his rental, but that wasn't apparent to anyone else in the beginning, so my wife gets a call for help from another neighbor and we go to check it out.<p>When we get there, we discover the assailant has been treed on a shed roof by the woman whose door he had beaten on. She was home alone with her baby at the time. She was (understandably) waving a ball-peen hammer at him and shouting.<p>Let's call him Trey.<p>Trey is around 6' 3" and a bit on the husky side. He is maybe 25 and he is wearing a worn out Auburn hat and a nice polo shirt. Trey is crying and refusing to speak to any of the small crowd that has gathered, some of whom who are darkly muttering about burglars and drugs. Trey is talking into his phone, quietly, holding it like a slice of pizza.<p>Trey has called his mom.<p>My SO and I figure out what has happened about the same time. "Hey buddy, are you looking for your airbnb?" I called.<p>Luckily, we were able to de-escalate before Metro PD arrived or Trey was beaten to death with a hammer by a 5' tall woman. It turns out that Trey had given his Uber driver the wrong adress on the way home from Broadway; he was supposed to be about one street over. We get a hold of the groom whose bachelor party Trey was a part of, and the police give Trey a ride home.<p>So, that can happen.
I find it really unfortunate that the airbnb debate is always so polarized.<p>AirBNB has often provided me a better alternative to a largely terrible hotel market that often takes racket prices and makes me pay for services I don't need. On the other hand I completely understand when people are annoyed about party folk living in the flat above them or when they lack safety regulations or don't pay the same taxes hotels do.<p>But none of that justifies an outright ban, there should be solutions to regulate the bad while allowing the good. Make them pay hefty fees that they may pass on to their customers if they violate night rest times. Make them follow safety regulations and pay takes. (Yeah, that will make it more expensive, but I can still avoid paying for daily room service I want to opt out and sometimes even can't and 24/7 reception staff I don't need.)
I lived a few doors down to someone who basically ran an ad hoc AirBnB ... before Airbnb. It was pretty terrible. Parties all the time, trash, they parked anywhere (in other people's driveways...) because there were likely no long term consequences for doing so, the folks staying there didn't care because why should they?<p>I was on the association board, it's kinda thankless job as we had to deal with this house.<p>We got the usual riot act / pushback from the folks operating that short term rental about how the association was terrible and oh man the government and how we just were protecting hotels (like man, I don't have any connection to hotels...). They tried to organize the other folks who rented out their places (traditional long term rentals) to push us off the board, they actually got several to go along with it, but they failed (it wasn't even close, we had a limit on how many units could rent out at once anyway so they never were going to have enough numbers).<p>In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association / neighborhood. Fortunately the law was on our side and they eventually sold the unit and left.<p>Local governments are run by the locals and they should get to decide where businesses like that operate and zone and so forth. The idea that Airbnb should just get to be the almighty "disruptor" and land on your neighborhood with no recourse is pretty absurd at face value, especially when the argument is usually about how folks should have some freedom, but what they mean is their freedom, not the communities.
This seems like an overly critical article. Zoning laws and NIMBY impulses <i>should</i> be fought tooth-and-nail and I'm glad Airbnb is doing so. The platform has allowed me to actually enjoy travel in ways I never could before.<p>What I feel like is missing is a communication path from the community to the platform. Because people <i>start</i> by calling the police to complain it immediately becomes a legal and local ordinance issue. If it were easy to report abuses to Airbnb directly, or if local police were instructed to contact them, the platform could better regulate itself.
I feel there is a difference between putting your home up for short term rent while you're away versus buying multiple homes that you never stay in and operating them as a self-service hotel. There's nothing wrong with this, but if you run a business, you must file the appropriate paperwork and follow the same rules as other businesses.
Just look at the havoc being reigned on some neighborhoods in Miami Beach during spring break. Specifically the low-scale, residential flamingo park neighborhood of south beach.
Airbnb is such a racket, and it annoys me that they haven't historically been given the same critical treatment that Uber has. In many ways, it's way more discriminatory and more damaging to residents of a city and almost the complete opposite of Uber/Lyft (which benefits residents and visitors alike).<p>The only people Airbnb benefits in a given city are the landlords/hosts. It's not a "neutral" effect on other residents - it either crowds out supply that could otherwise go to a full-time resident or creates a safety/quality of life issue for neighbors who live adjacent to these properties that are being constantly filled with strangers.
Any time anyone says they "want to pay taxes", you know they are lying. No one anywhere <i>wants</i> to pay - no one looks forward to it.<p>Not that I'm a fan of big government, but I don't understand why, if they really are just ignoring the law in most jurisdictions (which they are), none of these states just issue arrest warrants for the people in charge of these decisions? Why isn't there an outstanding warrant for the CEO of AirBnB from any one of the 50 US states for flagrant tax evasion? Or even going further to actually request the state where that CEO is present in to be arrested and extradited to that state? The CEO can't possibly claim they didn't know this was an issue. So then the battle will be forced in court for them to prove that they weren't responsible for collecting the tax <i>and</i> that if instead the property owners were in fact responsible, that AirBnB wasn't guilty of facilitating criminal tax evasion.<p>I'm sick and tired of these Silicon Valley companies deciding that their big idea is to decentralize so that they can ignore regulations and licensing requirements by saying "we're just a platform, the users need to do that". Same bullshit with Uber claiming their drivers aren't employees but rather "independent contractors", even though Uber sets all the rules, prices, etc. I've never heard of an independent contractor who can't determine how much they charge.<p>Similarly, these AirBnB places aren't legally zoned for the activity they are engaging in, nor are virtually any of the property owners licensed to do business as a lodging facility or registered and authorized to collect the occupancy taxes. AirBnB knows this and the grand scale of the illegal activity, at bare minimum, proves that the purpose of the platform is to circumvent the laws/regulations but not with an actual loophole, just by ignoring them and hoping they can grow fast enough so that they aren't just shut down hard.
AirBnb is a terrible, terrible company. Most of their money comes from corporate-owned mini-hotels yet they advertise as a mom and pop shop.<p>At every turn their solution is to sue small towns and cities so they can continue to extract wealth from our neighborhoods.<p>Disgusting.
I used to live in a flat where I was the only permanent resident on the floor and the rest were Airbnbs. My life was hell while I lived there.
I don't think most people realise what a massive negative impact these places have on the people living near by. Even if you are a good guest you may not think you are having a negative impact but you are.<p>I think tourists have to understand that when they use Airbnb they are giving a massive middle finger to the locals. You do not have a right to a cheap holiday and it should not come at the expense of those just trying to live their lives.<p>This was in Hong Kong if anyone was wondering so all the America specific issues don't apply.
The reporting on New Orleans is frustrating. They quote city officials complaining about the registration system being shut down and losing years of work, and they quote Airbnb saying that the system was shut down because the city changed the law and made it ineffective.<p>Seems like the journalist could've figure out what really happened here and just reported it rather than printing two conflicting accounts and wiping their hands of it.
Edit, it was shut down because my local area has a rule against bed and breakfasts that aren't located on a main road.<p>Our Airbnb got shut down after a year by the local government. It wasn't a safety thing, it was a competition thing. Our Red Roof Inn charges 60 a night, but we charged 80 a night.<p>Our reviews could make me tear up. People saying they had the best stay of their life.<p>Asking them what they wanted for breakfast, hot tub temp, Nerf guns, and chatting. People loved it.<p>But we stopped. Government....
I think hotel zoning should be loosened and maybe some of the regs.<p>There's clearly demand.<p>I don't buy the idea hotels are disruptive, in my urban community there are zero, but tons of commercial space there'd be no problem at all with one across the street.<p>In fact, it'd be good for business. Tons of offices, zero hotel space. Not good.<p>Some innovation in management i.e. no checkin, cleaner only come when you've gone, etc. etc. and we might get some material efficiencies.
The more I look at AirBnb, it reality it seems like a conspiracy to enable illegal activity (illegal listings, not collecting taxes). I wonder if in the future, a US Attorney or State Attorney General will attempt to bring criminal charges against the principals of the company. The threat of real jail time would do wonders to get their attention.
I think AirBnb is a wonderful, wonderful company. I don't want to stay in a hotel, and I don't want all of the hotel problems, including price. I value Airbnb's competition and think they are trying to do the best they can. Looking back at my history, 39 interactions across the country and not a single problem.
<i>To be sure, these aren’t Airbnb’s taxes, any more than Hilton “pays” taxes for its guests’ hotel stays. Rather, the officials sparring with Airbnb want the company to collect and forward the taxes from guests, much as hotels do.</i><p>So this is local governments trying to railroad an online information/marketplace/intermediation firm into becoming a tax collector. The local governments can't practically collect the taxes, so they're extra-legally trying to bully AirBNB into doing it.<p>Business models are changing along with the societal changes in communications technology. Governments are pretending to themselves that this isn't a society-level change they should adapt to. (How would collecting such taxes be much different from collecting sales taxes?)