The “Inside Airbnb” project has earned the home-sharing company bad press

https://backchannel.com/a-lone-data-whiz-is-fighting-airbnb-and-winning-7fd49513266e

by thewhitetulip • 9 years ago

131 99 9 years ago

xkrackerx• 9 years ago

Sifting through data looking for the unseen is one thing but this has got to be the biggest waste of time ever. AirBnB giving people a place to sleep. Yes, strangers in your apartment building..like you know your neighbors anyway.

Neliquat• 9 years ago

I lived next to a popular airbnb rental. The lack of neighborly respect, trash, and noise are not imagined problems. At this point cops now cruise my rural dirt road once a day just because of it. Commercial activity in a residential area is a serious problem.

random_rr• 9 years ago

I just purchased a home next to an AirBnB house - it's a mixed bag - well, it's pretty much all downsides.

More Uber/Lyft/taxi traffic at random hours of night - check

Strange people coming and going, pickups at all hours - check

Trash cans are never brought back from the street - check

Yard care - non existent Socialization - zero

There's 0 contribution to the neighborhood from an AirBnB house - I say this as a person who has no problem having a roommate in my own home. There's pretty much zero incentive for an AirBnB'er to give a shit about the neighborhood (I don't blame them).

This isn't an outlier. A lot of my friends live in houses that are pretty much crash pads (Arlington/DC area), and there's the same problem - when people only live somewhere for a month or two, they don't participate in the community.

ArtDev2• 9 years ago

Permanent crappy neighbors (like a frat house) would probably be worse.

It sounds like the owner/host is doing a poor job of selecting their guests. Have you talked with them first?

weeksie4• 9 years ago

It's not about people being uncomfortable with others in the building (a valid complaint, however).

It's about cities like NYC that have less than one percent vacancy rates, where a couple of AirBNB related effects put upward pressure on rents:

1) A person can stay in an apartment they wouldn't otherwise be able to afford, pushing rents up (I personally know several people who maintain apartments like this, either by leaving for a couple days per month or maintaining an apartment after moving out of town.)

2) A full apartment stays off the market because it is being used as a dedicated hotel

Both of these make a difference in rent prices, though it's hard to say how much.

I'd be happy to see a ban on AirBNB while residential vacancy rates are lower than 3%. I love the service but not what it does to my already pretty unaffordable city.

yummyfajitas3• 9 years ago

Yes, it's true that in a city with an artificial housing scarcity like NYC, AirBnB alters the distribution of who gets to consume housing. It opens the market to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to purchase.

Similarly, if we allow illegal immigrants to rent flats then that will also push rents higher. Should we attempt to prevent this as well? If not, why not?

megablast2• 9 years ago

I guess we can bury our heads into the sands with the problems that Airbnb or Uber creates because we enjoy the services.

ArtDev2• 9 years ago

Probably because they solve more problems then they cause.

jstanley4• 9 years ago

I find the anti-AirBnB comments on this site quite confusing, because in most other cases HN seems to be pro-free markets. If a landlord wants to rent their place out to short-term tenants, and tenants want to rent it, and AirBnB want to act as a marketplace, I can't see what the harm is.

You don't have any right to say who comes and goes to your neighbours' properties, any more than they have any right to say who comes and goes to your property.

If you want to decide who gets to stay in a given house, you should buy that house. Otherwise it's none of your business.

amelius2• 9 years ago

There are rules for renting out appartments for good reasons. For example, it influences the worth of appartments around it, and it messes up housing costs in a broader area.

Another example of the free market not working outside a very simplistic view.

ryanlol2• 9 years ago

Can you make a good argument for why free market doesn't work here?

I don't feel that ...

There are rules for renting out appartments for good reasons. For example, it influences the worth of appartments around it, and it messes up housing costs in a broader area.

... is really an useful argument against free market as it fails to explain why either of those are inherently bad things.

jstanley4• 9 years ago

If a new participant enters a market and that causes changes in pricing, it is not because the new participant has made the market less efficient.

If the new participant was offering a worse deal than the incumbents, nobody would trade with them. It is only because the new participant is offering a better deal than the incumbents that their actions change the market prices. And that's a good thing.

CPLX3• 9 years ago

Of course you have a right to say who comes and goes in your neighbors properties and what kinds of things they are allowed to do, as I am sure you would insist were they to open a concert venue or dog fighting arena.

3825• 9 years ago

Of course you have a right to say who comes and goes in your neighbors properties and what kinds of things they are allowed to do, as I am sure you would insist were they to open a concert venue or dog fighting arena.

Noise complaint is a valid argument up to a certain point. Of course, I don't want anyone to have a concert upstairs.

Don't get me wrong. I am no fan of Uber or Airbnb or many of the things they represent. However, we must agree that the ends do not justify the means. This is just one step away from FUD like "Oh, if we have Airbnb we might have {{insert trendy to hate -- black, Hispanic, Arabic, Chinese, Canadian}} people staying over for the weekend next door and who knows what they're going to do to me in my sleep". I think if you subscribe to this idea then we should throw the baby away with the bath water as well. Nobody is allowed to visit anyone in their homes. Absolutely no parties even if you own your home. Only the legal registered occupant may be present at any time (I guess we will add provisions for EMS and law enforcement).

I will agree with you the day I can get a fellow passenger kicked out of a train or an aeroplane for failing to quiet their devil spawn that won't stop wailing for over n hours.

I am not accusing you of malice but please realize that the anti-Airbnb rhetoric is no more of a "grass-roots" movement than the so-called "tea party movement". Yes, there are people with valid concerns. No, they are not the ones driving this train. It appears we share a common goal with "them" but we do not.

morgante• 9 years ago

Of course you have a right to say who comes and goes in your neighbors properties and what kinds of things they are allowed to do

Why? I have a right to intervene if their behavior affects me (ie. noise) but I certainly don't have a right to decide what my neighbors do.

If my neighbors want to host a swingers' party next door, so long as it's quiet then it's absolutely none of my business. Similarly, if they want to do short-term rentals, so long as noise levels are kept acceptably low I don't see what say I should have in the matter.

willholloway8• 9 years ago

That's an apples to oranges comparison.

A short term rental is residential use, just like a long term rental is residential use. In both cases the property is used by people to live and sleep in.

The question is does local government have the right to regulate the duration of a rental lease?

I would argue it doesn't, and it's a blatant violation of sacred property rights for a government to take that power.

The answer to problems of noise is to enforce noise ordinances. Guests will keep quiet if they are told that the town hands out $500 fines for violations of decibel levels after curfew.

There are simple market and incentive based solutions but so many Americans are so quick to jump on the "Ban! Regulate!" knee jerk train these days.

gaius• 9 years ago

You don't have any right to say who comes and goes to your neighbours' properties

But you do. You agree to abide by certain rules when you rent/buy and your neighbors have every right to see that the rules you ALL agreed to are followed.

xapata2• 9 years ago

Not everyone belongs to a home-owners' association.

chasing2• 9 years ago

I'm not anti-AirBnB. I'm pro-community. A house is in a neighborhood. An apartment in a shared building. I think we need to make sure we have some rules in place to make sure AirBnB-style sharing is a benefit to everyone and not just a benefit to a few at the expense of everyone else.

avip• 9 years ago

If a city wants to block all roads and cutoff water and electricity to said landlord (it's their infrastructure), I can't see what the harm is either.

mattnewton• 9 years ago

The city is run by the people though, not private ownership. Apples to oranges.

rhapsodic4• 9 years ago

You don't have any right to say who comes and goes to your neighbours' properties, any more than they have any right to say who comes and goes to your property.

But I do have a say in what types of commerce are allowed to take place in my community, or my country for that matter.

And although I am normally a laissez faire capitalist, I would love to see Airbnb utterly destroyed through lawsuits and over-regulation. Why? For political reasons. The latest tactic of the left is to attack any commercial entity that has the temerity to express any pro-Trump sentiments. And I think the only way for the right to counter that is to employ the exact same tactic, a hundred-fold, against companies who publicly oppose Trump, or political agendas supported by the right. And Airbnb, led by the smug boy-billionaire Brian Chesky, falls squarely in that category.

There are numerous stories[1] of people's lives being turned upside down as a result of using Airbnb. I think televised congressional hearings are called for. And there are probably billions of dollars worth of commerce that are going untaxed as a result of Airbnb. I don't think a few click-through TOS agreements should shield them from responsibility.

1. http://www.airbnbhell.com/

chasing2• 9 years ago

You make good points about community.

As far as politics, you're playing that game of false-equivalence that I thought we'd kind of moved past. Pro- and Anti-Trump aren't just two teams with different uniforms.

brandall102• 9 years ago

" If a landlord wants to rent their place out to short-term tenants, and tenants want to rent it, and AirBnB want to act as a marketplace, I can't see what the harm is."

Have you ever lived next a to unit used for AirBnB? I have. After one incident where 8 college students partied the weekend away non-stop, I finally let the HOA know. They then aggressively enforced the building policy of a 28 day rental minimum.

mahyarm2• 9 years ago

The solution to that is large HOA fines. They will quickly stop doing AirBnB or make sure the people are quiet. If a bunch of college students or emotional people moved in next door, you would have similar problems.

Scarblac• 9 years ago

If a landlord wants to rent their place out to short-term tenants, and tenants want to rent it, and AirBnB want to act as a marketplace, I can't see what the harm is.

It's classic tragedy of the commons. Cities that are great to live in and also very attractive for tourists are obviously great places to rent out an apartment over AirBnB in.

But when half the city does that, then the whole character of the place changes and what was previously great about the city is lost. That is harm.

Luckily, cities have the power to regulate this sort of thing.

megablast2• 9 years ago

Exactly. And if they want to change their house into an iron smelter or a coal power plant, they should be able to as well. Free market!!!!

wilde• 9 years ago

There's less incentive on short term renters to respect the people around their rental. This leads to all sorts of bad behaviors.

That said, I think it's a question of "why do we have zoning laws". AirBNB gets to profit from encouraging people to break the law, while the rest of us have to live with the decreased housing supply. If we had fewer restrictions on getting long term supply in place, or more effective restrictions on AirBnBs, I think there'd be fewer complaints. Right now it's super one sided.

zelos• 9 years ago

Presumably the market for renting out rooms started out virtually completely free and over the years regulations have been voted in due to problems caused by that free market.

That's not to say that those regulations are all necessary or helpful, but clearly the free market isn't enough in this case.

Same with Uber - it starts as a free-for-all, then you get stories like this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/11/uber-to-ban-c...

and they start introducing rules around it.

geebee• 9 years ago

Think of it this way: I would like to trade my right to run a hotel out of my house in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that my neighbors won't do this either. I should like to have this enforced through a set of rules, in my case zoning laws, that apply to everyone who buys in a particular geographic region. The law should be clear, so that everyone who does buy here knows that the agreement they've entered.

It sounds like you don't believe that residents in a particular neighborhood should be permitted to enter this legally binding arrangement.

This is a deep, fundamental disagreement between us, one that probably goes to the heart of how we perceive the relationship between an individual and the community.

mydpy2• 9 years ago

He's not alone. The article talks about the importance of his collaborator Slee. Weird, click-baitey article title.

dang2• 9 years ago

Ok, we replaced the title with the subtitle (shortened to fit).

mydpy2• 9 years ago

Sorry, I was criticizing the referenced article not your title on HN.

debt• 9 years ago

"data activist"

beginning of a new type of activism right here.

corporations manipulate the data. data activist or journalists are tasked with teasing out the bullshit in the data itself.

Overtonwindow• 9 years ago

Inaccurate title.

CodeWriter232• 9 years ago

There's no excuse for AirBNB permitting listings of multiple dwellings in the localities that prohibit it. In order to produce the Federally-mandated 1099K, they have to take the host's SSN and keep it on file. Even if someone uses multiple accounts, they can simple compare the SSN of an account adding a listing and reject the listing is the SSN already has a different listing on file for the locality in question.

x0x02• 9 years ago

The excuse is that's obviously where the majority of their revenue comes from. Why else would they fight so hard and risk being banned entirely?

jgalt212• 9 years ago

agree. 80/20 rule in effect here. no different than the power sellers on Ebay who drive the lion's share of transactions.

CodeWriter232• 9 years ago

So it's ok to break the law if your primary source of income is derived from illegal activity?

daurnimator• 9 years ago

I only gave airbnb my SSN because they were very clear that it would only be kept for purposes of producing my 1099K. If that changed (maybe it has? I don't use airbnb any more) then that would be a change of their TOS.

dastbe• 9 years ago

Would you have no/less concern if they encrypted your SSN and used that for non-1099k related tasks?

asher_• 9 years ago

This isn't obviously true (nor obviously false) to me.

If airbnb added a unique index to the SSN (or a two-column index with SSN and locality) would you consider that a TOS violation?

chx3• 9 years ago

Here's a single data point: https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/8618464?checkin=24-03-2017&check... I reported this listing to Airbnb more than a year ago and it's still up. As the review says, it's a shitty motel and if you look at the map https://goo.gl/maps/agvWpTr7pEN2 or go there personally (which I did) you will immediately see it can not be anything else but a motel because there are no private dwellings at the junction at all! (There's another room https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/9093980?checkin=22-02-2017&check... listed, same thing)

I did a crazy one week trip last January, every day sleeping somewhere else: Tel Hazor, Tel Megiddo, Beer-Sheva, Avdat - Mitzpe Ramon, Eilat, Petra, Amman, fly home. I do not drive. I do not read or speak any Semitic language. It was quite a trip.

kobayashi2• 9 years ago

Yikes. Airbnb really needs to deal with abuses such as those. That's just not fair for customers.

I'm interested about why you mention not speaking any Semitic languages. English is pretty-well universally understood there - did you have any problems with language barriers?

chx3• 9 years ago

The inability to read is a major hurdle when trying to mass transit. Having a data connection and bus.co.il helps. Not speaking the language only caused problems in Jordan and even there not much.

c06n• 9 years ago

English is pretty-well universally understood there

No, this is absolutely not the case. I was there just over Christmas, and we did have problems to communicate with locals. Sure, the college educated all speak English. They don't work as bus drivers or at the gas station though. But these are the people I interact with the most as a tourist.

That is not to say that people aren't multilingual there. I'm sure they all speak two or three languages. Such as Hebrew, Arabic or Russian.

Israel isn't just Tel Aviv.

chx3• 9 years ago

I just looked it up, it's the Savyonei Hagalil Hotel (formally Etap Galilee), there's nothing else there.

cletus• 9 years ago

Wow. As for the legality of all this, it's really beyond my ken.

Firstly, there's the question of jurisdiction. If a resident of the stste of New York uses a server outside of NY belonging to a company outside of NY to rent out an apartment in NYC, does the state of NY have jurisdiction? What about NYC?

Years ago Amazon took the stance that sales were interstate commerce and they shouldn't be forced to collect sales tax on interstate transactions. They ended up caving to New York's so-called "Amazon tax" [1].

Airbnb seems to be taking the view that it's not their problem if individuals violate NY/NYC law. Personally I think that's purely a self-serving stance a bit like how Craigslist turned a blind eye to prostitution.

I believe that illegal hotels in a few cities are Airbnb's core business and the efforts of cities to enforce laws prohibiting such are an existential threat. I believe Airbnb knows this.

I also believe that Airbnb will ultimately lose this one.

What this PDF represents is at best misleading and data manipulation and at worse misrepresentation. If at some point Airbnb has or will respond under oath or to a subpoena with this information well that could be a crime.

Whatever the case I think this is going to take years to play out.

[1] http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/new-york-internet-sal...

willholloway8• 9 years ago

My town had a recent dustup over prohibiting AirBnB, some people claimed that it was against zoning regulations, the town attorney and planning and zoning looked into it and decided it was beyond their power to regulate tenure, or the length of a lease.

Short term rentals are considered residential use in my town, and they make up the backbone of the local economy. A public forum was called and almost two hundred locals, many of whom have lived here for decades, spoke in favor.

Only two cranks got up and spoke against. There reasons were all about hypothetical harms and imagined worst case scenarios.

My town is a popular vacation destination for families and weddings. There are about 200 short term rentals and the two opponents were unable to come up with any actual examples of misbehavior, there was not one noise complaint, prostitution, drug use or any other worst case scenarios trotted out against AirBnB. There was a recent prostitution arrest at a local hotel though.

The difference between AirBnB and hotels, is that AirBnB runs an extensive criminal and sex offender background check on hosts and guests. They even check the terrorist watch list!

One opponent at first tried to say that an AirBnB house was hosting loud parties on weekends, and people were drunkenly sleeping in their cars and knocking on their windows. The newspaper ran this story prominently. It turned out it was the owner's young adult children that were throwing the parties when it wasn't rented to families on AirBnB.

My state has struck a deal with AirBnB to collect occupancy tax directly and we are contributing a lot in taxes in a state with a budget crisis.

Homes and rentals are still abundant and affordable, and our town gets all kinds of cool visitors that enrich our town.

I love AirBnB, my town has been doing vacation rentals for a hundred years but it has made it more popular and better. The new visitors are supporting a bunch of nice new and more upscale restaurants and bars. It's really revitalized this town and made it a much for fun place for young professionals to live.

Short term rentals started the revitalization, then new eateries opened, and next I hope we can attract a few tech companies now that we are a more desirable place to live.

dexwiz• 9 years ago

Is it a desirable place to live? Or a desirable place to vacation? It sounds like your town was already a destination if it supports 200 short term rentals.

willholloway8• 9 years ago

The town is highly desirable waterfront community, the region has a bit of a jobs problem, and the town was in a funk, visitors were down, local businesses were struggling, all the towns talented young people move off to larger cities, to places that are fun.

Now this place is fun too, we have a nano-brewery opening up, hipster restaurants, new boat tours...

The town planner loves AirBnB because it lets the town use some slack housing supply like guest cottages and in-law suites to host visitors in the downtown area, where it would be impossible to build a new hotel.

And short term rentals bring in a different kind of visitor than the hotels ever did. People come and stay for a week with their family.

It's all really nice actually.

And a large majority of AirBnB hosts are women. AirBnB is empowering a lot of women to become micro real estate entrepreneurs and earn money.

When people support blanket bans, they are cutting off income and opportunity for people, mostly women.

Punish bad guests, have the police fine them. Towns make money off speeding and parking tickets, I see no reason they can't make money off the occasional guest violating a noise ordinance.

vacri4• 9 years ago

extensive criminal and sex offender background check on hosts and guests. They even check the terrorist watch list!

What elements make it 'extensive'? Also, what's the point in checking the terrorist watch list? Someone on that list isn't going to act in a way to draw attention to themselves before they're ready; it's not much of a check to brag about in terms of 'will this tenant behave?'

The difference between AirBnB and hotels...

And that hotels have public liability insurance... and don't suddenly become unavailable because of the cultural origin of your name... and generally comply with public-safety legislation designed for short-term accommodation (like fire exits)... so on and so forth.

Clearly AirBnB offers enough benefits to its users to continue, but it's far from the rosy picture you're painting to society as a whole. If AirBnB was such a uniformly rosy proposition, then they wouldn't need to lie about their activities.

rhapsodic4• 9 years ago

The difference between AirBnB and hotels, is that AirBnB runs an extensive criminal and sex offender background check on hosts and guests. They even check the terrorist watch list!

I stayed in an Airbnb condo once, and neither Airbnb nor the landlord ever knew my name. That's because the arrangements were made by a friend, and it was 4 people staying in an oceanside condo.

Did my friend violate the TOS by not providing them my name and SSN?

stuaxo• 9 years ago

Sounds like the earned their own bad press.

The “Inside Airbnb” project has earned the home-sharing company bad press

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