Sorry AirBnB Hipsters, I’ll Take Health and Safety Over the Cult of Disruption

http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/25/fawlty-logic/

by ssclafani • 16 years ago

82 101 16 years ago

jim_h7• 16 years ago

FUD. I'll summarize for you below. I call it FUD since the author never provides any sources or anything to actually back up what he writes.

"don’t want to be burned alive by faulty wiring"

"lack of fire exits or basic electrical safety"

"hell of noise and violence and shady goings"

"don’t want to be robbed, or scammed or murdered"

"credit card and not have that card cloned"

"drug-addled European backpackers armed with camping stoves"

"used by gangsters and slum lords to drive families from their apartments"

"fleece tourists into spending their vacations under unsafe roofs"

hipsterelitist• 16 years ago

You're skipping the one very good and valid point he makes in the article, which is that the bill actually has an exemption which pretty much permits services like AirBnB to exist, if not thrive. Basically, short term rentals are acceptable as long as the owner is present... this means less competition for your average AirBnB user.

Given this exemption, it makes me question why exactly AirBnB was so up in arms about this, especially with their rhetoric being centered on protecting the little guy. That being said, I love the service, though if I had more cash I'd take a hotel every time.

jim_h7• 16 years ago

Also this: "absent owners can lend their rooms, but are banned from taking money".

This means people that go on vacation cannot take in renters.

(Sorry, your point was a bit lost in all the FUD that was in that article.)

j_baker3• 16 years ago

Automatic upvote for having come up with that username before reading this article's title.

dman• 16 years ago

In one of the past AirBnB articles about NYC the author mentioned that many landlords owning multiple apartments are making money on their vacant apartments by renting them on AirBnB. Maybe a bulk of AirBnB revenue comes from these operators who are doing hotel rentals on scale?

patio11• 16 years ago

I don't remember any particular public comment from AirBnB. Speaking generally, I think any business would react negatively to having a powerful competitor convince the government to rule a segment of their business illegal. After all, all it takes is a quick amendment to the law later to eliminate "the loophole being abused by vagrants, drunks, and foreigners" and suddenly you're guilty of Felony Interference With Business Model.

One's marketing and PR posture does not necessarily mirror the totality of one's business. If I was planting an article in the New York Times, it would focus on a poor Hispanic girl learning at a NYC school which has a number who loves school now rather than on a middle class white boy learning at a suburban Illinois school which has a name who got a candied apple at the Halloween party last year. Two true stories, but the one which pays the rent is not the one that gives NYT reporters weak knees.

mechanical_fish• 16 years ago

it makes me question why exactly AirBnB was so up in arms about this

Well, one obvious problem is that losing a big subset of your business is always bad.

But another problem, which I just found, is that these fine points of the law, if they exist, are nowhere to be seen on the web. All the immediately obvious Google hits paraphrase the law as "AirBnB and Craigslist short-term rentals now illegal in NYC". So that's a first-order marketing problem.

It also adds fuel to the FUD fire, as we are seeing right here in the linked article. Suddenly every AirBnB host is being accused of running a flea-infested, credit-card-scamming, fire-hazard rat trap. That's a second-order marketing problem, but it could prove even worse than the first-order one: The law only applies in NYC, but FUD can spread everywhere.

Finally, there are the legal problems. This law gives the cops, and whoever tips off the cops, a lever with which to hassle AirBnB guests and hosts alike. Just because you're ultimately going to be found innocent doesn't mean that being hassled by the cops is a barrel of fun. If it happens to any extent it's bound to hurt the reputation of services like AirBnB, especially among foreign travelers, who are probably damn scared of American police as it is.

And, of course, to prevent a raft of lawsuits AirBnB must now carefully educate its NYC hosts about the law, and pay a lawyer to draft an airtight agreement for the hosts to sign to indicate that they understand the law, and defend any lawsuits that spring up when people get busted in NYC and blame AirBnB anyway despite all those precautions...

moxiemk1• 16 years ago

That part had me puzzled - does 'owner' include renters?

This does seem to alleviate any legitamate concerns about the bill, as long as renters count as owners (ie, if I have a free room in my apartment, I can put it on AirBnB)

If its only _owners_, though, its quite draconian, as most NYC building owners don't live in their buildings.

inboulder2• 16 years ago

Notice how this 'valid point' has nothing to do with all the other 'safety' red herring nonsense. Forcing the owner to be present cripples the opportunity to sublet, which is exactly what the hotels want.

jbooth6• 16 years ago

Ok, he's probably being hyperbolic.

All the same. There's a reason that hotels have to be licensed, and it's because people occasionally die if they're not.

Do you consider the board of health restaurant inspections to be a bad idea?

jim_h7• 16 years ago

"There's a reason that hotels have to be licensed, and it's because people occasionally die if they're not."

Show us something that backs up your statement. People die all the time. Even from things that are heavily regulated and licensed.

invisible• 16 years ago

OK... "some dreadful, some absolute flea-pit shit holes by the side of highways in Dallas" - so "flea-pit shit holes" are safer than an apartment complex that has 100 other people living there daily? Oh, and his parents own hotels. It's pretty ironic for him to complain about a service which complained about legislation that is hurting their business (which involves them lessening the hotel industries profitability, phew)...

justin_vanw2• 16 years ago

let me paraphrase the article: "GET OFF MY LAWN YOU PUNK KIDS"

full disclosure: the startup I work at uses AirBNB when we bring in potential new hires, unless they insist on a hotel. We have never had anything but the absolute best experience, and I haven't spoken to anyone who has used it that didn't become an evangelist for it. But I guess paranoia and hypothetical boogy men trumps empirical data over at tech-crunch.

sandofsky2• 16 years ago

I wonder how you phrase the offer.

If I were planning to interview with a company and they suggested I use the service, I would get the impression the company is cheap beyond practicality, and find a way to politely back out of the interview.

smokinn3• 16 years ago

I would think the same.

There's obviously a market for people who don't mind sleeping with strangers but I'm definitely not in it. I'm way too paranoid that I would get robbed.

The credit card cloning example from the original article would probably be my biggest fear. I'd be checking my credit card purchases multiple times a day for weeks I'm sure. While actually there I'm sure I would put my wallet, phone and anything else that's valuable in a bag and sleep on top of it. It wouldn't be a very relaxing night's sleep just before an interview.

On the other hand, hostels tend to be cheaper than AirBnB and I have no problems sleeping there.

j_baker3• 16 years ago

There's a difference between being cheap and being frugal. Learn to recognize the difference. Frugality is a good sign, cheapness isn't.

Frugality: "If at all possible, I'd prefer if you used airbnb. If you don't want to, that's cool."

Cheapness: "We won't spend more than $50 a night in San Francisco."

kaens2• 16 years ago

I, on the other hand, would have a higher impression of the company, as I think that promoting and supporting business models that more directly enable individuals to make a living without a lot of middlemen is important right now.

Confusion5• 16 years ago

You're not interviewing with a company: you're interviewing with a startup. They're not going to offer you the salary you could get elsewhere either. If you take that as a sign they're cheap, you do not want to work for a startup.

justin_vanw2• 16 years ago

If you can't deal with a reasonable level of cheap, don't apply at a startup. You don't get rich by spending other peoples money on hotel rooms.

w1ntermute• 16 years ago

Disclosure: I like hotels a lot – and I’ve spent much of my life in them. Both of my parents are career-long hoteliers, first managing large corporate chain units and now owning their own hotel in the UK.

Why would you even bother taking the opinion of such a biased source seriously?

projectileboy3• 16 years ago

Ditto. I respect Techcrunch enough that I actually can't believe they published such a ridiculous article. My family (me plus wife and 3 kids) have used vrbo.com for our last two vacations (granted, not many data points). In each case, we saved money over staying in a hotel, enjoyed superior lodging over a hotel at almost any price range, and in both cases enjoyed far greater customer service over any hotel experience I've ever had.

Any time someone trots out the tired old argument of "well, with big huge companies, you have recourse if something goes bad", I always want to know which big company X they're talking about. Whether it's dealing with the DMV, trying to get JDBC driver bug fixes from Oracle, trying to get billing questions answered from Comcast, or trying to get the shower in you room fixed at a <major hotel chain here>, big organizations simply aren't organized around their customers. There may be legitimate reasons to pick a major hotel chain over AirBnB or the like, but customer satisfaction hardly seems like the best avenue of attack.

But of course none of this is rocket science... Whenever an industry resorts to competing through legislation, they aren't fighting the good fight to provide you with a better quality of life.

yurisagalov• 16 years ago

Well, for one, because it's an opinion... He's overly dramatic in his post and he doesn't present a lot of facts, but I think he's entitled to his opinion, especially as long as he's honest about his bias...

billswift• 16 years ago

"Opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one"; and this one really stinks. EDIT- "this one" refers to the original article, not the parent comment; sorry for any confusion.

JulianMorrison• 16 years ago

You go right ahead and do that - great thing about a free market, it makes room for everyone.

richcollins3• 16 years ago

Because I don’t want to be burned alive by faulty wiring. Because I don’t want to be robbed, or scammed or murdered. Because I want to pay by credit card and not have that card cloned. Because I want legal recourse if something goes wrong.

That government licensing will protect you from these better than the market is an untested assumption.

Locke16892• 16 years ago

How would you test that? How many people would have to die in fires or slums before we consider the hypothesis "proven"?

Empact2• 16 years ago

So we're banning this the avoid deaths-by-fire? Can you name a single example to justify the restraint? And if you could, wouldn't it apply to residences in general, not just those let out by their owners?

richcollins3• 16 years ago

If people are afraid of unsafe rental conditions, they should rely on a trusted third party assessment of the safety of the room they plan to rent. How do you support the assumption that the government's assessment is more likely to be accurate than that of a private organization?

cynicalkane• 16 years ago

Your post seems to bear a mistrust of government regulation in general. Actually, certification and licensing are standard economic solutions to many market problems. The argument isn't over whether this is true or not (AFIAK, in the economic world, only Mises-wingnuts think it's untrue) but whether it's applicable here.

nl2• 16 years ago

That government licensing will protect you from these better than the market is an untested assumption.

Actually, that isn't true.

Many building code laws (and by extension hotel laws requiring fire escape access etc) were enacted because of large scale urban fires (eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fire_safety_legislat..., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Baltimore_Fire#Legacy).

In general, building codes and related safety regulations for hotels have strong scientific and engineering testing behind them.

It's true that these regulations are often imperfect. But it is also true that they have been tested and proven to be better than the absence of them.

kiba• 16 years ago

Sometime, the government just take the regulation code from private sources, such as Underwriter Labs. In fact, UL sets the standard from building code, household checmical, and fire-fighting equipments, and more.

However, safety, like anything else is a tradeoff. There is no such thing as a perfectly safe building. Even if you were to make it totally safe, it would be too expensive to use or construct.

You want safety? Just how much are you willing to pay?

richcollins3• 16 years ago

That there were fires due to poor engineering practices 100+ years ago doesn't provide evidence that the market wouldn't create better solutions than government regulations in the present.

bluesmoon3• 16 years ago

FWIW, the bill still allows couchsurfing where exchange of money is strictly prohibited by the terms of service.

brianmckenzie• 16 years ago

You're just as likely to have unsafe wiring in your leased apartment as w/an AirBnB situation. Same goes for most of the stuff he said.

The article doesn't make any sense to me.

greenlblue• 16 years ago

Is this guy for real? I understand the need for minimum safety standards but the ban against AirBnB and their ilk goes a bit far.

jdminhbg• 16 years ago

Even by the standards of Techcrunch, this is a particularly egregious exercise in begging the question.

defen• 16 years ago

Wow...talk about a flamebait article. This one was so bad that I finally went ahead and actually added an entry in /etc/hosts for techcrunch.com pointing to 127.0.0.1, something I had been "threatening" to do for a while.

makmanalp• 16 years ago

I'm sorry, but his claims seem to apply to a lot of hostels but not to any of the airbnb homes I've been to. Public health concerns, egregious conditions, credit card fraud ... If things like this happened in an airbnb home, they'd get a bad rating and a bad comment explaining what went on, effectively ruining the rest of their business. Also, payments happen through airbnb so that also gets rid of a lot of problems and ripoff issues. There is a world of difference between the hostels / illegal hotels mentioned and airbnb.

jerguismi• 16 years ago

For hostels, there are sites like hostelbookers.com and hostelworld.com, and reviews matter a lot with those sites. If you choose only top reviewed places, you will get good service for sure.

edanm• 16 years ago

Then again, he also says that the laws don't apply to most AirBnB homes, either.

pg• 16 years ago

You know you've made it when you become material for linkbait.

barmstrong• 16 years ago

Yep - I think Paul Carr's schtick since he started there has just been to take the most outrageous position possible to try and shock, awe, and offend his way to page views. It's probably working to some extent, but at the end of the day there isn't any substance to it - it's just a cheap trick.

projectileboy3• 16 years ago

I think he means AirBnB...

shadowsun7• 16 years ago

http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/21/airbnb-brian-chesky/

Airbnb's founder is himself living on Airbnb for the next coupla months (or even indefinitely - though he doesn't say). If that isn't a plus for dependability, I don't know what is.

Edit: here's the first blog post - http://blog.airbnb.com/living-on-airbnb-0

seldo• 16 years ago

I wasn't aware that the law has an exemption for short-term lets if the owner is present -- which is almost all AirBnB lets that I've seen, isn't it?

jonknee2• 16 years ago

> which is almost all AirBnB lets that I've seen, isn't it?

That's more Couchsurfing's territory. There are plenty of shares on AirBnB, but whole apartments and even buildings are commonly listed too.

inboulder2• 16 years ago

"Sorry AirBnB Hipsters, I’ll Take Health and Safety Over the Cult of Disruption"

And you were free to do that already, why force everyone else? (what is that again hotel lobby?)

groaner• 16 years ago

What the heck is NSFW about this?

samratjp• 16 years ago

Read pg's post above - Linkbait!

megablast2• 16 years ago

The techcrunch section is called NSFW, it is a weekly writeup about something or other.

angrycoder• 16 years ago

first response, why is the main character from "Up in the Air" writing blog posts.

second response, Techcrunch has become the Fox News of technology blogs.

hdctambien• 16 years ago

I agree with the author, but he definitely could have gone about his argument a bit more civilly.

As an example of the type of people that would/will abuse AirBnB and similar services I submit this article describing my last landlord: http://www.tenant.net/Other_Areas/Massachusetts/jaffe.html . It is dated 1994, but they are still up to the same tricks 16 years later (I lived in one of their houses for the last year). I can't imagine the field day they would have if they knew about AirBnB and the like.

noodle• 16 years ago

i find it hard to take this angry rant seriously.

if it were much more calm, with rational arguments and justifications, i might actually agree, or at least agree to disagree.

Sorry AirBnB Hipsters, I’ll Take Health and Safety Over the Cult of Disruption

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