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[-] MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world 336 points 8 months ago

They didn't accidentally do shit. They ignored the consequences of their decisions for profit at the expense of everyone else. You don't get to make $100 billion dollars and feign ignorance about how you got it and the damage you caused to obtain it.

[-] bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 132 points 8 months ago

I still think municipalities share a significant amount of blame here. They definitely could have at least limited vacation rental saturation, and didn't do anything.

I live in a ski town, and have been to city hall meetings on this issue. The overwhelming amount of attendees at these are vacation homeowners or their representatives, and the prevailing attitude is, "fuck the locals, our profit is at stake here." A number of owners have changed their primary residence to our town just to have more say that local long term renters. These meetings are held at 2pm, when locals are working. It's about as fucked as it can get. And when we've had a sympathetic council person, they're immediately recalled or replaced the following election cycle. It's a shitshow.

During COVID, when the Airbnb boom really took off, we had a 25% resident attrition rate. That's no typo; twenty five percent of our valley's residents had to leave town because they were priced out (about 5000 in a population of 20,000) because either rents skyrocketed, or the owners of their homes sold out from beneath them. These days, much of our local labor force commutes at least an hour into town. It has gotten a little better, and some have been able to moved back, but the damage is done.

Even for prospective buyers, like my wife and I, prices are outrageous. Our current home, which is valued around $600k, would have been $200k pre COVID. And this is solely because of Airbnb assholes.

[-] frickineh@lemmy.world 58 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

My office regulates airbnbs for the city and it's very hard to do anything about it. None of the rental platforms will work with us - we've sent them about a million notices that they're collecting the wrong tax amount and they don't even bother to respond, and they just send a check every quarter but refuse to break it out by address/owner. They won't provide any data on what addresses are being rented, either. Apparently some other cities have successfully sued airbnb, but for a small city with a correspondingly small budget, that's an expense that's hard to justify to taxpayers.

We have some owners that are great - they get licensed right away, get their inspections done, no problem. Then there are other people who have done things like dig out their crawlspace themselves and turn it into non-conforming bedrooms with no egress windows - no permits or inspections, of course, and an engineer basically said the entire thing was in danger of collapsing any minute. Or the person who had a buddy do a bunch of unlicensed electrical work that was so bad the city couldn't even let the owner stay there until it was fixed. I honestly wouldn't stay in an airbnb now, having seen what I've seen - people will absolutely put renters at risk to make a buck. And we can go after them but only if we know it's happening.

I'd personally love it if rental platforms were forced to provide owner data to cities/states, and for cities to tax the shit out of rentals that aren't also owner-occupied, but I'm not in charge and the people with money have a vested interest in making sure that doesn't happen. It sucks.

[-] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 15 points 8 months ago

I'm an activist writing a housing bill to get introduced to my state legislature. Part of it specifically addresses these platforms, but I don't know what's been tried against them yet. Any tips?

[-] frickineh@lemmy.world 14 points 8 months ago

Unfortunately, I don't know too much - most of the contact has been initiated by our sales tax staff to whatever department handles tax collection on the company side, but from what they've told me, they just don't get a response. Our municipal code only allows us to go after owners if they fail to get licensed (and even that is a nightmare for us to try to do) but there's nothing about the actual companies.

It's kind of the wild west at the moment - the problem isn't evenly distributed, so there's not one catch-all solution. One of the mountain towns here said they have 700+ rentals and their official population is only like 500 people. We have <100 in a city of about 40k. It's still a problem here, but nowhere near as bad as ski towns have it. Most of the laws I've seen are aimed at the owners, not at the companies facilitating the rentals, and they range from things designed to just make sure someone's actually inspecting the rentals so no one dies all the way to making it unaffordable to rent multiple properties by charging a fuckton of taxes and fees. I'd kill for something forcing airbnb, vrbo, etc to actually cooperate.

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[-] hedgehogging_the_bed@lemmy.world 16 points 8 months ago

Visiting my husband's home town where this has happened and all his parent's friends have moved into trailers because the houses where they raised their kids were bought for insane amounts but then they couldn't afford a smaller house in the same town. Where we live now on the East Coast, we can no longer stay in our school district for less than half a million because doctors from larger urban areas keep buying the houses in our school district and we're being forced 60+100 miles out from my hometown where we raised our young kids to even begin to afford housing.

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[-] GrundlButter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 8 months ago

You don't get to make $100 billion dollars and feign ignorance about how you got it and the damage you caused to obtain it.

Don't you? I can't think of any instance of justice truly being served to billionaires, can you?

[-] eran_morad@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago

SBF recently and Madoff before him.

[-] GrundlButter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 8 months ago

Those are fair points, but I can't help but chuckle that they were brought to justice because they stole from millionaires and other billionaires to make their ill gotten gains. Probably woulda got away with it if they just stole from the poor and middle class.

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[-] Toes@ani.social 14 points 8 months ago

...decisions for profit at the expense of everyone else.

-The American Dream™

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[-] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 167 points 8 months ago

Accidentally? Man these writers will suck any corporate dick.

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 40 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yeah, real hard-hitting journalism here from... arktrek.shop?

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[-] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 86 points 8 months ago

“accidentally” 🤦‍♂️

It was - and is - entirely fucking intentional.

[-] kashifshah@lemmy.sdf.org 80 points 8 months ago

Big tech - move fast, break things, disrupt, and destroy

[-] Snapz@lemmy.world 53 points 8 months ago

This is a stupid light take, starting with the flowery version of their early 2010-ish "good intentions".

Their "guarantee" insurance was notoriously difficult to actually access if needed. This was typical enshitification from the start, they just had to do a bit more early to gain public trust, until they reached critical mass and then flipped the switch.

The drug dealer gives you the first baggie for free, not because they are good dudes that care about you saving money...

[-] demonsword@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago

The drug dealer gives you the first baggie for free

We should kill this urban legend, this simply doesn't happen in the real world

[-] Snapz@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago

Not an urban legend, just not in your first hand POV - Many examples around crack in the 80s, Molly at raves, a bump of coke at a party... All followed by, "and hey man, if you ever want more, hit me up"

When you're making definitive statements try to add "doesn't happen TO ME...." or "IMO/IME", otherwise you just sound like you base the truth of the entire world solely on your own hyper limited, lived experience.

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[-] yokonzo@lemmy.world 18 points 8 months ago

Can confirm this happened to me a few times, especially with dope, you don't know what you're talking about

[-] Kit 12 points 8 months ago

Sure it does. Or at least it happened all the time when I was in college.

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[-] Chozo@fedia.io 53 points 8 months ago

The only thing they've ever done on accident was make their logo look like a ballsack.

[-] kratoz29@lemm.ee 7 points 8 months ago

Can't unseen it now, thanks.

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[-] snownyte@kbin.social 42 points 8 months ago
[-] Vakbrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Same when NASA accidentally landed on the moon

[-] Phegan@lemmy.world 41 points 8 months ago

I don't think it was accidental

[-] Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world 32 points 8 months ago

I can't believe people trust others enough to rent their house out like a hotel. I've already seen so many problems from this I can't believe it's still legal. My neighbor moved and they turned it into an AirBnB, some kids threw a party and left some trash out that poisoned my other neighbors dog. There's a lawsuit, but the dog is still fucking dead.

[-] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 8 months ago

I don't know if I've ever been in an airbnb that's actually somebody's house. It seems like they're mostly "investment properties" that people rent out. I'm sure that's great for housing. \s

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[-] nucleative@lemmy.world 32 points 8 months ago

There are a few things humans (and thus a healthy society) require for survival. Water, food, shelter.

When we start to point unadulterated VC backed capitalism at those resources, I think we give up something in our society and culture that we don't actually want to give away.

I travel a lot worldwide and have used Airbnb quite a few times. However I'm now on the side of "Airbnb is evil".

A couple years ago had a horrific experience in a villa and Airbnb customer support didn't give a rats ass. Fortunately, my bank did and my credit card chargeback for $4,000 was successful. While I was going through that experience I came across a multitude of communities of travelers who have had equally horrific, oftentimes more horrific experiences with Airbnb where they've failed to step in and assist in any way.

Random dudes who own houses are on average unqualified in the hospitality business and not incentivized by maintaining a brand reputation. There are so many issues caused by shitty Airbnb hosts that hotels - real hotels - just don't suffer from.

So now we have this situation where a lot of spaces are allocated to hotel businesses, more space is allocated to residential housing, And any random dude who can qualify for a mortgage can take a house off the market, fill it for 10 or 15 days out of the month, and keep both a domicile unused for a resident and a hotel room empty.

This is one of the few areas where I think hotel regulations are smart.

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[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 29 points 8 months ago

Remember back before Airbnb when this was just a free thing called couch surfing?

[-] Tryptaminev@lemm.ee 25 points 8 months ago

i mean couch surfing is guest and host being there and interacting with each other.

AirBnB is getting the flat for yourself for the time you rent it.

[-] Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world 19 points 8 months ago

A big part of Airbnb used to be spending time with a host. It has since turned into just landlord via app.

[-] Tripp1976@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago

That's exactly how airBnB started though. Then they moved to renting out the whole place and now we are where we are.

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[-] power 29 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I feel like the US is far down on the victims list. Look how they massacred my boys Spain and Italy

[-] kameecoding@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago

Prague city center is basically just airbnb flats now

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[-] Spotlight7573@lemmy.world 28 points 8 months ago

It also doesn't help housing prices that the landlords are colluding to raise prices:

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fixing-algorithm-still-price-fixing

It isn't just Airbnb's fault, it's landlords wanting to maximize their return, no matter the method (short-term rentals or price fixing collusion).

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[-] ViscloReader@lemmy.world 27 points 8 months ago
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[-] kalpol@lemm.ee 25 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

https://www.insideairbnb.com

Just gonna leave this here. Pick your favorite city.

edit: guess we killed it. But there are a lot, a lot

[-] Meltrax@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Jesus. I can't find an affordable apartment in Boston but "Blue grounds" is listing fucking 372 of them on Airbnb....

EDIT: so Blueground is the biggest property holder in almost every city? Or one of the top 5 in the places it isn't #1. What the hell?

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[-] dugmeup@lemmy.world 24 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Hotels were a nightmare, cabs were a nightmare. These companies indisputably changed the game in the favour of the consumer all around the world.

Where we are now having an issue is large swaths of housing taken over by companies and investors wanting a return. As long as housing and renting are attractive for investment over and about housing and transitory renting, it will attract lots of money.

Supply must be improved to improve the housing market. This should be a continuous government function at least at the low and middle income level not just a private endeavour.

Density and public transport is the answer - not killing something that absolutely changed the game and took the hotel and cab market back to their customers begging for a chance.

[-] horsey@lemm.ee 72 points 8 months ago

Agreed on cabs but hotels haven't changed anything significantly and they're looking much better than AirBnB at this point.

[-] Plum@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago

They ripped out the carpets. It made everything better.

[-] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 29 points 8 months ago

Sure, but AirBnB and Uber didn't improve the hotel and taxi markets, they just joined them. They each took advantage of a tech debt and then lowered the barriers for entry to the market. In doing so, they made a shit ton of money by carving out market share from the fucked up systems you described.

[-] snooggums@midwest.social 26 points 8 months ago

Also by doing and end run around regulations by pretending to be people just renting their house when they are away or giving rides to people going in the same directions. That is why they have names like 'ride share' instead of 'contracted cabbies who drive their own cars'.

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[-] Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago

What wasn’t a nightmare was bed and breakfasts. They also weren’t an excuse to keep property off the housing rental market at scale.

These companies aren’t saviours, they’re businesses who rode public tech optimism and common frustration at established industries in the same fields to stay ahead of regulation and have the public demand it. Surprise, they’re the same businesses.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 8 points 8 months ago

Yes, bed and breakfasts rock, and I try to use them when I travel because the experience is way better.

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[-] AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago

Just a little fucksy wucksy :3

[-] buzz86us@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago

Maybe they should ban whole home AirBNB.. i only ever do rooms.

[-] Breezy@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

Theyd part out a hous into multiple rooms. I stayed at one airbnb that were 3 stories and each one was another airbnb, with a kitchen on the main level that had to be shared. No one used it for the 3 days i was there, but still.

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[-] eran_morad@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago

“Accident” fkn lol

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this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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