6 ms·

Good. I know that Chesky is trying to pretend that this is about people who occasionally share their homes, but that's bullshit. There are a lot of people who

by dbags 13y ago

Good. I know that Chesky is trying to pretend that this is about people who occasionally share their homes, but that's bullshit. There are a lot of people who are stuck living next to illegal, untaxed hotels because one of their neighbors AirBNBs their place full time. I know that a lot of people on this site think that if you add the words 'on the internet' you should be exempt from all regulation and taxation, but that's just not how the world works. I hope that the people who've been profiting from the lack of enforcement are forced to play on a level playing field. Disclaimer: my experience with NYC AirBNBs have been incredibly negative, including people listing with fake names, revealing that they'd given fake addresses at the last minute (when it was already too late to change plans), showing deceptive photos, and giving false descriptions.

brador 13y ago
Why would they give a fake address?
- lylejohnson 13y ago
  Because some addresses or locations in a city are more desirable than others?
  - mercurial 13y ago
    Or to avoid issues with their landlord.
    - frenger 13y ago
      You don't get the exact address until you've paid - just the street.
      - dbags 13y ago
        I've been given the wrong streets during browsing. Hosts give out an address a block or three away so their landlord is less likely to find it.
      - untog 13y ago
        It's still pretty obvious from photos, etc. I know someone who listed his apartment and was contacted by the building management, who'd seen his listing.
    - smnrchrds 13y ago
      Or because their listing under their real name and real address has too many negative reviews.
    - dbags 13y ago
      I believe it was mostly landlord dodging, but the fake address was also a better location.
- TheBiv 13y ago
  post code envy
mrcactu5 13y ago
Do you live in New York City? I don't think it's bullshit. This is about landlords who don't want individuals to make money subletting their apartments. The old rich guys in Westchester who own all the housing in the Bronx. There are a lot of people who are stuck living next to illegal, untaxed hotels because one of their neighbors AirBNBs their place full time. I don't see what's wrong with this. Landlords routinely take advantage of ill-informed tentants charging very high rates for roach-infested apartments without running hot water. These should not be on AirBNB -- the housing was illegal to begin with. AirBNB is a crapshoot - I did it one time it was amazing... since all parties involved were responsible. NYC may need to be subject to special consumer protection rules, pay taxes etc. in order to make this work. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky cautions that the government is over-reaching in its demand for data. Chesky is wrong. NYC can and should subpoena for his data - Schneiderman has the public interest in mind. New Yorkers are that shady, but someone has to read this data...
- mhb 13y ago
  Here's what's wrong with it (in the case of rent controlled apartments in NYC). The city has embraced rent control as a way of foisting the cost of "affordable" housing on landlords. As a result, apartments constrained to below-market rents receive below-market maintenance. Now illegal subletters seek to capture the benefit of this market distortion. But maybe you're right - the way to fix this problem of deteriorating housing is for the government to become more involved in micromanaging the illegal subletting.
  - chimeracoder 13y ago
    > in the case of rent controlled apartments in NYC. This is not the issue. There are very, very few rent-controlled apartments left in NYC. Almost nobody who works in the tech industry here has one, because it requires having lived in the same apartment since the 1970s. If you have one, though, you could easily be paying 5% of market rent. Rent stabilization is a very different set of laws altogether, and these apartments are also vanishing slowly. As for true rent control, landlords would love it if their rent-controlled tenants were to sublet their apartment on AirBNB. That would allow the landlord to kick the tenant out and charge market rent - 20 times more - for the apartment.
sitkack 13y ago
Mirrors my experience to a T. There are so many issues with AirBNB (bidding process, calendar, cost model, trust model) that it strikes me as being created by some naive suburban kids. The amount of work that they do to prevent out of band messaging makes any sort of meaningful discourse or authentication impossible.
- sneak 13y ago
  I get the impression you've only used it once or twice. It generally works really well, and in many cities all over the planet. I trust you provided feedback against your bad host?
  - sitkack 13y ago
    I have used it 5 times (some whole apt, some rooms). In _general_ it works o.k I travel a lot and the amount of work that one has to do (back and forth with host, broken calendaring, shady host) etc only makes sense for longer stays. If I am only going to be at place for a weekend, I'll book a hotel and be done with it. It isn't feedback against bad hosts, it is the amount of work that it takes to _not_ get a bad host which isn't comparable to weeding out bad hotels.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
>I know that a lot of people on this site think that if you add the words 'on the internet' you should be exempt from all regulation and taxation, but that's just not how the world works. >I hope that the people who've been profiting from the lack of enforcement are forced to play on a level playing field. If only there were a level playing field. I think the rebellion from the regulatory structure is a reaction to the unfairness of it. Hotel reg's, Taxi reg's, these systems unfairly favor established players and established business models.
- Xylakant 13y ago
  Hotel regulations at least partially benefit me as a customer. Hotels are subject to health checks for example. B&B places are exempt from some of the regulations, but not from all. So why don't AirBnB-hosts just go and apply for a B&B license - or maybe AirBnB handles the legalities for them. There's no conceivable reason that AirBnB-places should receive a preferred treatment in that matter - so I must admit I don't see and rebellion from the regulatory structure. They're just enforcing the rules that every other player is bound to as well. I also fail to see that adherence to health and fire code unfairly favors established players - quite to the contrary, those not adhering to the standards take an unfair advantage. One of the price differences between AirBnB and other establishments is that often AirBnB-Host don't factor in taxes just because they consider themselves exempt. Why should tax avoidance be tolerated? What's unfair about cracking down on those that cheat?
  - apineda 13y ago
    There was a discussion on this earlier as well but regarding food checks that happen annually if that. Just because it's regulated doesn't mean there is an efficient means in place to assure compliance day in and day out. You're tax dollars are being burned assuring compliance would be an additional burden you don't further want. I think if there is a guarantee of some specified level of sanitary quality (for lack of better word) before you signup for a hotel you are free to sue them if you discover they broke that contract. I know this sounds absurd but you're also free to bring in your own sheets and pillows. My point is that regulation and oversight in this centralized manner should be the last resort.
laxatives 13y ago
I'm living in one of these places now and I could not say enough negative things about the place or AirBNB. Its a mess, most of the rooms are either filled with beds or used entirely for furniture/tool storage. There were no shared trashbins until about 4-6 weeks after I had arrived. One of the guests had a severe breakdown and would spend hours in the middle of the night rapping or shouting at the top of the lungs, forcing his roommates to move to the permanent tents in the backyard. Eventually the guy left during one of his rants and disappeared for a few days, during which the landlord had us avoid calling the police because he did not want to have them involved. Worst of all, I feel like none of us are in a position to do anything. I complained within a few hours of arrival on my first day because the place is a mess, but AirBNB charges a months rent to leave early on a long term stay and there's nothing to gain in destroying our relatioships with the landlord. The rating system also makes it so that taking any action would probably result in an open flame war so that I'd probably get rejected by future landlords. I'll probably never use AirBNB again regardless.
- NathanKP 13y ago
  Wow... You guys seem to have had horrible experiences. May I ask what area you are staying in? I've stayed at Airbnb places in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn area about ten times now over the past couple years and my experience has been satisfactory every time. And I've stayed in the entire range of Airbnb, from very nice places where I'm basically a roommate for a month and eating meals with my host, etc, to places where I rarely see the owner and it is obvious they don't live there but just rent it out, to an old loft that was subdivided into small rooms and being rented out to four different Airbnb guests at once. The subdivided loft one was probably the most illegal one I ever stayed in because it certainly wasn't up to code but it was still very cool and the other guests were polite and quiet. The only time I've ever had a bad experience with AirBNB was once when staying at a place in San Francisco which turned out to be very dirty due to the owner being out of country and just having his next door neighbor give the keys to short term renters. The rating system also makes it so that taking any action would probably result in an open flame war so that I'd probably get rejected by future landlords. I call bullshit on this. Leaving a bad review on a host is not going to get you rejected by future landlords unless those landlords are also running dumps and they don't want to get bad reviews, and in that case you probably don't want to stay there anyway. The key is to find places that have lots of reviews and read them. If you see anything amiss don't stay there. If you stick to well reviewed places you will have a great experience. If you choose to break new ground and try completely new unreviewed places (which I have done from time to time) it is more of a gamble. You can also get some great experiences that way as well, because in general newer, unreviewed places don't charge as much so as to attract people, while the older very well reviewed and run places will charge nearly double in most cases compared to brand new places. Basically, you get what you pay for, as with many other things in life.
ryguytilidie 13y ago
"I know that a lot of people on this site think that if you add the words 'on the internet' you should be exempt from all regulation and taxation, but that's just not how the world works." Yeah dude, you're right, it's this point you made up that no one is upset about that people are ACTUALLY upset about...? Oh, I see, because your experience has been negative you should definitely make up a strawman and beat it to death for no good reason. We all know that projecting views on everyone on an entire site is a super healthy and productive way to make a point.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  Don't speak for me. I'm upset about the lack of taxation and regulation. I care about it in the AirBnb context, I also care about it in the Lyft and Sidecar context. These are all cases where we have a massive provisioning of services, in a context where caveat emptor is not actually practical, in industries where vendor-side abuse has been historically endemic. We regulated the slum-hotels of the 20s and 30s out of existence. We regulated gypsy cabs (mostly) out of existence. I personally still recall living in a time where unregulated cabs would hold passengers for ransom by driving them to the middle of nowhere. Thankfully I no longer live in such a time or place. I'm concerned that in our obsession with "move fast and break things" we're doing a lot of the latter. Some of these regulations are powered by vested interests. Some of it is historical and represent hard-learned lessons. The tech industry's collective attitude towards them seems to be "all laws are archaic and outdated, ignore all laws that don't benefit us". I for one don't believe in this for one second.
  - jellicle 13y ago
    The tech industry is driven by 20-year-olds who have zero education or practical experience to understand why a lot of things are the way they are. It turns out there are real reasons why hotels are regulated, why banking is regulated, why cabs are regulated, why meat-packing is regulated (still waiting for a internet-based meat-packing startup - Mechanical Turk meets Tyson Foods! Just slice the side of beef we send you, in your kitchen, then pack it back into the cooler with the pre-addressed label...), and so on. The reason always is: because the business has been PROVEN TO FUCK PEOPLE OVER WHEN UNREGULATED. (Longer answer: there's a systemic power problem between the provider and user of these businesses. Tourists have no power to avoid being fucked over, for example. Meat with E. Coli looks the same as meat without.) But the 20-year-olds have grown up in a world where the business does not fuck people over (because it is regulated) and so they do not see any reason why it might require regulation. And the VCs, the only adults in the equation, don't act the part of grownups because they're hoping the regulators are slow enough for a lot of profits to be extracted before shutdown occurs.
mtalantikite 13y ago
And it's not just tenants renting out their apartments without their landlord's knowledge, I have friends living in a loft building in Greenpoint where the owner no longer rents out the spaces long term. Instead he furnishes the units and rents them out to tourists on airbnb whenever he can get a unit to vacate. This takes units off the market -- in an already scarce market -- and forces normal people to live in buildings run as hotels.
apaprocki 13y ago
As much as people want to like AirBnb, I'd guess most rentals in NYC are illegal given the existing laws on the books. This is why NY is requesting the data from AirBnb. Owners can not rent less than 30 days unless they are present. In addition, I do not know of a single condominium building that allows AirBnb style rentals -- most at this point have modified their rules/by-laws to explicitly forbid it so as not to leave any room for interpretation open. I am President of my condo board and we both have this language in our rules as well as have a hefty fine for violating them. The minimum allowed rental is 12 months and includes a full background and financial check. Unit owners with common amenities do _not_ want short-term rentals in their buildings and can prevent them legally.

by dbags 13y ago

brador 13y ago

Why would they give a fake address?

lylejohnson 13y ago
Because some addresses or locations in a city are more desirable than others?
- mercurial 13y ago
  Or to avoid issues with their landlord.
  - frenger 13y ago
    You don't get the exact address until you've paid - just the street.
    - dbags 13y ago
      I've been given the wrong streets during browsing. Hosts give out an address a block or three away so their landlord is less likely to find it.
    - untog 13y ago
      It's still pretty obvious from photos, etc. I know someone who listed his apartment and was contacted by the building management, who'd seen his listing.
  - smnrchrds 13y ago
    Or because their listing under their real name and real address has too many negative reviews.
  - dbags 13y ago
    I believe it was mostly landlord dodging, but the fake address was also a better location.
TheBiv 13y ago
post code envy

mrcactu5 13y ago

Do you live in New York City? I don't think it's bullshit. This is about landlords who don't want individuals to make money subletting their apartments. The old rich guys in Westchester who own all the housing in the Bronx. There are a lot of people who are stuck living next to illegal, untaxed hotels because one of their neighbors AirBNBs their place full time. I don't see what's wrong with this. Landlords routinely take advantage of ill-informed tentants charging very high rates for roach-infested apartments without running hot water. These should not be on AirBNB -- the housing was illegal to begin with. AirBNB is a crapshoot - I did it one time it was amazing... since all parties involved were responsible. NYC may need to be subject to special consumer protection rules, pay taxes etc. in order to make this work. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky cautions that the government is over-reaching in its demand for data. Chesky is wrong. NYC can and should subpoena for his data - Schneiderman has the public interest in mind. New Yorkers are that shady, but someone has to read this data...

mhb 13y ago
Here's what's wrong with it (in the case of rent controlled apartments in NYC). The city has embraced rent control as a way of foisting the cost of "affordable" housing on landlords. As a result, apartments constrained to below-market rents receive below-market maintenance. Now illegal subletters seek to capture the benefit of this market distortion. But maybe you're right - the way to fix this problem of deteriorating housing is for the government to become more involved in micromanaging the illegal subletting.
- chimeracoder 13y ago
  > in the case of rent controlled apartments in NYC. This is not the issue. There are very, very few rent-controlled apartments left in NYC. Almost nobody who works in the tech industry here has one, because it requires having lived in the same apartment since the 1970s. If you have one, though, you could easily be paying 5% of market rent. Rent stabilization is a very different set of laws altogether, and these apartments are also vanishing slowly. As for true rent control, landlords would love it if their rent-controlled tenants were to sublet their apartment on AirBNB. That would allow the landlord to kick the tenant out and charge market rent - 20 times more - for the apartment.

sitkack 13y ago

Mirrors my experience to a T. There are so many issues with AirBNB (bidding process, calendar, cost model, trust model) that it strikes me as being created by some naive suburban kids. The amount of work that they do to prevent out of band messaging makes any sort of meaningful discourse or authentication impossible.

sneak 13y ago
I get the impression you've only used it once or twice. It generally works really well, and in many cities all over the planet. I trust you provided feedback against your bad host?
- sitkack 13y ago
  I have used it 5 times (some whole apt, some rooms). In _general_ it works o.k I travel a lot and the amount of work that one has to do (back and forth with host, broken calendaring, shady host) etc only makes sense for longer stays. If I am only going to be at place for a weekend, I'll book a hotel and be done with it. It isn't feedback against bad hosts, it is the amount of work that it takes to _not_ get a bad host which isn't comparable to weeding out bad hotels.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

>I know that a lot of people on this site think that if you add the words 'on the internet' you should be exempt from all regulation and taxation, but that's just not how the world works. >I hope that the people who've been profiting from the lack of enforcement are forced to play on a level playing field. If only there were a level playing field. I think the rebellion from the regulatory structure is a reaction to the unfairness of it. Hotel reg's, Taxi reg's, these systems unfairly favor established players and established business models.

Xylakant 13y ago
Hotel regulations at least partially benefit me as a customer. Hotels are subject to health checks for example. B&B places are exempt from some of the regulations, but not from all. So why don't AirBnB-hosts just go and apply for a B&B license - or maybe AirBnB handles the legalities for them. There's no conceivable reason that AirBnB-places should receive a preferred treatment in that matter - so I must admit I don't see and rebellion from the regulatory structure. They're just enforcing the rules that every other player is bound to as well. I also fail to see that adherence to health and fire code unfairly favors established players - quite to the contrary, those not adhering to the standards take an unfair advantage. One of the price differences between AirBnB and other establishments is that often AirBnB-Host don't factor in taxes just because they consider themselves exempt. Why should tax avoidance be tolerated? What's unfair about cracking down on those that cheat?
- apineda 13y ago
  There was a discussion on this earlier as well but regarding food checks that happen annually if that. Just because it's regulated doesn't mean there is an efficient means in place to assure compliance day in and day out. You're tax dollars are being burned assuring compliance would be an additional burden you don't further want. I think if there is a guarantee of some specified level of sanitary quality (for lack of better word) before you signup for a hotel you are free to sue them if you discover they broke that contract. I know this sounds absurd but you're also free to bring in your own sheets and pillows. My point is that regulation and oversight in this centralized manner should be the last resort.

laxatives 13y ago

I'm living in one of these places now and I could not say enough negative things about the place or AirBNB. Its a mess, most of the rooms are either filled with beds or used entirely for furniture/tool storage. There were no shared trashbins until about 4-6 weeks after I had arrived. One of the guests had a severe breakdown and would spend hours in the middle of the night rapping or shouting at the top of the lungs, forcing his roommates to move to the permanent tents in the backyard. Eventually the guy left during one of his rants and disappeared for a few days, during which the landlord had us avoid calling the police because he did not want to have them involved. Worst of all, I feel like none of us are in a position to do anything. I complained within a few hours of arrival on my first day because the place is a mess, but AirBNB charges a months rent to leave early on a long term stay and there's nothing to gain in destroying our relatioships with the landlord. The rating system also makes it so that taking any action would probably result in an open flame war so that I'd probably get rejected by future landlords. I'll probably never use AirBNB again regardless.

NathanKP 13y ago
Wow... You guys seem to have had horrible experiences. May I ask what area you are staying in? I've stayed at Airbnb places in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn area about ten times now over the past couple years and my experience has been satisfactory every time. And I've stayed in the entire range of Airbnb, from very nice places where I'm basically a roommate for a month and eating meals with my host, etc, to places where I rarely see the owner and it is obvious they don't live there but just rent it out, to an old loft that was subdivided into small rooms and being rented out to four different Airbnb guests at once. The subdivided loft one was probably the most illegal one I ever stayed in because it certainly wasn't up to code but it was still very cool and the other guests were polite and quiet. The only time I've ever had a bad experience with AirBNB was once when staying at a place in San Francisco which turned out to be very dirty due to the owner being out of country and just having his next door neighbor give the keys to short term renters. The rating system also makes it so that taking any action would probably result in an open flame war so that I'd probably get rejected by future landlords. I call bullshit on this. Leaving a bad review on a host is not going to get you rejected by future landlords unless those landlords are also running dumps and they don't want to get bad reviews, and in that case you probably don't want to stay there anyway. The key is to find places that have lots of reviews and read them. If you see anything amiss don't stay there. If you stick to well reviewed places you will have a great experience. If you choose to break new ground and try completely new unreviewed places (which I have done from time to time) it is more of a gamble. You can also get some great experiences that way as well, because in general newer, unreviewed places don't charge as much so as to attract people, while the older very well reviewed and run places will charge nearly double in most cases compared to brand new places. Basically, you get what you pay for, as with many other things in life.

ryguytilidie 13y ago

"I know that a lot of people on this site think that if you add the words 'on the internet' you should be exempt from all regulation and taxation, but that's just not how the world works." Yeah dude, you're right, it's this point you made up that no one is upset about that people are ACTUALLY upset about...? Oh, I see, because your experience has been negative you should definitely make up a strawman and beat it to death for no good reason. We all know that projecting views on everyone on an entire site is a super healthy and productive way to make a point.

potatolicious 13y ago
Don't speak for me. I'm upset about the lack of taxation and regulation. I care about it in the AirBnb context, I also care about it in the Lyft and Sidecar context. These are all cases where we have a massive provisioning of services, in a context where caveat emptor is not actually practical, in industries where vendor-side abuse has been historically endemic. We regulated the slum-hotels of the 20s and 30s out of existence. We regulated gypsy cabs (mostly) out of existence. I personally still recall living in a time where unregulated cabs would hold passengers for ransom by driving them to the middle of nowhere. Thankfully I no longer live in such a time or place. I'm concerned that in our obsession with "move fast and break things" we're doing a lot of the latter. Some of these regulations are powered by vested interests. Some of it is historical and represent hard-learned lessons. The tech industry's collective attitude towards them seems to be "all laws are archaic and outdated, ignore all laws that don't benefit us". I for one don't believe in this for one second.
- jellicle 13y ago
  The tech industry is driven by 20-year-olds who have zero education or practical experience to understand why a lot of things are the way they are. It turns out there are real reasons why hotels are regulated, why banking is regulated, why cabs are regulated, why meat-packing is regulated (still waiting for a internet-based meat-packing startup - Mechanical Turk meets Tyson Foods! Just slice the side of beef we send you, in your kitchen, then pack it back into the cooler with the pre-addressed label...), and so on. The reason always is: because the business has been PROVEN TO FUCK PEOPLE OVER WHEN UNREGULATED. (Longer answer: there's a systemic power problem between the provider and user of these businesses. Tourists have no power to avoid being fucked over, for example. Meat with E. Coli looks the same as meat without.) But the 20-year-olds have grown up in a world where the business does not fuck people over (because it is regulated) and so they do not see any reason why it might require regulation. And the VCs, the only adults in the equation, don't act the part of grownups because they're hoping the regulators are slow enough for a lot of profits to be extracted before shutdown occurs.

mtalantikite 13y ago

And it's not just tenants renting out their apartments without their landlord's knowledge, I have friends living in a loft building in Greenpoint where the owner no longer rents out the spaces long term. Instead he furnishes the units and rents them out to tourists on airbnb whenever he can get a unit to vacate. This takes units off the market -- in an already scarce market -- and forces normal people to live in buildings run as hotels.

apaprocki 13y ago

As much as people want to like AirBnb, I'd guess most rentals in NYC are illegal given the existing laws on the books. This is why NY is requesting the data from AirBnb. Owners can not rent less than 30 days unless they are present. In addition, I do not know of a single condominium building that allows AirBnb style rentals -- most at this point have modified their rules/by-laws to explicitly forbid it so as not to leave any room for interpretation open. I am President of my condo board and we both have this language in our rules as well as have a hefty fine for violating them. The minimum allowed rental is 12 months and includes a full background and financial check. Unit owners with common amenities do _not_ want short-term rentals in their buildings and can prevent them legally.