Like I said, the law isn't anyone's idea of a good first option. The law is where you go when talking to your neighbors has turned out to be useless, the lawbreaking is obvious, and the damage is great enough that you need to coerce someone into stopping. Also want to be fair here, - in general, I would not expect airbnb rentals to lead to this kind of dispute very often.
But the gov't wouldn't be interceding in the minutiae of a dispute between neighbors here, they'd be creating and enforcing legislation around minimum lease duration, which I think is a much less objectionable role for government.
There are laws, and then there is the matter of getting the laws enforced in a timely fashion -- if at all.
And of not suffering undue material harm during the process. Such as an extended lack of sleep adversely affecting one's employment.
There is also the possibility of escalating retaliation after you file a complaint.
There is the time and cost and confrontation of taking the other party to court, when that's what the law dictates and/or what police insist upon.
I'm significantly inclined to view AirBnB as a parasite upon the well being of long term, "real" tenants.
Both I and my extended group of friends and acquaintances have, en masse, had enough difficulty with neighbors -- before even adding AirBnB to the mix -- for me personally to give this viewpoint considerable weight.
However, government has a right to close loopholes in existing regulations (e.g. hotel tax) that are opened by the changes in the environment (e.g. availability of new technology such as airbnb). It's unfortunate that they chose to do this by an outright ban. It's especially unfortunate for homeowners who can't as easily leave the community if they disagree with the councils decision.
As I read through the comments in this and previous posts about airbnb, I noticed that a majority of issues cited by angry neighbors are related to renting of units in apartment buildings, as opposed to single family homes. I'm not suggesting that there are more abuses of the service in apartment buildings (though here may well be for a number of reasons), merely that the abuses are more troublesome in these cases because of the resources shared by neighbors (staircases, walls, etc.). It seems to me that the owners or managers of apartment buildings, and the homeowners associations of condos, should be able to enact reasonable limits to short-term rentals of their own properties in their rental agreements. To me this is a much more desirable way to attack the problem, rather than a hasty ban, as it may give people more choice in the matter. I say may because it's probably equally likely that apartment buildings would blindly start banning it as well. Nonetheless if I am someone who cares about using the service, I would try to find apartment that allows it.
The law that Airbnb hosts break so frequently was designed exactly to prevent this type of thing from happening. It's why there are zoning regulations that prevent short term inhabitants. So yes, bad residents are directly to blame, not Airbnb.
I take issue with Airbnb because they operate from a place of both knowledge and leadership. They know that this is illegal, they have the tools to easily detect it, and yet they do zero to either enforce the law, or advise their members. Members that Airbnb organized into a marketplace they now run.
I understand they are trying to change the law, but I am strongly not in favor of changing said law, based on how it has already directly impacted my life.
Interesting perspective. I've done AirBnB but only ever in single-family homes in jurisdictions where it's not illegal.
But if I rented a unit and it turned out that the unit was actually not legal to rent, and even more-so if the neighbors are hostile, why PAY for it? Sounds like a great basis for contesting the charge.
Item #1 isn't a problem at all. Every day, courts have no trouble differentiating a business from what you do with your friends. Courts aren't stupid.
Additionally, laws are not executable code, not every hair has to be split up-front. Each of your scenarios would be addressed individually in a court of law.
As for #2, AirBNB could operate 100% entirely within the law tomorrow, if they wished: assiduously ban rentals that aren't owner-occupied.
This is exactly what I expect them to do.
Obey the damn law. Comply with investigators completely reasonable requests. Stop trying to "improve the legal situation" by shielding lawbreakers and issuing nonsense press releases.
Regardless of whether the law is justified or not, it should be very simple for Airbnb to force compliance to these laws. In other words, it should be simple for Airbnb to see a person having multiple properties within this district/city and not allow it if it's against the law, or limit the number of days a person can rent a properly out. However, Airbnb doesn't seem to do this.
Airbnb is a great platform, which I've used both domestically (in USA) and internationally, and I really appreciate what it offers. What I don't understand is the flaunting of laws by saying it's not their problem, that they shouldn't police their users and that their users are responsible for what they do. I can understand the argument, but it's not difficult to handle these cases and Airbnb should really do more (arguably their due diligence) to handle them.
I don't really understand why AirBnB has to be of help in this instance. Someone broke a contract and possibly vandalized a home. The truth of that statement and the penalties involved are enforceable directly through the court system.
I am very wary of companies that try to 'help' by requiring 3rd party private arbitration instead of taking it through the established legal system.
in order to protect one's neighbors from... what exactly?
Their lives being disrupted. There are enough horror stories out there that you'd have to try very hard to ignore them - short term renters simply do not care about community and shared spaces in the same way that long term residents do.
You living with a same-sex partner has absolutely no effect on my life. You renting out your apartment to tourists who are loud, disruptive and trash common property does. And yes, that behaviour is already illegal but it's incredibly difficult to secure any kind of prosecution for it.
I'm not suggesting that we should ban AirBnb here, but I think "it's all just property rights" is also a dramatic oversimplification in the opposite direction.
People are getting mad at airbnb, but they should also be getting angry with the city, demanding more enforcement of zoning laws and building codes.
I'm not really against airbnb, but I do think that communities should have a choice. In short, I think that there should be some places in a city where people can trade their own right to run a hotel out of their apartment in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that their neighbors won't do this either.
The legal structure for this is zoning. In the past, it was difficult to violate these laws (pre-internet, it took quite a bit of effort to find tenants for an illegal hotel). As a result, enforcement could be indifferent.
Some laws become obsolete with new technology, others acquire new relevance and need to be dusted off and enforced more rigorously. Airbnb will most definitely not solve this problem, they stand to profit massively by denying people the arrangement I described above - agreeing not to turn your house or apartment into a hotel in exchange for an assurance that you will not have to live next to one. We need city government to take this on and do something.
>A vacation renter is gone pretty much before you can pursue any existing legal processes apart from calling the cops to come by and tell them to turn the music down. So, the AirBnB renter doesn't have to live with much/any consequences; the AirBnB "host" doesn't necessarily have consequences since they'll say "I won't rent to them again"; but the folks in the neighborhood do suffer from it.
Perhaps the law differs where you live, but where I live, local ordnance on repeated noise complaints gradually ramps penalties up from warnings to fines, so hosts have a strong interest in preventing partying at their properties. That seems a more appropriate legislative response than banning short-term rentals entirely.
And it's really easy for AirBnB to know exactly who rented the property for a given period, so if they do anything illegal (which includes noise violations), they'd be easy to track down with a warrant.
If you're not affecting your neighbors, it's nobody's business what you do on your property, including letting other people live there. If you want to regulate, add some additional regulations about behavior that affects neighboring properties but isn't currently covered.
But what recourse does the homeowner have in that case? And being banned from AirBNB is not really a huge deterrent. Making the behavior illegal would give you more options if it happens to you, and might really make someone think twice.
To the extent that AirBnB hosts are violating their contract with the landlord, the state should be involved to enforce that. However if the host owns the property (or has contract permission to sublet) the state should not be involved. The state may also get involved is someone (guest or legitimate owner) is affecting their neighbors (excessive noise for example).
I can recognize that some AirBnB's are not legal even while arguing that as a whole the idea should be legal.
It seems like a lot of these problems could be solved by better enforcement of existing laws, rather than creation of new ones.
For instance, the article has a picture of trash piled up on the sidewalk in front of an AirBnB. Surely there are existing laws or regulations against this. People often mention noise from short-term rentals, there are regulations against this too. The benefits of better enforcement would extend beyond short-term rentals as well, and improve quality of life for all residents.
Other issues, like the "vomit covered floors", seem like strictly private issues to be handled between the host, guest, and possibly the mediation of the rental site.
I'm not saying that better enforcement should be the only solution (it can't deal with larger issues like elevated property prices), but it should certainly be a large part of it.
This argument comes up on HN frequently but doesn't seem particularly compelling to me.
We have laws and regulations around things like noise, parking, etc which apply equally to homeowners, long term renters, short term renters, guests, contractors, etc.
Does having a neighbor who rents their place on Airbnb really change your life compared to a neighbor who has frequent social gatherings or has a large family or works night shift? It seems like the correct solution here is to improve action by parking enforcement, towing companies, building security, HOA or police depending on the exact issue and severity, rather than take away the right of people to rent out their place.
"And it's really easy for AirBnB to know exactly who rented the property for a given period, so if they do anything illegal (which includes noise violations), they'd be easy to track down with a warrant."
You say that, but there are currently many, many cities trying to get Airbnb to deal with their illegal apartments, and yet Airbnb is stalling on that (presumably because if you shut down their illegal apartments, their valuation would implode).
To your point, "affecting your neighbors" is a pretty tough thing to track down. Even if things seem to be going well, there's a difference between having stable neighbors who take care of the neighborhood and an unknown rolling of the dice every few days. If you have kids, it's an even bigger risk. It's very difficult to accurately judge just how much of an impact it has, which is why cities have set up zoning regulations.
You can have a neighbour who trough airbnb rents out to noisy tourists, go through a lengthy feud involving building administration and law enforcement, and finally make sure he makes sure it's reasonably quiet at night. If any changes in laws would be necessary to make these processes identical they should be smaller and less disruptive than an outright ban on activities like those of airbnbs lenders.
I think Airbnb would argue that it's not their place to enforce these laws; and that if individual hosts are violating them, the government should go after them.
It's a typical problem of the "sharing" economy. I'm not sure the courts will agree with them, but their strategy has been similar to Uber's in that they come in, break the law (or at the very least operate in a legal grey area), then get so big that traditional regulatory systems have no way to deal with them.
But the gov't wouldn't be interceding in the minutiae of a dispute between neighbors here, they'd be creating and enforcing legislation around minimum lease duration, which I think is a much less objectionable role for government.
reply