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.
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...
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.
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?
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.
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.
I think the chances of people doing an apartment 'swap' for their out of town/country vacation is pretty slim.
2 people going in the exact opposite direction and wanting to living in the other person's home. Seems slim chance to me unless those people knew each other in advance.
add - bluesmoon, learn something everyday. Though I think not all everybody wants to open their own apt for swap and instead would rather rent someone's for a week or 2.
It actually happens fairly often on couchsurfing. Couple A from New York wants to spend July in San Francisco and swaps with Couple B from San Francisco who wants to spend July in New York. I've seen it happen with entire families too.
Less likely to work internationally, but domestically, it happens. It's the key exchange that's the hard part, but the safest is to leave the key with a neighbour and then call them from the other side to give them the okay.
There are companies, like homeexchange, that have been in businesses for decades doing exactly that. Swapping, vacation rental, subletting have all been around far longer than sites like airbnb. Even craigslist has had a home swapping section for as long as I can remember.
Swapping homes is far more common than renting a room for a week. It's more common outside the US sites like gumtree, leboncoin, etc. have been doing this for years
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)...
There are a bunch of laws regarding how your landlord can act, in fact, and they're extremely restrictive on the landlord.
Stop with the black/white nonsense, everybody in this whole thread agrees that it shouldn't be a big deal to sublet for a couple months or have a house guest. That's qualitatively different from running an unlicensed hotel.
"everybody in this whole thread agrees.." I didn't get that memo and I am unanimous in that.
I was never arguing what to call 'short term rentals' or whatever you want to call it. I am questioning why it's unsafe and why the FUD (in the article) and where is the proof.
If you have lots of friends and you let them visit often, does your apartment become unsafe? Or is it really when you start charging them money that it becomes unsafe? (I am NOT referring to trying to cram all your friends into your apartment and having a wild party. I mean 1-4 friends visiting at a time.)
So let them require BnB's to be registered and inspected. If I start a single-room restaurant, where people can join me at the dinner table each night (and yes, those exist: a few have been popping up in some European countries lately), it wouldn't be outlawed either, would it? I'm sure hardly any owner would mind paying $100 a year and allow random inspections (which usually means they'd get inspected once every two years or so...).
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.
Why is parent being downvoted? PG says "material for linkbait" not "the author of linkbait": it's a mildly obtuse compliment for AirBnB. The grandparent misreads this, and someone helps him understand better, and gets slammed for it? C'mon, people.
Barmstrong was making a legitimate comment about troll tech journalists, in a legitimate place (i.e. following its mention), which Projectileboy seems to have grossly misinterpreted.
Both PG's comment and Barmstrong's make sense and flow to me; the "yep" signifying agreement with the AirBnB complement before extending commentary on the linkbait aspect: an addendum if you will. I don't see why, or how, Barmstrong's reply to PG would be read in the manner Projectileboy objects to - perhaps the dash could lead to such a reading but it's fairly difficult to arrive at.
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.
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.
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.
Most hostels have dorm and private room options. I just get the private room. It's more expensive than the dorm but way less expensive than a hotel. I've never slept in a hostel that only offered dorm rooms.
Just curious, is this true mostly in a certain region or all over the world? Also, what kind of price different should I be expecting between the dorm and the private room?
I'm not sure, I've mostly only stayed in hostels in Canada. The last one I stayed at in Ottawa had rooms for 25$/night in the dorm or 60$/night for a private single bed room.
You lost me on the hostel part, but that could be because I'm getting old. :) And the credit card issue isn't that much of a problem since AirBnB handles it and the person you're renting from never sees it.
I considered using AirBnB for a trip I just booked to Greece, but I decided against it. For several reasons:
1. I don't know how clean the place will be. With a 3 or 4 star hotel with good reviews online, I can be fairly certain I'll get a place that is clean.
2. I don't know how secure the place will be. The rooms I booked all have in room safes, so I can leave my netbook in my room and be fairly certain it will be there when I get back.
3. Getting a private apartment on AirBnB isn't that much cheaper than a hotel. No offense to the hosts offering a room in their place or their couch, but when I'm on vacation, I don't want to share a place with people I don't know. I'm just not that type of person.
All of that adds up to general uncertainty over the use of AirBnB. And if a company I was interviewing with wanted me to use AirBnB to find a place to stay, well, that would give me serious reservations as to whether or not I'd want to work there. The possible exception would be if I were interviewing with AirBnB themselves.
The hosts on Airbnb don't get your credit card info...Same as, you know shopping on Ebay.
I just moved across country. I stayed at 3 different places of Airbnb over the course of 2 weeks while I looked for a place with roommates off Craigslist. Each host was great and I never felt anything but safe. The only reason I stayed at multiple is because they had other bookings coming in so I couldn't extend.
One of the major problems with modern society is this paranoia that everything on the news is true, and a good representation of the general population.
I have stayed in 100s of shared hostel rooms, never had a problem. I have heard stories, we all have heard stories, but they are so minor to be negligible. You are in more danger getting to the hostel/house than you are once you are there.
I suggest you actually get out more and experience people, share a room, it is a great way to stop your foolish attitude. If you have a car, then you are already way to cut off from the real world.
Perhaps they should turn it around: offer the applicant the choice, without stating a preference. If he chooses the hotel, it counts against him, because startups need to be frugal. The applicant should realize that they're not just interviewing him, but perhaps a dozen others and the difference adds up.
On the other hand, when he's hired, he should expect to be made comfortable: don't skimp on chairs, displays, airconditioning, etc. Whether that's the case should become clear during the interview: it's also about "do I want to work here?"
If I had a strong enough preference for not using airbnb, I would. If my choice of accommodations is that big an issue, I probably don't want to work there anyway.
I guess that is why thousands of startups are running out of run-down brick warehouses covered in a swipe of fresh paint in some of the most seismically unstable areas of San Francisco; because people care that their companies are skimping on rent.
I'd love for the company to be frugal with everything that isn't related to my salary.
My salary? No, I don't want the feeling that they're going to knock me down to as low as I'll accept, I've worked hard to develop my skills and I deserve a paycheck. The OP's company could spend an extra 100 bucks per interview and have way higher odds of a good impression from the interviewee. It's like tipping really well when you order your first drink and getting good service for the rest of the night, first impressions matter.
The OP's company could spend an extra 100 bucks per interview and have
way higher odds of a good impression from the interviewee
If the startup you're interviewing at needs to make a good impression to be graced by your future employment, then your sense of entitlement is way to large.
I'd rather see them save 12*100 bucks, so they can buy me a decent chair when they hire me.
Meh, if they're already flying me out and putting me up, and skimp on the extra 100 bucks to put me in decent lodging, they're likely to cut corners other places as well.
The issue isn't even the 100 bucks, it's the fact that they're telegraphing that they don't know how important first impressions are, and they'll cheap out on me given the first opportunity.
As far as my sense of entitlement, well, what the market will bear and all that. It's not that I insist on 4-star lodging, it's that the company is sending a message by asking me to do AirBnB or couchsurfing or whatever. If this is a scrappy pre-funding startup with an awesome idea, ok, if I like the idea, I'll play ball. If it's a business that wants to hire me as an employee, that's different.
In a down market, there are some people who would accept a wet cardboard box for the night if they thought that showing frugality would get them the job.
You have to wonder how many of your interviewees were thinking along those lines when you made the offer.
It could also be that they want them to interact with locals, learn a bit more about the area they would be living if they got the job. Make sure they like the area, you don't really get that same impression staying in a city hotel.
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.
Of course. My comment wasn't phrased extremely well. They just don't do much other than providing centralization of information. That's why "without a whole lot of middlemen" -- the line between AirBnB and the individual is pretty direct.
I think that services like that are important right now, and I'm glad that they exist.
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.
There's nothing wrong with being cheap. That's why I included the phrase "beyond practicality."
How much are you spending to fly out the applicant? How many man hours will be spent on the interview process? If you're willing to risk these investments to save $50, I consider that impractical.
That argument presupposes that you are taking a risk. However, that is the point under discussion: is it a risk? You could also consider it in a positive way: people that are put off by something as irrelevant as where they stay, that worry about comfort, are less likely to be a suitable candidate. There'll be more uncomfortable circumstances to deal with.
Of course, this is from my point of view: I presuppose that 'where you stay' is irrelevant, because I consider it irrelevant. If I have to sleep on a couch in the founder's living room, so be it. Perhaps you are right that one should best err on the safe side of caution by providing a hotel. Nobody's ever been fired for providing a hotel room :P
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.
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.
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?
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.
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...
"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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
What does a fire in a hotel say about short-term rentals, which have more to do with homes & apts than hotels? Do horrific club fires (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZx4i1TwZME) justify a ban on house parties?
To restate: one of the justifications for regulating landlords is the possibility that they may offer unsuitable, even unsafe housing, in desperate circumstances. But where's the evidence that this is happening in the short-term rental market?
I have no opinion on the relative dangers of fires to residents vs short-term visitors, nor am I saying that regulation of short-term lets is necessary. I posted only to respond to the general contention that the market makes safety regulation unnecessary or superfluous.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Let's straighten this out -- I can't stand when people start complaining about "government". It's like complaining about "private enterprise" or "computers" -- yeah everything sucks sometimes but you need to be specific.
Here, we have 2 reasons that Paterson and the New York State Assembly/Senate got involved:
1) There is a legitimate public health concern with running unlicensed hotels -- subletting your 2 bedroom for a couple months is one thing, renting places in order to run a business out of them while circumventing health regs that are there for good reason is something entirely different. They were seeing a shift to the latter.
2) Simultaneously, hotels have money, have lobbyists, didn't like this and had a great argument to make with public health. The senator in question can keep the donations flowing while all the while claiming he's only concerned about the public welfare.
So, some mixture of that is what happened. Notice how none of it involved Glenn Beck's nightmare socialist conspiring to reduce "freedom" and expand "government" in order to, you know, piss off Glenn Beck or whatever motivates all of those socialists. When you unpack political reality, it turns out to be a lot less about "government vs private sector" and a lot more a combination of who has the money (usually one aspect of the private sector).
Of course not, that's different from running an unlicensed hotel. I'm saying we wound up with a law that could apply to both because some people were running unlicensed hotels and other people with money and lobbyists stood to lose money. Either by itself might not have been big enough for a law change, both together are.
I thought it would be instructive for people who talk about "government" as if just putting the word big in front of it solves the issue, and the solution is cut taxes for rich people. None of that has anything to do with this. This is a concrete policy change in a specific area.
You're not addressing my question: What "legitimate public health concerns" are different for couchsurfing vs a person renting out their apt while on holiday?
There actually is a difference (although I'm not taking sides in that debate):
If you allow people to not be present at all, then some will turn this into a business and operate a real hotel room, 365 days a year. Operated like a cheap hotel. I can see why the government may want to regulate that.
An easy way to distinguish the above situation from legitimate friends staying over, is to ask for the owner to be present. Or couchsurfing. That tends to make it a more casual and better controlled environment. I can understand why the government may want to stay out of this.
My impression is that the real criteria should be how much the room is rented: if you have guests 300 days a year, you should be regulated. If it's 10 days, leave me alone. The problem is that it's probably hard to define, and may impose its own set of requirements (such as, everyone would have to keep a registry of all visitors, just to prove that they don't fall into the hotel category).
You need to un-ask your question. I already stated my opinion on renting out an apt on holiday, in the comment you originally responded to, and it's totally irrelevant to the point I'm making about how legislation happens as well as the larger point about people running a hotel out of their apartment.
I don't think this is a totally absurdly black and white case, it's no oppressive regime rearing its ugly head. Both sides have ulterior motives (AirBnB and the established hotels), but their arguments aren't totally without merit. And one thing that people keep forgetting, is that this law isn't breaking new grounds, both renting and hotels are pretty heavily regulated, mostly for a good reason. Yes, for the hard-core magical hand of the market libertarians this is another nail in the coffin, but I bet that a lot of people that get too angry in this discussion don't have problems with laws against arbitrary landlord decisions or hotel health and emergency codes.
"both renting and hotels are pretty heavily regulated, mostly for a good reason."
Says who and what are those reasons? I suspect the reasons are: old people got scared and stakeholders saw an opportunity.
Luckily the Internet is mostly protected from scared old people and powerful stakeholders.
Maybe in another decade when we're all older we will be willing to give up the freedoms we once enjoyed when the Internet was still young. And it will be for "mostly good reasons."
Wow, an "old people" conspiracy. Haven't heard that since my high school days. Trust no one over 30…
Remember the old silent movies, where the evil, mustachioed landlord was one the most popular villainous archetypes? That wasn't without reason. People looking for a roof over their heads often aren't in a good bargaining position, so often you could make them sign almost any contract. There are quite a few federal and local laws that limit what's possible in all these cases, so that your landlord e.g. can't evict you all willy-nilly. Rent control is also rather common.
Same goes for hotels, especially when it comes to security (emergency exits, maximum occupancy etc.).
Whether every single law (including this new once) make sense is another question, but my point is that this isn't something completely new, were all of a sudden the octogenarians ruling the world decided to come down on the poor cyber-startups.
OK right now I have a little trouble taking your position seriously because you have seriously misinterpreted the Constitution. The full quote that you were looking for would be: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
What that doesn't mean is freedom to gather with a bunch of friends where and whenever you want. What it does mean is the legal right to stage peaceful protests or gather in public (with reasonable restrictions).
If needed I can run over to the library and grab you a list of cases on that, but I think you'll have trouble finding any for "couchsurfing."
What distinguishes "peaceable assembly" from meeting with a bunch of your friends? Some of the most important assemblies were antislavery meetings in barns, where meeting in public might mean suicide - does it say "peaceably assemble in public"? The prohibition is against government interference in all "peaceable assemblies" which is to say, all peaceful meetings. There are limitations, of course (eg I generally can't assemble in the street), but what reasonable restrictions intrude into the home? You do your name-sake disservice.
I rent an apartment on a 1 year lease. I expect my neighbors to live under the same situation as that forces a social contract. I don't fuck their lives up so they don't fuck mine up.
What does a vacationing transient care about pissing in the hallway? He'll be gone in 8 hours. AirBNB ignores the reality that apartments are part of shared property. That shared property maintains its state of repair thanks to people from the building having large stakes in making sure they don't leave human feces in the stairwell.
Almost all apartment leases have stipulations about excessive guests and required behavior. I don't see in your comment justification on why this required YET ANOTHER LAW and not just common sense and enforced contracts.
Totally agree with you - different countries / places have different norms on what is considered socially acceptable. So visitors can often have different expectations on what is considered late hours, what is being loud and how okay it is to dispose off trash in public places. Even ruling out bad behavior on part of the guests, they could be making a scene without knowing about it.
False dichotomy. Just as the law doesn't totally ban people staying in apartments that they don't rent, it doesn't seem necessary to totally ban motorcycles. Motorcycle helmet legislation, while rather lenient in the US, still deals with this specific security risk. (And no, I don't think this is a particular infringement of personal liberties, considering the medical costs that often have to be born by the tax payer, never mind the trauma for other participants in the accident)
A motorcycle's risk is almost entirely concentrated on the occupant(s), not its neighbors. That isn't a good comparison with transients imposing on resident neighbors.
If this solves for neighbor complaints, why not craft the legislation to be triggered on a neighbors complaint, rather than make all hosts criminals, responsible or no?
How about a car, then? If you mess up, you are quite likely to kill lots of other people, while causing little damage to yourself (my world-view supports the idea that causing inconvenience to people in a house which you are a guest in is akin to driving on the sidewalk, and that being polite, pleasant, and quiet is similar to driving in the street; yours may not). Still not a good comparison, of course.
(EDIT begins): The above paragraph is not only "not a good comparison," but a really bad comparison which entirely misses the point and argues against the below paragraphs (as jbooth's comment succinctly points out). It's only still here because I don't like deleting text I've posted; I still support most of it (especially it being common courtesy not to cause discomfort to your hosts, regardless of any regulations or laws regulating behavior), even though the basic idea is horrible. You should disregard it, and focus on the paragraphs below. (EDIT ends)
However, if you are going to get up in arms about the potential for noisy guests, and require legislation to prevent it in some way, it makes far more sense, to me, to empower apartment owners to kick out anyone who sublets an apartment to noisy guests, and allow legal recourse for the people in surrounding apartments if this does not occur. A system of incentives would thus be created for people renting out a spare room to make sure to educate their visitors about the behavioral standards they are expected to follow, and to enforce these standards. This would create greater freedom for everyone, and the owner of the building has the option of stipulating that short-term sub-letting is not permitted in whatever contract they have with their renters.
The problem of actual unlicensed hotels - a set of rooms lived in by no one but short-term renters - is entirely different, and is the problem which should be removed by legislation. It's also the problem which many of the people who are against AirBnB and similar sites are thinking of; there is a world of difference between a group of tourists given free reign in an apartment and one or two tourists renting a bedroom from someone who is living in and present in the apartment. This difference is perhaps why so many of the people who have tried such services are in favor of it; they have been in the latter situation, which seemed quite pleasant to them and which was completely preferable to hotels (all of the stories I've heard of users of such services describe this situation). The people who are angry about it (outside of the hotel industry) without actually coming into contact with it (short-term renting of the adjacent apartment, with whatever results) are thinking of the first situation.
Or at least, that seems to be the case, from reading many of the comments on this article. It's quite likely that I'm misunderstanding something, of course.
The problem of actual unlicensed hotels - a set of rooms lived in by no one but short-term renters - is entirely different, and is the problem which should be removed by legislation. It's also the problem which many of the people who are against AirBnB and similar sites are thinking of; there is a world of difference between a group of tourists given free reign in an apartment and one or two tourists renting a bedroom from someone who is living in and present in the apartment. This difference is perhaps why so many of the people who have tried such services are in favor of it; they have been in the latter situation, which seemed quite pleasant to them and which was completely preferable to hotels (all of the stories I've heard of users of such services describe this situation). The people who are angry about it (outside of the hotel industry) without actually coming into contact with it (short-term renting of the adjacent apartment, with whatever results) are thinking of the first situation.
Dear god I read your entire post only to realize you entirely agree with the legislation that was just passed only you have no idea what the new law means.
Really? My understanding was that it includes an exception for situations where the owner of the apartment is present, but forbids the exchange of money in that situation (which allows couchsurfing, but outlaws actually renting a room). At least, I think that that's the bit you're thinking of when you say that I have no idea what the new law means. Admittedly, I haven't actually read the legislation; what I know is mostly from the comments here and the various articles on it (which have tended to have a quite obvious agenda, from one side of the other), so it's entirely possible that I am entirely misunderstanding what its purpose is.
Ah. My understanding was that the "not charging" bit also applied to renting rooms while present. Which, if you're right about it not applying, means that I entirely agree with the law and don't see why there's so much fuss about it. Thank you for clarifying.
It turns out, actually, that there's a very large body of regulation regarding cars, and you have to be licensed and provide proof of insurance in order to drive them.
I did say that it wasn't a good comparison; however, thank you for clarifying exactly how horrible it was. How about moving on to the other paragraphs?
(Also: previous comment edited to incorporate exactly how terrible the comparison was. It was really more of a jumping-off point for the rest of my musings ...)
"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"