Luckily these cheaper alternatives to hotels appeared out of nowhere and didn't come out of long-term housing stocks, pricing people out of the city.

And luckily these affordable car transportations don't drive around the city empty most of the time, causing huge traffic congestion.

> having cheaper alternatives to hotels available that let people make money renting out extra rooms.

Yeah, in that case, all the long term residents living in popular cities must be insane to hate Airbnb. Have lived in a city and a building infested with Airbnbs? If you did, you would how fucked up it is for a long term renter.

I've stayed in AirBnB's. The only way any other tenants would even know I was there was that I was taking up a parking spot. Someone would have been insane to be mad about my being there, yes.

The problem is that investors buy up cheap apartments and put them on AirBnB to make insane profits.

This drives up prices for locals.

The other tenants are mad because landlords prefer renting apartments to tourists for 5k a month instead of renting to locals for 1k a month.

> The other tenants are mad because landlords prefer renting apartments to tourists for 5k a month instead of renting to locals for 1k a month.

If this is happening it's because your city has a massive shortage of short-term rental properties. If you can make $5k a month then people should be building those properties left and right since it's so profitable -- but what most likely happened is that your city passed rules effectively prohibiting that construction, so now there's an arbitrage opportunity by converting long-term rentals to short-term rentals.

You should direct your anger at your local government for doing nothing to address the high short-term rental demand, because if they did then that wouldn't happen. And the same rules tend to restrict the availability of long-term rentals as well, which means that they were causing your rent to be higher than necessary even before people started converting neighboring units.

> This drives prices up for locals.

Yes, so what? Why should a tourist be forced to pay more than a "local" (who might nonetheless move out of town at a moment's notice) for what boils down to the exact same service?

Because there are massive positive externalities to people stably investing their communities (often called "social capital"). Your attitude of putting your head in the sand about things you can't measure precisely is the consistent folly of the High Modernist, "systems are simple so we can tear them down and remake them" line of thought that destroyed the American city.

I actually think cities tend to overregulate Airbnb (and housing construction), but if your model of housing policy can't tell the difference between a tourist and a resident, it's woefully incomplete.

The thing is that a NIMBY attitude does absolutely nothing to create more social capital. Places where social capital is highest are often precisely those with the strongest traditions of welcoming hospitality towards short-term-visiting ("touristy") outsiders.

I agree, and I'm probably closer to you in my opinion of nimbys than you think. But I don't think there's a problem with being aware, at a policy level, of the distinction between residents and tourists.

Some price controls and restrictions on renting out whole domiciles would be nice but the aspect of renting out a portion of an already-occupied space like I used it for is great.

If that's all AirBnB was used for, nobody would complain. But at least 90% of listings on Airbnb are for whole apartments that nobody lives in.

If people just rented out their guest room, or rented their apartment out while they're on vacation, I don't think anybody would complain.

Hotels would

Yes, airbnb used as a bed and breakfast is great. I'm not saying otherwise. But what has ended up happening is people buying multiple properties to list them only on airbnb. This has created shortage for people actually living and working in the city and driving the rent prices up in desirable neighbourhoods since tourists want to experience the city through the lens of a local person. And Airbnb actively lobbies and tries to skirt the rules where city puts a limit on how many units you can list and for how many days a year. So yeah, long story short, fuck airbnb.

Airbnb is hardly cheaper than a hotel when you factor in the obscene service and cleaning fees in addition to the hotel taxes they collect.

And if it still comes out cheaper it’s for a reason e.g. no security, no housekeeping, no amenities, no one to help you.

> if it still comes out cheaper it’s for a reason e.g. no security, no housekeeping, no amenities, no one to help you.

Why is this a bad thing? It's just unbundling security and housekeeping and lowering the price correspondingly. If you want the full-service option hotels still exist

It’s like getting sick without health insurance. You don’t think about it until it happens. Most people underestimate the risk.

And like I said in a lot of places an Airbnb is not actually cheaper than a hotel, so in that case you’re getting ripped off because you pay the same price as a hotel without any of the benefits a hotel provides.

Airbnb has compensating benefits though. You're living "like a local", in a space that might a lot more compelling to some than your average hotel room, and often in a non-touristy area where some goods and services can be quite a bit cheaper.

Lol it’s a marketing ploy.

I can’t be happy “living like a local” when I’m wondering in the back of my mind if the apartment I’m staying at was illegally turned into a hotel (most likely yes) and getting dirty stares from the neighbors that actually live there.

I don't think the paranoia you're describing is typical of most Airbnb users. I'm sorry, and it sounds like what you're dealing with sucks, but these details don't psychologically cancel out the advantages for most people, and as such are nowhere near a "marketing ploy"

Most people don’t think about societal consequences of their purchasing decisions, I agree.

Yes because renting an Airbnb is the same thing as living in your own house.