Being an Airbnb host is often a funny thing. It is a very unique situation — a unique kind of business. Having people come and stay with you in your own home — it’s a very personal, even intimate kind of business. You can end up making good friends with people you may never otherwise have met. You can learn much more about people than you ever would have learned or known, had you not had a chance to learn their kitchen cleaning or non-cleaning habits. You can learn their foibles and idiosyncrasies, as they may learn yours, and you can share their joy and delight and see your own world with fresh eyes when someone from the other side of the world tells you how they are experiencing your neighborhood.

There is another kind of uniqueness to being an Airbnb host, and that is, that we weren’t something that cities thought of.
Cities’ lack of thought about us, seems to be a relatively new forgetfulness, since 100 years ago, 200 years ago, and certainly 500 years ago, many or most people who traveled, stayed in private homes when they traveled. This wasn’t seen as odd. There were no neighbors back then out picketing and complaining and writing to their city council, about how those Airbnb medieval voyagers parked their horse-drawn carriage in front of my home, or smoked a pipe in my cornfield.
Seems we got something right then that we have now forgotten. Somewhere along the way, something called “ZONING” happened, and new things called inns and hotels started taking the traveler business away from the private homes, and cities started cementing this compartmentalization of traveler into increasingly box-like rooms in hotels, via their “zoning.”

Many cities developed regulations about where “hotels” could be located, which kept them in “Commerical ” districts. Airbnb didn’t exist then, and neither did the “sharing economy”, so these regulations didn’t actually address having guests in a private home. They dealt with hotels.

So now, along comes Airbnb, and the rise of home sharing, and the city sees a lot of people starting to have travelers at their home again — just like the good old days! But the city doesn’t remember those good old days. It only sees through a narrow set of regulations, that dont’ even directly address this phenomenon. THe regulations are for “hotels.” Many hosts would argue, and argue coherently, that we are not “hotels.” Neither are the Hyatt Regency or the Flamingo Inn someone’s private home that they have opened up to guests. In fact, though some cities (and some disgruntled neighbors within these cities) insist that we are “commerical operations” if we have guests, a Colorado Court has recently affirmed that having guests in one’s home, is a RESIDENTIAL use of one’s home, and is NOT a commerical use of the home. (See this thread about that — globalhosting.freeforums.net/thread/819/colorado-short-term-rentals-commercial )

So we often fall in between the cracks, and cities actually have no existing laws to address home sharing. Or, the laws that exist, are challenged by many to be backward, and to represent a stage of culture that may be on its way out.

Thus, many cities have yet to take up the issue of home sharing and create regulations that are in step with modern times and the reality that home sharing is not going away. Yet in many municipalities, there may be forces that are arrayed against home sharing, which political pressure city leaders may feel obligated to address.

Which brings me back to the title of this thread. How one person creates short term rental regulations for a whole city. Who is that person, you ask? Well, if you are very fortunate, that person is you, or another Airbnb host. Ideally it is the first host in the city who starts working with the city and/or with other hosts to get the ball rolling to develop favorable regulations. But , it may also turn out, and this has happened in some cities, that it is NOT the host who is the one to create short term rental regs for that city — instead it is that hosts’ neighbor.

You see, that host had a guest. Or make that, several guests. Actually it was supposed to be 4 guests, staying at a 3 bedroom home, with a huge yard, and an ocean view, located in an exclusive, upscale neighborhood of a desirable city…but it turned out to be 75 guests, staying at, partying in, boozing it up in, blasting loud music all over, and vomiting in the backyard next to the neighbors’ fence, in that host’s home. Not to mention the police cars that arrived later on and drew still more attention to the whole affair. And then, the person who the city council heard from, and heard from again, and again, and again, in numerous letters and several council meetings in sequence, for several months, was not the host, but that hosts’ neighbor.

You get my point, I hope. It has been made clear in many cities, that the city leaders are far more receptive to one neighbor’s complaint about one hosts’ bad guests, than they are to 400 hosts whose neighbors never complained about their guests. That one party incident may go a long, LONG way towards creating short term rental regulations in that city. Now if the city leaders are reasonable people who are already openminded and aware of the reality that “the sharing economy is here to stay”, this problem may not arise. But if city leaders are less open, and want any excuse to ban short term rentals in their city or town, it is quite possible that such city leaders will seize on that disgruntled neighbor’s lament, the way that a child’s fist clamps down around some delicious candy it received on a special day. That one neighbor’s complaint can go a long way. Particularly if that neighbor starts rallying other neighbors behind him or her. So now it’s not just one complaint –it’s 5. Still, when it’s a score of 5 vs 400 , in a city with city councilmembers tilted to the wrong direction, the 5 will win. And then quite possibly, the city will say no, no Airbnb in our town.

In fact, quite recently, this exact situation came to pass.  In the town of Danville, California (a town with only 15-20 Airbnb hosts), one single instance of a neighborhood feud caused the neighbors of an Airbnb host to get so upset at her, that they collectively worked together, and pushed the town to ban short term rentals.  The host’s guests in this case actually did not cause any problems, other than that very trivial issue of perhaps parking in front of someone else’s home, but the host had poor interpersonal skills, and intentionally did many things to rile her neighbors and upset them.  And so now no one in her entire town of 16,000 can do short term rentals.  See more about that situation here: Danville Bans Short Term rentals .

So the moral of the story is — be careful in how you host. Do good screening for guests, have good house rules in place that you can effectively enforce, be in control of what happens at your property, be attentive to your neighbors’ needs, make sure the neighbors have your contact info. And dont let your angry neighbor be the one who creates short term rental regulations for your whole city!!

 

I have a pet peeve – actually I have several of them but let’s just take one at a time.  My pet peeve as relates to many of those who sign up to do Airbnb hosting, is that they approach starting their own small business, as though they were somebody’s baby.  Airbnb’s baby.  Maybe they watched This dreamy Airbnb video too many times.  Or maybe they have never run a small business.  Maybe they had no idea they were opening a small business, but thought they were clicking a button to get Santa Claus to send perfect guests automatically to their home, delivering them on a sleigh,  one after another, all wrapped up nice and pretty with a red bow on top.

That isn’t how being a host on Airbnb works.  I think Airbnb actually doesn’t help as much as it could, to clarify that those who sign up as hosts are starting a small business.   So, some Airbnb Babies jump into opening up a small business, with little understanding of market forces.  We see many of these new hosts coming into the host community, proudly telling other hosts that they have now opened up their listing and hung their shingle up in Nowheresville, AnyCountry, 60 miles from the nearest city, 10 miles down an unmarked dirt road, and are complaining that they haven’t had any inquiries.  “Why am I not getting any guests?!?!”  They fail to understand that listing a place on Airbnb doesn’t magically make it into a tourist destination.  There has to be a reason why people want to come to your area, because it’s unlikely that the host’s home itself is the vacation destination — unless you happen to have a home with a national park in your backyard, or you own a hunting ranch, or a private zoo, or you offer kayak or float trips on your local river,  or something else very special that is going to make guests want to come to your area just to visit you.  So as you contemplate becoming a host, it pays to do some research into the demand for short term rentals in your area.

Many find the process of becoming a host and getting their first guest, to be so easy and straightforward, that they are led to believe that they don’t need to be careful who they accept as a guest in their home, or have good house rules that help ensure appropriate guest behavior, and delineate necessary boundaries.

I have noticed that a lot of relatively new hosts, come to the host community, with questions, complaints or stories, which indicate that they did not adequately understand all the implications of starting a small business as an Airbnb host or short term rental operator. To begin with, many hosts don’t understand that it is they, rather than Airbnb, who need to do the screening for people who will be staying in their home.  Hosts have one, then two, then 6 or 8 good experiences with guests, and get lulled into the illusion that Airbnb is somehow “vetting” all their guests for them.  They have heard that there is a thing called Verified ID, they have heard that there are requirements for people to sign up on Airbnb, and so they figure, quite irrationally, that if a guest has verified ID, this must be a fine person, right?

No, actually,  not quite so.   Stop for a moment and think how Verified ID, which basically guarantees that someone’s name is what they say it is, or that their phone number is really their phone number, is going to ensure that your guest doesn’t leave the sink full of dirty dishes, or talk back and argue with you, or go into your bedroom and look through your private things while you are gone.  Verified ID does nothing to prevent any of that.  Verified ID can help to prevent serious crimes, because serious criminals dont’ tend to want to give you their name in advance (but some know how to provide “fake” Verified ID) but it won’t ensure that your guest doesn’t smoke in your non-smoking unit, doesn’t get stains all over your furniture or carpets, or doesn’t have a party in your house where you have house rules that clearly prohibit parties.

So what would-be hosts need to learn, is that when you sign up to be an AIrbnb host, you are actually in the property rental business, and hence, you need to learn the skills of managing rental property, such as how to screen potential guests.  Screening guests is not simple, because it requires imagination.  The less developed your capacity for imagination, the more trouble you will have in imagining what might possibly go wrong, and hence, the less likely you will be able to set up house rules, policies and procedures, questions and other measures by which to try to reduce the likelihood of having problems.  So, give your imaginal skills some practice, and sit down and start thinking of how you want things to go right, and what might go wrong, and how to draw lines to separate these two outcomes, one from the other.  And then, depend on your own skills to get good guests, dont’ depend on getting sent guests in packages from Airbnb, all neat and pretty and tied up with a bow on top.  

There’s another aspect of the Airbnb Baby.  This is the Baby we see who doesn’t screen their guests, doesn’t have adequate house rules, doesn’t realize that renting out a beautiful home to 8 young guys who are in town for spring break might not be the best idea…and who comes out to the host community and cries when they have a bad experience with a guest, who damages their property.  This Baby host then doesn’t realize that they have to document the damage and produce evidence, assuming quite irrationally that simply because they phone up Airbnb and say something happened, their word will be considered gold and the guest’s will be mud.  They may fail to get the required evidence, or have unrealistic expectations of reimbursement.  They then end up whining , crying and screaming, because they didn’t get compensated by Airbnb for all of their damage.

Hosts need to realize that there are two sides to every story, and if any issue gets taken to Airbnb for mediation, this is somewhat like a landlord tenant dispute being taken to small claims court.  A judge in court can’t start out being partial to either side — the point is that the judge is supposed to look at the evidence presented, and if you don’t have a good case, if you don’t have good evidence, you can lose, even if you are entirely in the right.  Because it is quite possible to lose in court when you are in the right,  is one reason why it is best to stay out of court — meaning, run your business in such a way, that you are unlikely to end up with guests doing hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of damage, which you then have to approach Airbnb to try to get reimbursed for.

So, I’m advising — dont’ be an Airbnb Baby.  Airbnb isn’t your Daddy or Mommy, or Santa Claus.  Dont’ expect that you can just click buttons on the computer and get sent great guests every time and not have to have the skillset to run a small business.  Be in control of what is happening at your own property.   I think hosting is ideally for those who actually live at the property where they are having guests.  It is more difficult when you aren’t there to see what is going on.

If you are far away from the place where you have guests, you really need someone close by who can pay attention to what is going on there, and intervene quickly if needed — like a property manager, friend or neighbor.  I have been surprised by the number of stories of hosts who come to clean up after the guests depart, and arrive to a trashed home. They lament and whine that they had no idea about what was happening.  Their neighbors will later be interviewed by the local news station, and say that they saw 50 people arrive to that house the day before, or 3 days before, and were bothered by people partying there all night, and I have to wonder — while the host’s neighbors were being bothered by noise and partiers, where was this Airbnb Baby?  Did this Baby think someone else would magically run their property and control it for them?  Why was this Airbnb Baby 50 or 100, or even 1000 miles away, with no property manger or not even a neighbor in communication with them?  Why are their relationships with their neighbors so undeveloped?    Why didn’t their neighbors have their phone number, to call and notify them of problems they witnessed?

Given the number of people who are hostile to Airbnb, who like to scapegoat Airbnb, who think that Airbnb rentals in neighborhoods invariably will bring problems, it does not take many out of control parties at an Airbnb, or trashed Airbnb homes, to have a huge effect on the regulatory landscape of short term rentals in any given area.  Consequently, it is better for all of us if Airbnb Babies grow up and start developing some skills in regards to hosting, so that they dont’ ruin other’s opportunities to do hosting in their region, and so that they dont’ come and cry to us over spilled milk.

 

Face it, Airbnb and Airbnb hosts have had quite the drenching in accusations of “conducting business illegally.”  People in cities around the world are upset with the spunky corporation, which has grown in size and power quite dramatically, and which began as an illegal arrangement by 3 young guys of the Millennial Generation, to try to make some income renting out a couch to those coming to their city for an event.

Short term rentals in San Francisco were quite illegal when Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia  and Nathan Blecharczyk began Airbnb in 2008.  In fact, Short term rentals not only remained illegal in San Francisco for 7 years after the founding of Airbnb, until February 2015,  but were actually a criminal matter in many cases — it was a misdemeanor to do short term rentals in some situations.  Short term rentals were illegal in San Francisco, all throughout the time that hosts in San Francisco set up thousands of listings on Airbnb — currently over 7000 listings — until the city passed a law in Feb 2015 which legalized short term rentals in a person’s primary residence.

San Francisco Short term rental law

So, in effect, thousands of people were doing short term rentals on Airbnb for many years,  during which time this was all illegal!!  Now multiply those thousands of people and their listings by many hundreds of cities across the nation, which had similar prohibitions on short term rentals, and what do you have?

Some would say, you most definitely have a scofflaw company, and thousands upon thousands of scofflaw hosts and homeowners.

Others would say, you have a political and social movement, and a compelling phenonmenon.

Your take on this,  depends, of course, on your ability to view laws and regulations in the context of an evolving, changing and adapting society — which are formed to help humankind — rather than as fixed structures and values, rigidly fixed in place and inflexible, to which humankind is enslaved and under the burden of which humans are often squashed.  I think you’ll know at this point by my rhetoric which side I stand on.

A wise guy in the ancient Middle East said it well,

“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”

What do the words of an ancient prophet have to do with Airbnb hosting?  They lend perspective on how we can either use laws to support valuable or benign human endeavors, or to suppress them.

Highly legalistic and literal-minded human beings are unable to get beyond what their families, tribes, or governments tell them, and then to envision new possibilties.  Their level of moral development is at a lower level than those visionary individuals who pursue totally new ideas and start movements.  Actually the study of moral development in human beings is interesting, and I recommend the book  Spiral Dynamics by Don Beck.  He describes how moral development moves along levels called “memes”.  At the lowest level,  you will tribes where everyone has to do what the tribal leaders dictate under pain of ostracism or even death (we see this in the modern day in religious cults and fanatical/terrorist groups like Daesh) , through to more complex societies where diligent literalists mindlessly pursue a set of encoded social mores, values and laws , and on to the highest level, where, if you hadn’t guessed yet — individuals actually think for themselves!!  And in the process, come up with their own moral values, beliefs and decisions, freed from all cultural and poltical “shoulds”.

Many people limited by a legalistic and literalistic mindset,  live in America, a country which would not exist if its founders had obediently followed the law of their British overlords.  Many of these people are , in addition,  Airbnb hosts, who would not be doing Airbnb hosting today, if the founders of AIrbnb had been individuals concerned about always strictly following the letter of the law.  Airbnb would not exist today and no one would be “hosting” today, if its founders had started by consulting the law and the law’s representatives, and had first dutifully gone to their city’s Business Licensing or Zoning office, or into their City Council Chambers,  asking if the city could please change the law because they wanted to start having paying guests stay at their home.  No, had the founders done that , they would have been laughed out of the Council hall.  It was not possible to start this movement by getting right with the then current law.  Rather it was necessary to create a movement sizeable enough to create a significant challenge to these outdated laws.

The point being, many of those who scold others about being sure to cross all t’s and dot all i’s when following the law, are simultaneously enjoying many rights and freedoms, which they would not have if everyone thought like themselves and always took their advice.
Sometimes mass civil disobedience is needed, and the laws of the land need to be violated, and violated by great numbers of people, to accomplish some good and movement forward for all.  Ghandi knew this, and led his people to make salt when this was prohibited.  Making salt…seems a small thing.  So does doing what you want with your own bedroom.

 

His government was oppressive in his day, and it continues to be intrusive and nannying in our day.

 

 

There’s a saying that is pertinent, and it goes like this:

Short term rental laws are a “Moving Target”

What do we get when we have many sets of outdated laws, and a large movement, or phenomenon, of people trying to move society beyond their shortsighted limitations?  What we have is a situation in flux, a “moving target” of regulations as it were.    Hence, it can be misleading to characterize something as “illegal” when in fact it may be illegal today, and quite legal tomorrow, or the reverse — it’s legal today, but will be illegal in 4 months or a year from now.    When “legality” is so rapidly changing, let’s not speak as if it is something set in stone.  The terms legal/illegal are just not that helpful,  and can be  misleading and problematic for a cultural phenomenon which is very much in flux and in regards to which, many cities are in the process of, or planning to, rewrite their regulations.  Particularly in those parts of the world where the regulations on short term rentals have not yet been revisited by their municipalities in the new era of Airbnb hosting, I think it is shortsighted to quote such regulations as if they were definitively authoritative and final.  So, particularly with regard to a phenomenon which is so challenging the status quo (and keep in mind the “status quo” tends to be large commerical operators, eg “hotels”),  it is necessary that we can look beyond simplistic distinctions between black and white, legal and illegal, and envision the future, and how this and other movements fit into the future that we would like to see.

 

Some Regulations on Short Term Rentals are needed

Though the libertartian in me blanches at the thought of any government telling people what they can and cannot do with their own bedrooms,

not all short term Airbnb rentals are of bedrooms in the host’s home.  For this reason primarily, I acknowledge there is a point to having fair and reasonable regulations on short term rentals — and in some cities, such regulations have been more necessary than in others.  I see significantly more rationale in governments regulating the use of apartments in large multi-unit buildings, for instance, than in governments regulating property owner’s use of bedrooms in the home they live in.

Quite often, in smaller cities or towns which are not large tourist meccas, and where there are relatively fewer Airbnb or other short term rental (STR) hosts, regulations are not needed because there is simply no problem.  Palo Alto, California is an example of a city which decided that it did not need to visit this issue, as short term rentals had not caused any problems in Palo Alto.  See this story to read about that.

In other cities, such as New York City or New Orleans, which are tourist cities, many individuals have been motivated either to buy up or to rent out properties solely to turn around and offer them as short term rentals, so high is the demand for entire home/apartment short term rentals in these cities.  This has created some problems for neighbors and neighborhoods.  Where real problems exist for neighborhoods and communities, then we see the rationale for some reasonable regulations.

In sum, what I have been trying to do here, is argue not that laws aren’t needed or that it’s fine for all Airbnb hosts to violate any laws pertaining to their business — but rather, that there is a complexity on the issue of the legality of short term rentals, and there is a larger context, and these things need to be  appreciated. The simpleminded approach of “if it’s illegal you shouldn’t be doing it” just doesn’t apply well to this new phenomenon — which we would do well to recall, is really a very old phenomenon.  Just because there is a law prohibiting something, does not mean that law is right.  Just this year in the US, in June 2015, the US Supreme Court decided the case  Obergefell vs Hodges , and determined, all of a sudden, that gay and lesbian individuals had the right to marry. News of the ruling.  The day before this decision, gay marriage had been prohibited in 13 states. Then the following day it was legal.  The “rightness” of gay marriage did not change all of a sudden on that one day — it had been right all along, it just took the law quite some time to catch up.  A similar situation applies to short term rentals.

Difference between city/state/regional laws and contracts 

Sometimes when this issue of legality arises, in conjunction with short term rentals,  confusion can arise between citizen’s obligations to regulations/laws of their governments, on the one hand, and their own responsibilities and obligations to private individuals or organizations that they have via contracts with those individuals/entities, on the other.  While it can be pointed out that government regulations on short term rentals are often unclear, outdated, or in a state of flux, and thus the duty that citizens have to this nebulous and changing body of law can be seen as qualified by their very ephemeral nature, (and/or their unjustness) the contractual agreements we have with private individuals or entities are of a different order.  These private agreements were entered into willingly (unlike government regulations, which are often imposed upon individuals who have no say in the matter) and are more ethically compelling than government regulations.  Which is to say, that in my view, a tenant’s obligation to their landlord, or a condo owner’s obligation to their condo association, is of a different moral order or nature, than that same tenant’s or condo owner’s obligation to their government.  We can speak of “civil disobedience” with regard to unfair government regulations, but we cannot speak of “civil disobedience” with regard to an individual with whom we have entered into a private business contract.

A reasonable approach 

I’d like to suggest that a reasonable approach to short term rentals, requires starting with the perspective that the existing laws on this issue, in most cities, are simply out of date and irrelevant to modern times.   As some have said, “The Sharing Economy is here to stay”.  (I admit, the term “Sharing Economy” isn’t the best to refer to micro-entrepreneurial enterprises.  “Peer to Peer Economy” is a better phrase.” )  Hence, cities should not be enforcing out of date laws, but either deciding not to regulate short term rentals, where these cause no problems,or working to pass new regulations which are fair and reasonable.

Berkeley, California is a good example of a city taking a common sense approach.  The city of Berkeley refused to enforce existing law prohibiting short term rentals, when city officials realized that the Airbnb phenomenon was as large as it was — meaning, there were hundreds of short term rental hosts in that city.  It was a movement.  So the city set about to create new short term rental laws, and while it was doing that, refused to enforce the old, outdated laws that it was working to rewrite — a very reasonable and practical approach, and one more cities should emulate. People complaining to Berkeley’s Code Enforcement or Zoning Dept about those doing short term rentals, were out of luck, as they were met with the response that Berkeley was not enforcing those laws.

By contrast, the author of    This Story   about Airbnb hosts in Roanoke, VA, doesn’t seem to appreciate the wisdom of the position  that Berkeley took on the issue, and  illustrates the foolishness of the belief that cities should enforce those laws which are rapidly on their way out.

This refusal by the City of Berkeley to enforce laws which were on their way out, was also wise in that it prevented many people from using these laws simply to bully their neighbors — something which wise government leaders will acknowledge, that miscreant neighbors like to do.  There were numerous complaints coming into the city of Berkeley from one particular individual, a tenant in a large apartment building,  who seemed to have a vendetta against someone.   He wrote long pages of letters to the City Council and Planning Commission, urging the most drastic and draconian of penalties be applied to an individual who was actually no longer even doing short term rentals, but long term rentals listed on Airbnb.  He urged huge fines and asked for criminal penalties as well, for these individuals.  One City of Berkeley Planning Commissioner responded to this tenant’s salacious desire to see others slapped with criminal penalties, by quipping,  “Why don’t we just bring back the firing squad?!!” Actually, New York City has just about done that, by suggesting that those who violate its short term rental laws, be  subject to $50,000 fines !!

Affordable housing — problems and solutions  

It is worth mentioning, in this context, that the juxtaposition of two emerging phenomena, is resulting in a degree of irrational animosity towards Airbnb hosting, which would be unlikely in another context.  At the same time that short term rental hosting on Airbnb and other venues is emerging, we have a housing crisis,  and in particular, an affordable housing crisis, in many areas of the nation and world.  Many who are upset about the lack of housing or affordable housing, readily blame Airbnb and short term rentals for this problem, even though the housing crisis has been in the making for many decades.  Airbnb is a convenient scapegoat for a problem which is complex, and many-sided.  This battle and this animosity have recently been seen in sharp relief in San Francisco, home to Airbnb headquarters, and also home to many organizations with goals of promoting affordable housing, stopping evictions, offering greater protections to tenants, and strengthening rent control laws — though it remains to be seen just how rent control laws could be strengthened in the city which, of all places in the world, may well have the most extreme degree of tenant protections and rent control laws on the planet.  Many SF property owners have a hard time in this setting  , and there are many stories of abuse and exploitation of rent control laws by tenants.  There have already been many horror stories of property owners who were unable to move into their own homes, such as in this such as in this case of a small SF landlord ,or who have had to pay a king’s ransom to do so.  Just how such laws could be tipped even more in favor of tenants who seem to have more rights to the properties they live in, than the owners themselves, remains to be seen.

In any case, unable to find any easy target to blame for the escalating rents in the nation’s most expensive rental market, many of these organizations have decided that Airbnb is to blame, and duly cited a few hundred “rogue” hosts who are apparently doing illegal rentals of apartments which they dont’ actually live in.  The point seems to escape these tenant and affordable housing  organizations, that if and when (I think it will be “when” and not “if”)  these property owners are forced to stop doing short term rentals of these properties, they are unlikely to then kindly offer these units as permanent  housing to some of the tenant activists who have been so ardently castigating them and attempting to wrest control of their properties away from them.    Instead, such owners are much more likely to  allow these units to join the other 31,000 other rental units which have been taken completely off the market in San Francisco by their owners, due to those owner’s desire not to be hemmed in by what they and many others experience as exceptionally oppressive rent control laws.  See one such story here . Or read here a story of an owner who is being bullied by his tenant   . Or, they may offer those units as “medium term rentals” on  Sabbatical Homes , which would allow them to fulfill all legal requirements, and not do short term rentals, but not allow their units to be available as anyone’s permanent housing, thus finding a way to avoid the rent control laws they despise.    There have been a few news stories showing that property owners are often doing just this.

Hence,  I think it’s unlikely that property owners are going to be forced into doing any kind of business with their properties that they dont’ want to be doing.  So I think viable strategies for solving the housing crisis and the affordable housing crisis, cannot be made through violent efforts to force property owners to do what they dont’ want to do.  There must be (and I believe there are!) other solutions to the housing crisis, than developing more and more oppressive regulations for property owners.

(I will write more about Airbnb hosting , the crisis in housing/affordable housing, and why I believe rent control is an outdated and increasingly useless means of creating affordable housing,  in another blog. So stay tuned!)

Offering short term rentals, or any type of rentals, is actually an affordable housing solution both for homeowners, as well as for tenants who have permission to sublet.  Renters are not the only ones who need affordable housing, and help affording their housing — homeowners also need affordable housing, and renting out space in homes has been a means to access affordable housing,  long before Airbnb arose — though the popularity of Airbnb hosting with homeowners is hearkening us back to the 19th century in America, when “putting up boarders” was much more common.  (This will also be a subject for another blog).

The types of accomodations that travelers choose are changing in this country, and housing is also changing.  I expect that we will continue to see many changes in terms of how people are housed, and how they use their housing.  In the midst of all of these changes, how likely is it for the law to always remain rigid and inflexible, unchanging in spite of the rapid change of society?  Let’s take the perspective that laws need to change as our society changes, and continue to push for changes that can easily be viewed as restoring older rights and customs,  ways of traveling and housing travelers, that existed for centuries before there were hotels.

Travelers Come Back Home

You know all those hoteliers who are getting upset about the competition they are getting from hosts in private residences?  Well hotels didn’t used to exist.  In antiquity, all travellers stayed in private residences.   As time went on, hotels took the travelling guest business away from private residences, and many cities reified and codified this change by developing zoning laws that helped hotels retain their monopoly.  Now we are returning to some of the same form of ancient hospitality we used ot have, and so the hotels’ monopoly on this business is being broken.

And therein lies a story for another blog!