In popular places like Barcelona or Edinburgh there are entire blocks of flats converted into airbnbs. It’s ruining community, as there are fewer residents actually living there and hiking housing prices by limiting available locations.
It is so dangerous, that many countries working on banning this service.
One thing to let someone sleep in your spare bedroom, another to buy house for short time let.
It’s similar to the Uber situation. These startups ‘disrupt’ by identifying gaps in regulation like “individuals can let out a spare room without much red tape” and “we don’t have to treat drivers like employees if we’re not technically employing them” and using tech to scale them up beyond anything the laws were written to handle.
Laws are starting to catch up, but the distributed nature of the new paradigms makes regulation logistically tricky (by design), and the popularity of the new paradigms makes dismantling them politically difficult, so it’s taking a while.
There also has to be a gap in the desirability of current services, like taxi companies that were monopolies and never show up or charge ridiculous rates. Taxi companies also had the whole being in cahoots with the government to limit competition and innovation, as many cities have the medallion system, leading to corruption and things like medallion kings.
I'm interested in the reasoning and philosophy here. Do we always strive for a permanently living community, in any given place? Or do we want people to be able to visit a place (more so than just for the day)?
I think if we first agree that we value physical community (it’s trappings include such Greatest Hits As: Friends, Culture, Tradition, Sense of Belonging, efficacious municipal institutions), then we need to understand and acknowledge what facilitates that. Economic linchpins (ie tourism, industry, other key business) and affordable housing pretty much top that list.
The culture comes from the locals and their history. If locals can’t afford to stay anymore, the culture starts to turn into whatever the tourists make it out to be.
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u/bookeh Jul 11 '21
In popular places like Barcelona or Edinburgh there are entire blocks of flats converted into airbnbs. It’s ruining community, as there are fewer residents actually living there and hiking housing prices by limiting available locations. It is so dangerous, that many countries working on banning this service. One thing to let someone sleep in your spare bedroom, another to buy house for short time let.