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posted by martyb on Friday March 09 2018, @07:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the roomers-rumors? dept.

There are two kinds of horror stories about Airbnb. When the home-sharing platform first appeared, the initial cautionary tales tended to emphasize extreme guest (and occasionally host) misbehavior. But as the now decade-old service matured and the number of rental properties proliferated dramatically, a second genre emerged, one that focused on what the service was doing to the larger community: Airbnb was raising rents and taking housing off the rental market. It was supercharging gentrification while discriminating against guests and hosts of color. And as commercial operators took over, it was transforming from a way to help homeowners occasionally rent out an extra room into a purveyor of creepy, makeshift hotels.

Several studies have looked into these claims; some focused on just one issue at a time, or measured Airbnb-linked trends across wide swaths of the country. But a recent report by David Wachsmuth, a professor of Urban Planning at McGill University, zeroes in on New York City in an effort to answer the question of exactly what home sharing is doing to the city.

Source: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/03/what-airbnb-did-to-new-york-city/552749/


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @08:33PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @08:33PM (#650213)

    Why are they doing that?

    Why don't they demand higher salaries?

    Why don't they move elsewhere?

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @08:37PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @08:37PM (#650215)

    Not everyone can just pack up and move. Might not have the resources to do, may not have another job when you get to where you're going.

    Demand more salary - and get fired. Or, you get the higher salary, then the prices go up because everyone is make more, a vicious cycle.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @09:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @09:00PM (#650226)

      See subject.

    • (Score: 0, Troll) by cocaine overdose on Friday March 09 2018, @09:57PM

      Unless you have no arms, no legs, or are physiologically unable to move your body consciously, you can pack up and move. What you mean is "some people don't want to accept their circumstances and adapt." So all you're left with is bitching: "Muh jobs, muh boomers (seriously fuck boomers, jobs are fucked), muh LiViNg StAnDaRdS!!!" While this is a caricature, a simplification, and a hyperbole, if you were to strip away the veneer of "maturity" that contains a proficient use of vocabulary, an adept mind for self-delusion, and the outward appearance of being calm, it's just whining. Like a child whose parents have taken away his Xbox, and now he's on the floor, linting the carpet. Instead of doing something about, he's throwing a tantrum. Get up and take your Xbox back. What are your parents gonna do, yell at you? Man up, lad. Maybe your dad's an alcoholic and he'll glass you for being a lil shit: man up, lad. Do or don't. If you don't, stop bitching.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Friday March 09 2018, @10:10PM (1 child)

      by frojack (1554) on Friday March 09 2018, @10:10PM (#650258) Journal

      Probably one of the worst offenders is Amazon. Lots of high paying jobs.
      But even more low paying entry level jobs. Scan the list. [payscale.com] Notice that any job with the word "Associate" or "Customer Service" in their title offers subsistence level salaries, insufficient to rent even the cheapest apartment.

      Tons of these people are camping in homeless shelters, tent cities, parks, church property. In a couple of cases the land owners are quietly paid money by Amazon, but more often they foist servicing and policing these camp sites off onto "city services" which the liberals are fond of funding. Seattle has a climate just mild enough to allow living rough year around. The city would have you believe that the homeless problem resides mostly among its own citizens, former renters and mortgage payers, and not by outsiders attracted by all the "city services". The people on the street know better. Its starting to be a scary place to live.

      Meanwhile, the absence of any affordable housing is worsened by the lack of rent control, in the midst of a building boom of high end apartments for those people without the word "associate" in their job title. Much of this is financed by Chinese investors.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.