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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/
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Friday March 09 2018, @08:43PM (13 children)
How is it that you guys never know how the economy actually works? There is no increase at a sustainable rate or transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor. Prices associated with living are driven up faster then any wage increases for the low income people. There really is no trickle down effect or economy, it's a theoretical fantasy that doesn't work. The segment of the work force that is growing is the low paying low skill jobs and they are not really getting paid that much more. There is just to many people there, so the wages can be kept down since there is always another wage slave around that you don't really have to pay a sustainable income to.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @08:54PM (12 children)
It's time to start reducing the population; society doesn't need you to have kids.
And, trickle-down does indeed work. It took rich people to fund the computing industry, and now even homeless people have super computers in their pockets. (What a mistake that was! All the rich got in return was a bunch of ungrateful layabouts flooding Internet forums with calls for socialism, the exact opposite of that which has created the richest poor people that the world has ever known.)
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by looorg on Friday March 09 2018, @09:03PM (11 children)
Are you sure you are not the socialist? They tend to get a raging boner for genocide.
Somehow I get the impression that those poor homeless people would be in a lot better shape if they had an actual home, food or healthcare instead of a phone. It's not that a phone it's worthless, but it's a pointless luxury compared to the basics of living. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It's nothing new. It has nothing to do with socialism, it's realism.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @09:28PM
You're the one who brought up "genocide"; nobody said anything like that. Supply and Demand applies to the human population, too; it's not just something that should be ignored, especially if you insist (at the point of a gun) that one group needs to pull weight for another group.
Secondly, the poor or homeless of today have more help than at any other time in the entire history of this planet, and many enjoy benefits that would make even the Kings of yore envious. It's absurd to try to shame rich people for the plight of poor people
Go work with poor people, especially the homeless; it will change your opinion—it will make you realize that they aren't just you on hard times.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Friday March 09 2018, @11:02PM (2 children)
Sometimes the poor are in worse shape (and quite possibly are poor in the first place) because they make bad/stupid choices - or at least choices that look that way to the rest of us.
I have seen someone trying to work out how much a minimum wage increase would deduct from their housing benefit, to see if they could still afford the rent. They were working it out on their brand new contract iphone (apparently a "really good deal" - still several times what I would pay for a phone, and I actually have money to spare each month).
Capitalism gives you the choice of how you want to throw your money away, socialism typically doesn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @10:46AM
I was fortunate to choose the right parents and the right upbringing and had bone spurs and a high draft number. What can you do? Sucks to be poor ner-ner. That's actual government policy BTW.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday March 10 2018, @07:28PM
...and sometimes they aren't. Proceeding as if they all were making the same mistakes you might be willing to decry as bad/stupid is... bad/stupid.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @11:25PM (2 children)
You're the one who brought up "genocide"; nobody said anything like that. Supply and Demand applies to the human population, too; it's not just something that should be ignored, especially if you insist (at the point of a gun) that one group needs to pull weight for another group.
Secondly, the poor or homeless of today have more help than at any other time in the entire history of this planet, and many enjoy benefits that would make even the Kings of yore envious. It's absurd to try to shame rich people for the plight of poor people
Go work with poor people, especially the homeless; it will change your opinion—it will make you realize that they aren't just you on hard times.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @03:27AM (1 child)
You're doing that thing again where you repost. We enjoy debating with you, but it could be time to step away from the keyboard for a while. Get some fresh air. Are there nature trails near by?
One thing I like to do when the internet makes me depressed is head out to a rustic campground about 50 miles away. There are miles and miles of hiking trails there. Is there somewhere near you like that? Buy some firewood and cook a steak or something over the fire. I guarantee you'll feel a lot better after a night of sleeping in fresh, clean air and waking up surrounded by mother nature's beauty.
The place I go to is hardly ever close to full except for holiday weekends. Often I'll only see two or three other distant campfires at night.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @01:35PM
Sorry, poor people can't afford to take 50 mile drives for pleasure, let alone days off work to appreciate nature. There is no respite from the bitterness of the world, just an endless stream of anger building up until the seals blow.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @01:54AM (1 child)
Historically, it's the fascists who had the boner for genocide. Communist/socialist governments just let the poor starve.
These days, the fascists still have a boner for genocide. Whereas modern socialist governments learned something from history, and are actually doing pretty well on the whole.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @10:52AM
No, by definition (the Conservapedia definition) it's socialists like Hitler that wipe out the Jews and other riff-raff. That's why you have, presumably, liberal Obama supporters marching in Charlottesville waving the Nazi flag. Good people, tho. Many, many good people on that side.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @05:22AM (1 child)
I hear this argument a lot - poor people are having a lot of kids - but it is so completely false. Birth-rate alone hardly has any effect on population, it is the difference between birth rate and death rate which affects population. Historically, both have followed each other closely. Population increase in last century is a direct consequence of detaching death rate from the equation due to better medical facilities, mostly the invention of anti-biotics, and the ability of poor people to avail these inventions. I suppose that is why so many people are against universal health-care, they really want the poor people to die.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @03:32PM
Of course, that doesn't imply that they should die; it just implies they shouldn't be created.