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The City of Bonavista has taken a new approach to dealing with airbnb hosts who represent unfair competition for hotels and bread-and-breakfast ins because they don't pay business taxes. They cut your sewer and water lines.
Bonavista cuts off services for Airbnb operators with unpaid business tax bills.
"We have gone to some pretty serious measures to collect. We have literally dug up driveways and turned off water (and) sewer service until the bill is paid, cutting them off completely from all municipal services.
-- Mayor John Norman
If people can't even drive their car onto your property, take a shower, use the toilet, you're pretty motivated to pony up.
The mayor said the taxation method has been successful, but he acknowledges not all Airbnb owners are pleased.
"I don't think some are happy about it, but it is what it is."
This is a pretty effective fix to unfair competition by airbnb hosts. The next question is, how can we apply the same thinking to uber and lyft?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 11 2019, @02:54AM (24 children)
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @05:12AM (1 child)
And I'm entitled to build a honey-bucket and a trebuchet.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by janrinok on Wednesday September 11 2019, @07:56AM
Yes you are, but you are not entitled to use it against anyone. Even spreading the contents of your honey bucket will probably be breaking several health and environmental laws.
But I do hope you enjoy building it... Pics or it didn't happen!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @05:14AM (5 children)
Under a grand to dig up a driveway and then replace a driveway?
Is your "grand" the same as my "grand?"
That would be close to ten grand in my world.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 11 2019, @03:49PM (2 children)
Digging up and replacing existing sewer lines between the city boundary and a home is only a one-day job. I know because my first real job after college, a friend convinced me to buy a pickup and go into contracting. Bought a backhoe, and when he came by to help me on what he thought would be a two day job for two people, I was just finishing up. Nobody had told me it would take two people two days. Even included time for the city to inspect my work, so no corners cut.
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(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday September 12 2019, @02:01AM (1 child)
Seems a case of negotiation power. A homeowner probably can't get a contractor to do a job like that for less than $3000, but city employees can do it for less than $1000 cost to the city.
But why not cut the water by just shuting and padlocking the valve at the water main? Several hundred dollars may be peanuts to a city, but still, lots cheaper and faster to just turn a valve.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday September 12 2019, @11:53PM
A lot of places don't meter water (it's Canada, water is usually a flat rate for homes), and the shutoff valve at the city boundary is not designed to be locked. It's buried, and you need a pentagonal socket to remove the bolt blocking it - and a 6' long extension to work the valve. Usually it's a two-in-one tool. Any contractor can order one. So shutting off the water at the valve doesn't mean that it stays shut.
The valve is city property,so they just dig it up at the property line, close it, and remove the hollow pipe that allows access to turn if off and on. Anyone digging it up to turn it back on without authorization is committing a criminal offence - vandalism of city property and theft of service, so most contractors won't touch it no matter how much money the owner offers to fix it illegally.
It's not the same as when you access it in the course of regular repairs, where the city hasn't turned it off. In such cases, you should have a good enough working relationship with public works that they trust you not to screw things up. After a while, they'll even let you self-certify that the work was done without an inspection. Just don't fuck it up by trying to cut corners or be the lowball bidder.
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(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 11 2019, @05:33PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @04:56PM
Odd you say that barbarahudson when APK proved in a quote of yours you stalked him by unidentifiable anonymous posts for years + that you are less than an amateur at coding with your errors on C/C++ vs. Pascal in string related buffer overflows Pascal has no issue with https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=33430&page=1&cid=889582#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Troll) by shortscreen on Wednesday September 11 2019, @05:46AM (1 child)
Just because cities can get away with this doesn't mean it's a smart move. It's counter productive and could come back to bite them. Let's say the property value isn't all that high to begin with, and now the owner is stuck with back taxes, penalties, and a repair bill for damage caused by the city. They might say eff it and strip the house of anything of value, leave it to rot and never pay those bills. The city can seize it and try to sell it at auction but now the property is junk. Congrats, you're one step closer to being Detroit. (I've heard stories that were quite similar to this)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @06:00AM
No, because the next guy will buy the property at a significantly reduced value, pay to have the services reconnected and repairs made. Then either sell the property at face value, or turn it into a B&B and afford to pay taxes since he's probably not mortgaged to the hilt after overpaying for the property.
No Detroit. And no non-payment of water and sewage rates.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 11 2019, @11:54AM (13 children)
Except when they aren't so entitled. Not every water and sewer utility is run by the city in which it operates. This conflict of interest, and the abuses detailed in the story, are a good reason to have that separation - keep in mind the city could have just legally seized the property for non-payment, but that would have opened the whole scheme to the courts.
Nor have we established that there is non-payment of taxes. The town's government decides what your "business" is worth, decides that you haven't paid taxes based on this supposition, and plays these sorts of games without any sort of legal review.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 11 2019, @01:00PM (12 children)
Airbnb is a huge tax dodge at all levels of government. Most hosts don't declare their income, even when they're running 100 properties. Why should they get away with avoiding the costs that legit operators such as hotels, motels, and bread and breakfasts have to pay?
Nobody likes to be a neighbour to an Airbnb. They destroy residential apartment buildings and condos for the other users, and their operation is flat-out illegal. Cities are finding different ways to stomp out these cockroaches.
Check out Vancouver, BC., where Airbnb operators have taken over entire city blocks of apartment buildings. It's a disaster to the few legitimate tenants left. Especially since the new building owners are not shy to use illegal tactics to evict the few tenants who refuse to move.
Politicians have to take action because, unlike in many places in the world, tenants and renters have the right to vote in elections at all levels of government.
You can be sure this mayor will be re-elected. And your example is contrived - the municipal utilities are owned and operated by the city taxpayers - you don't pay your taxes, no service for you.
Same as privately run utilities like internet and satellite tv - don't pay, you're cut off. And unlike when the city cuts off your water, you can't complain to the municipal politicians about your satellite TV being cut, and if you try to go to court because it was cut for non-payment, you'll lose.
This is not the "sharing economy." It's a way to operate illegal businesses that are only profitable because they don't pay the overhead legit operators pay. Legit taxpayers should not be giving these dicks an indirect subsidy by letting them avoid paying taxes.
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(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @05:57PM
fuck you and your fucking taxes, you stupid fucking slave.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 11 2019, @10:41PM (10 children)
And if the town hadn't pursued these taxes (not just against the Airbnb folk, but also normal businesses!) there wouldn't have been a problem either.
The town isn't entitled to know your income or invent permits for you to pay either. I find it remarkable how you ignore how intrusive this all is.
If taxes and zoning are so shitty that this works, then Vancouver needs to do a lot more than just obsess over this Emanuel Goldstein. They need more hotels and such and some sane zoning law too. Airbnb can be a great help in working around this damage. Sounds like they already are despite the few alleged victims.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 13 2019, @12:02AM (5 children)
Libtards (libertarian retards) rant against taxes but want the benefits. You scream human rights violations but without taxes there's no legal system to pursue human rights violations. You talk big about lawsuits from this but without taxes there's no justice system to file a lawsuit with.
If you can't even troll properly, can't you at least try to be funny?
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 13 2019, @03:27AM (4 children)
And as the story shows, taxes also pay for thugs to shut down your property with a backhoe. Let us sing of the benefits of civilization!
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 13 2019, @03:44PM (3 children)
Nothing quite like taking a Cat 966 and scooping up and burying a station wagon in the field after the owner has been warned repeatedly not to park there! The dirt bucket digs a really nice car grave. Dump it in the hole, drive over it a few times to crush it, bury it, smooth it over, and the job is done. 10 minutes of fun. Should have run over it with one of the D9s in the lot first, though. Or just run over it and left it in plain view. Even the engine block would have shattered under that much weight.
Or burying a car that is parked under a no parking sign for the upteenth time under 10 tons of snow and ice and them losing their front end when they try to have it towed out.
Self-entitled shitheads often deserve everything they're asking for.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 13 2019, @10:43PM (2 children)
Who here is surprised?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 13 2019, @11:00PM (1 child)
You've probably never even operated heavy machinery. One of my daught, barely 5'1", 105 pounds, drove a tractor for a decade. She makes you look like a wimp.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 13 2019, @11:32PM
Anything I'm uniformly opposed to would, of course, be a good enough reason for me oppose specific instances. By tautology. Sounds like you'll need to refine that question a bit.
And my take is that economic freedom is far more important than whatever weird thing you have against Airbnb. It's amazing how much tyranny has been excused here merely because it hypothetically helps the trains run on time.
I don't agree that these games are remotely needed to protect Bonavista's tax base (keep in mind that the alleged Airbnb businesses are paying taxes, just not as much as the town would like!) or apartment dwellers in Vancouver. Nor do I agree that taxing foreign investors is a sane idea or that people could live in apartments with the right onerous regulation - after all, how are you going to force landlords to make more apartments and maintain the ones they already have, if they're losing money? It's just more dumb ideas from people who have never gotten an economy to work on their own.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 13 2019, @12:07AM (3 children)
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 13 2019, @03:40AM (2 children)
They just keep digging the hole deeper. A huge part of this whole problem is taxing without representation. I'm familiar, having lived in a number of places where tourists frequent, on the near universal exploitation of these tourists with taxes on lodging and such. Sorry, it's not right. I don't buy that tourists use more resources than the locals. It's just a wealth transfer because the city can.
Similarly, we see Vancouver feeding like a tapeworm on external investors. The whole thing is profoundly stupid. My bet is that if this really is a genuine, implemented policy, it'll backfire spectacularly.
Maybe. This whole Vancouver thing sounds remarkably retarded. It's partially legal, but surely, they could do some credible land ownership reform rather than tilt at the Airbnb windmill? I'd start by looking at the zoning and hotel markets. Someone has fucked up there, if they're having this kind of supposed trouble with Airbnb.
It strikes me that a solution to this problem is simply to revoke Vancouver and other cities's ability to do these sorts of things.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 13 2019, @03:22PM (1 child)
We're in an election campaign, and Prime Minister Trudeau has announced he will impose a 1% buyers tax on all foreign home buyers.
Foreign buyers taxes work. If you're only going to be using the home for a few weeks a year, you're not supporting the local economy, which is how the roads get paved and repaired, the traffic lights keep working, and the police keep getting paid to keep vandals from squatting in your pied-a-terre.
A 15% tax on new foreign buyers is fair. Some places, such as New Zealand, have put an outright ban on new foreign buyers, so the rich had better stop counting on fleeing there in the event of a nuclear war and start actively trying to avoid one, even if it means they make less money off war industries.
You're not a resident, you don't get representation. Don't like it, vote with your money by buying elsewhere (which is what the law is designed to encourage you to do). Block after block of housing that looks abandoned for most of the year is a huge burden - they've also imposed an additional annual tax on homes that don't have permanent residents living in them. Guess what - those homes quickly got rented out to full-time renters at below market value just to avoid the tax.
Taxation can lead to greater availability of housing stock, and this demonstrates it. Don't be surprised if more cities around the world copy it.
You're not a resident - why should anyone care what you think? The neighbours don't want you living there 1 or 2 weeks a year and leaving a hollow shell the rest of the time. Same as someone living in New York doesn't give a shit what you think if you don't live in New York.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 13 2019, @09:57PM
What are you even trying to fix? I see some talk about creating more available housing, but nothing about how this tax is supposed to do anything for that.
Let us also note that the tax is very easy to bypass. Just have some local front the thing.
Except of course when you're using the home for a few weeks a year, which may well be more support for the local economy than some schmoe living there at below market rate.
For who? You're just looking at it.
Even if this tax were a good idea, it doesn't sound like a foreign owners tax to me. More like a non sequitur. But I suppose if we put a 15% tax on non sequiturs, it would, no doubt, make housing more affordable.
We didn't need that investment in our future anyway, right?
Because they might want to do something for the future of their city or society instead.
My view on this whole thing is that it's the use of regulation to enforce a terrible business model. It's not just existing hotels protecting their market, it's a bunch of people protecting the valuation of their real estate assets by driving out affordable housing.
Apparently, the neighbors do want those taxes though that come from the one or two weeks a year the property is in use. Can't have it both ways.