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How Airbnb's fight to overturn a New Jersey law imploded
Residents of Jersey City, New Jersey, voted overwhelmingly in favor of strict short-term rental regulations on Tuesday, putting an end to the high-profile feud between Airbnb and local officials that had engulfed the city in recent months. The move comes as a major blow to Airbnb, which spent more than $4.2 million blanketing Jersey City in television ads, handouts, and pro-Airbnb canvassers in a campaign to quash the restrictions, which will affect a popular destination for guests looking to visit Manhattan (which is just across the Hudson River and several minutes away on public transit) without running afoul of New York's tight rules on short-term rentals.
The new rules crack down on Jersey City's booming short-term rental industry—which has grown by an order of magnitude since city officials effectively legalized the practice in 2015—by requiring that owners obtain permits and limiting who can rent out their spaces and for how long. Despite an aggressive opposition campaign, voters approved the regulations in a landslide, with current estimates suggesting nearly 70% voted in favor of the measure.
Jersey City's rejection of Airbnb suggests that the tide may be changing for the so-called tech unicorn, as the city joins the growing ranks of former Airbnb defenders turned defectors. Local government officials around the nation that had been early advocates of the company, from Arizona and Louisiana to Oregon, are now turning against it. And with Airbnb looking to do an IPO in 2020—a process that involves airing out its dirty laundry for investors—every bit of regulatory backlash counts.
This story originally appeared on wired.com.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 13 2019, @03:52PM (6 children)
The AirBnB campaign screwed up - they didn't understand the voters' mindset. In a population like that, the way to win is not to stir people up - let it roll as stealth as possible and direct target the people on your side. Spending millions on broad voter awareness just brought out the NIMBY crowd. Whether this is right or wrong is moot, it's the way the system works and AirBnB just clearly demonstrated a dramatic lack of understanding.
Unless a city has a majority of voting property owners who rent, which is damned hard to do since property owners who rent tend to own multiple properties and often live out of town - and doubly so for AirBnB since those owners of multiple properties probably see AirBnB as unwanted competition, it's going to be very hard to find a majority of people who will check off on a ballot: YES - please increase the number of noisy transients who tramp in and out of my neighbors' houses.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by slashnot on Wednesday November 13 2019, @08:40PM (1 child)
I came here to post a similar comment. Airbnb was campaigning to ALL the residents of Jersey City, when only a small minority of those residents care to offer Airbnb rentals.
(Score: 2) by rcamera on Wednesday November 13 2019, @09:03PM
but i loved that commercial about a place 80 miles away from where i live... "i have to rent out my primary residence so that i can pay my property taxes" made me laugh every time. i kept wondering where they stayed while their place was being destroyed.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday November 13 2019, @09:06PM (3 children)
Raising rent levels and frequent gridlocking [theguardian.com] affect more people than just the neighbors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 13 2019, @10:09PM (2 children)
Barcelona is kind of an extreme case, and probably should have regulations to address this.
Almost like Uber making taxis out of normal cars, AirBnB is making hotels out of normal residences - and most places there are already zoning regulations to take care of that.
Some smug yuppies bought the house next to me in Miami, came around on the weekends and make lots of obnoxious noise, left their dog with no food chained in his own filth and literal bags of garbage all week, then... after 6 months of this, put up a "FOR RENT" sign on the front to try to rent out part of the house. Now, this structure was zoned R-1, and the rental agent was licensed, so one quick call to inquire about the rental: "what is for rent? Oh, just the front two rooms? First and last deposit? Yes, o.k., well, since the property is zoned R-1 and this would be an illegal rental, what happens to my deposit when the city comes in with a cease and desist order?" Rental sign was gone the very next morning, and the owners were even more pissed than when I had them explain themselves to animal control.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday November 13 2019, @10:27PM (1 child)
In TFA context, the proximity of Jersey City to Manhattan is likely to bring it in the same 'extreme' category if left unchecked.
My sympathy, glad that there was a solution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 13 2019, @11:16PM
>My sympathy, glad that there was a solution.
Not really a solution, and they weren't the ABSOLUTE worst neighbors possible, but... Cubans from Hialeah, lots of money, no kids, would have loud sex in the front bedroom (of 5 bedrooms) 10 feet from my garage when I'm working in the garage on a Saturday morning (more than twice...), and the dog thing - didn't correct when I asked them face to face about it, so I tried animal control who did visit and "educate" them - mostly in how toothless animal control is to do much of anything about it, but they did at least try to clean up a bit after that, and started complaining about leaves from my trees blowing into their concrete 4' wide yard where they kept the dog. Most amusing part was when I refused to cut my trees that would drop leaves was Ms. neighbor out in her lingerie top - no panties - bending over to clean up the dog area. We had a new baby and left within the year, so it never blew up into anything bigger than that. I actually preferred the family before them with 5 kids and a derelict/drunk uncle with his sketchy construction worker buddies who drank Tequila on that 4' concrete yard area. They left after #6 was born. I was hoping if they couldn't rent part of it illegally (like most of Hialeah does...) that they might sell, but no such luck. I actually learned the R-1 zoning trick from the crack dealer 3 blocks away, city was toothless to do anything about him for 10+ years, literally hundreds of arrests for all kinds of things, but the one thing they made stick on him was breaking his place up into 3 rental units when it was zoned R-1, that actually sort of put a kink in his operations for a while after they made him stop that.
🌻🌻 [google.com]