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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: 0, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 09 2018, @07:36PM (8 children)
let's face it - Some cities are not car cities. New York City, D.C., and San Francisco as examples have great subway (or BART) infrastructures. If your city has great public transit, then use it. I love the imperfections of public transit, you see weirdos, bums, and have wide latitude to behave like a shit and it's just another walk in the park for the bus driver or train operator.
And from the workingman's perspective, services like Uber and Lyft are much more dangerous to the drivers than they are the customers. If a customer calls upon those services during daytime then those customers are looking to get drunk. If they call upon those services later at night they are drunk. One of my most fond memories of rideshare services was being picked up by a German immigrant. My buddy and I had brought up the movie Falling Down not expecting the driver to understand. Then, out of nowhere, the driver started reciting quotes from the movie we thought he didn't know.
I gave that driver an extra-fat tip.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Virindi on Friday March 09 2018, @09:08PM (7 children)
Hahahaha, good one. I needed a laugh.
DC Metro is far from great, it was designed under the assumption that you have to transfer from the subway station to a bus to get to your final destination. A handful of places downtown (and touristy places) have good station coverage, then the rest of the area has "a station far off that you can drive or take an hour long bus to". Even parts of the city proper cannot reasonably be reached by subway (eg. Georgetown). Plus, after rush hour there is one train every half hour and it closes at midnight. If your primary mode of transportation is Metro, I hope you like walking.
(Score: 3, Touché) by frojack on Friday March 09 2018, @09:48PM (1 child)
Pretty sure that wasn't an oversight.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Friday March 09 2018, @10:40PM
Yes I know that, doesn't change the reality of it though.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 09 2018, @10:11PM (4 children)
Oh boo-hoo, you have to ride with Blacks and Mexicans. Drink a few beers and don't get Seth Rich'd and isn't D.C. progressive? Well, anyway, it seems that D.C. public transit is a lot like San Diego transit (yes, I've been to both of those places and ridden extensively both of their public tranisit).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Virindi on Friday March 09 2018, @10:43PM (3 children)
That is not at all the problem with the bus, jeez. The bus is slow; routes are crap and require many transfers. By the time you wait for a train, wait for a train to transfer, wait for a bus, wait for another bus, etc. you have spent double or more (sometimes MUCH more) the amount of time it would have taken to drive. Not to mention that it is expensive.
DC Metro system was designed for two things: commuting (to the city center) and tourists. General getting around is an afterthought.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 09 2018, @10:51PM (2 children)
Well, I agree with you. But good luck getting everybody else to agree with you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @02:38AM
Build your own? /sarcasm
No. Wait. Better idea. The government can build huge roads straight through from A to B. Then anyone, including public transport can quickly get around. As long as they pay the toll to the private operator the road is leased to.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Saturday March 10 2018, @02:56AM
Well if Uber and Lyft are doing well, you can assume some others agree as well.