Hey folks just wanna say that studies show that Airbnb is contributing to rising rents in multiple major cities, so please don't use it.
@eribloodlust Is it AirBNB or any similar service such as Vacasa?
@rotatingskull
If it allows people to rent out rooms or flats as if they were hotels, then any service. The issue is about areas which are zoned for residential being used as commercial (a short term rental, not a subrenter). Areas that are zoned for residential can be driven up in value because of the demand for commercial hotel space. So these services microcommodify the housing market.
Here in Portland there's a huge problem with AirBnB-type places.
Landlords get around it by putting up ads and taking $ for rental applications, then they just never rent it out and continue using it as a hotel room.
So they're getting people's app $, and the nightly stay money. And the regulatory agencies just shrug it off, cause there's ads for the space so it's not illegal, so they don't care.
And locals can't find an affordable rental because of it all.
@ThisQueerBashesBack @eribloodlust Then it sounds to me like we need the regulatory agencies to regulate. This is a political problem. It can have a political solution.
Agreed! I'm just explaining how it works now, and how that contributes to the wider housing crisis.
@ThisQueerBashesBack @eribloodlust Cool. I think a solution to the housing crisis is to end rents. Renting is paying an owner for no labor, simply for the service of ownership, which is no service at all. We have more empty homes than homeless people in the USA. So start handing them out. Anything else is just tinkering around the edges.
@rotatingskull @eribloodlust
I agree with you there! But unfortunately most people don't, so we have to work on both fronts. We can work for free housing while simultaneously fine-tuning the rental system to make sure that people don't get left out in the meantime.