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Brisbane to introduce Airbnb permits for property owners amid housing crisis crackdown (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Mayor Adrian Schrinner says property owners would now need appropriate planning approvals, body corporate support and a 24-7 property manager for short-term rentals

Hard to argue tbh.... Is there a negative to something like this I'm not aware of?

Personally I think Airbnb is the stupidest thing going. You pay more than hotel rates, to live in a house you have to clean and tidy yourself and then pay cleaning fees on top, and its often a hassle if anything goes wrong as there's no responsible party you can approach - Airbnb shrug their shoulders, and the host just hides behind a mobile number they can conveniently turn off.

Have used them a couple of times in the past purely because we had pets and I hated it.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I hate airbnb. I live in a place in the US that depends on tourism that also has a bad housing shortage for locals who cannot find affordable rentals. Tourists come and pay the excessive prices to stay at airbnb places that should instead be used for long term rentals to the actual residents who live here. Tourists should go to hotels which are meant for them instead of wrecking the housing market.

I spent years being homeless because the little long term rentals that open up every so often have such high prices. I have stayed at places that were unpermitted since that's what I could afford, I cannot stress how awful it was being off-grid away from town with no transportation. No bathroom either. Power, outlets, etc. completely exposed. And when I finally got section 8 (after years of waiting for an opening and then years waiting for the selection to happen), no landlord would lower the price or even rent to someone using section 8 so I had to "network" to find someone that would let me rent with them as long as I illegally gave them extra money every month since they felt their property has more value than what section 8 covers, oh also lease says utilities included but you need to pay for your own utilities. Yeah every landlord I've had with section 8 has done that so far because section 8 pays more if utilities are included. We need rent control and airbnb banned asap. We are not doing OK.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Part of this comes about because of bad local government policies. Airbnb being used for housing would be much less of a problem if:

There were more hotels. Why aren't these people going to the existing hotels? Are they too expensive? What causes that? Not enough competition? Do local zoning ordnances forbid the creation of more hotels entirely, or make it prohibitively expensive? Or
There was more actual housing available for residents. Australia has this problem too, though not nearly to the same extent as America, from what I've seen. Zoning is far too restrictive on housing, making the provision of enough housing impossible. Remove restrictions on medium-density housing entirely, and ease them up to allow more high-density housing in key areas nearest to the major employment centres and major transport hubs. Also: governments should directly fund the building of a whole heap of housing themselves.

Restrictions on Airbnb are a good idea, in my mind, but they're a bandaid solution. They don't address the underlying issue, which is that there literally isn't enough housing to satisfy demand for residents, and in some tourist areas there aren't enough hotels at the price points customers are demanding.

The biggest long-term problem with Airbnb, which would still exist even if housing were abundant, is its unregulated nature. Its customers need to be assured that they can get reliable help if there is a major fault with the service, just like they could with any other business. Regulating them like hotels, with some easing of that regulation in some aspects (but not the key ways affecting customer experience) for Airbnbs that are used only for a few weeks per year while the long-term resident is away, is something that needs to happen regardless.