Tourism Gentrification in the United States: How Short Term Rentals Impact American Cities. Airbnb's rapid growth has caused significant challenges for local governments, demanding comprehensive regulation and a re-evaluation of its functioning at the city scale. (2024)
The Great Airbnb Crackdown. Last year, a massive blaze consumed several illegal Airbnb units in Montreal and killed seven people. The tragedy shone a harsh light on the Wild West of Airbnb in Canadian cities—and the battle to regulate it has just begun. (2024)
Why Travel Expert Rick Steves Says You Should Rethink Booking An Airbnb. He acknowledges that the Airbnb’s popularity adversely impacts housing markets and communities. (2024)
How Short-Term Rentals Affect Communities with Loose Restrictions — Shelterforce. Brendan O’Brien, author of "Homesick," talks with us about his new book, and what's he's learned about the effects of short-term rentals in communities like Flagstaff, Ariz (2024)
Do short-term rentals impact population movements? An analysis in six French urban areas found the density of STRs increases the likelihood of residents moving to a neighborhood that is poorer than their neighborhood of origin. (2023)
New York is breaking free of Airbnb’s clutches. This is how the rest of the world can follow suit. (2023)
Has Airbnb Overstayed Its Welcome? Some Cities Say ‘Yes’. What has driven NYC, and other cities here and abroad, to take action against this company? (2023)
Six Ways That Short-Term Vacation Rentals Are Impacting Communities. (2023)
Research Paper: Place-based displacement: Touristification and neighborhood change. touristification disintegrates the places people belong to & rely on for their daily lives, which leads communities to experience disruptions to their mental health as well as feelings of dispossession, anger & frustration. (2022)
Institutional investors have bought hundreds of thousands of single-family homes, many in Black communities. Critics say it’s creating a ‘generation of renters. Rep. Al Green, the Democratic chair of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said during a hearing Tuesday that ‘private equity companies have bought up hundreds of thousands of single-family homes and placed them on the rental market.’ (2022)
How short-term rentals ruin everything. An example current listing in Scottsdale on Realtor.com. The property is just under 4,000sf and just over .8 acres with six bedrooms, six baths, a four-car garage and pool. But here’s the twist: it’s not being sold as a single-family home, its being marketed on an income basis as a “turn key” Short Term Rental / Hotel property sleeping up to 50 people in a residential area. How does this play out? (2022)
Short-Term Rental Regulations: A Guide for Local Governments. New League of Cities research on how cities can navigate and develop short-term rental policies. T report touches on the many downsides & pitfalls of cities entering into memorandums of understanding & voluntary tax collection agreements with STR platforms like Airbnb & Vrbo. Entering into these agreements is often not in cities’ best interests. (2022)
Morningstar report recognizes the negative impacts as risks with Airbnb: “impact on society (resident quality of life), safety (adhering to codes), and economics (cost of living).” (2022)
That Vacation Home Listed on Airbnb Might Be Owned by Wall Street. Investment firms are buying up more vacation homes, aiming to cash in on growing demand from tourists and remote workers. (2022)
Community Consequences of Airbnb. While individual hosts and guests may benefit economically, the local housing market experiences significant change in the form of fewer affordable housing options and erosion of neighborhood social capital. At the same time, discrimination on Airbnb’s platform means that the benefits and consequences are not evenly distributed, with economic gains accruing disproportionately to white users. (2022)
An Open Letter to Airbnb. I write to you in the hope that you will radically re-structure your company before it starts a class war in which you will almost certainly lose the lion's share of your wealth, your moral conscience, your place in history as innovators instead of oppressors, and you and your family’s physical safety. … You have set your company on a path that can only lead to ruin — for millions of houseless families, and eventually, your leadership team and investors. (2021)
This is why cities need to be wary of entering into voluntary tax collection agreements with Airbnb. Airbnb failing to remit accommodation tax to Jersey City, leaving JC hosts holding the bag. Can you trust Airbnb? (2021)
Please put the ’neighbor’ back in ’neighborhood. The myth — that short-term rentals are a fun way for mom and dad to make a little extra retirement money — is far from the reality. Clear and concise article summarizing the main issues with Short Term Rentals. (2021)
Platform Accountability Should Be Central to Vacation Rental Plan. Making the platforms accountable to the city for their business practices will be far easier and more cost-effective than the Herculean task of checking each licensed host, one by one. (2021)
This Forbes article (2/21/2020) should be required reading for all city and state leaders. The influence of the so-called ‘Airbnb effect’ on local housing markets has grown into a significant cause for concern, particularly when looking at its impacts on housing stock, prices and communities. Economic Policy Institute: ‘While the introduction and expansion of Airbnb into cities around the world carries large potential economic benefits and costs, the costs to renters and local jurisdictions likely exceed the benefits to travellers and property owners.’Harvard Business Review: Airbnb is having a detrimental impact on housing stock as it encourages landlords to move their properties out from out of the long-term rental and for-sale markets and into the short-term rental market. (2020)
An International longitudinal study of Airbnb in popular US and world-wide cities reveals these destinations experienced reduced quality of life for residents, reduced housing availability and affordability, a change in the character of neighborhoods, additional competition for hospitality businesses, and potential safety risks for guests. (2020)
Platform Failures : How Short-Term Rental Platforms like Airbnb fail to cooperate with cities. With case studies on Barcelona, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Prague, Vienna, New York and San Francisco, the report reveals how Airbnb has driven up rents, caused damage to urban communities, and wrecked affordable social housing programmes. (2020)
Cities Tap AI to Regulate Short-Term Rentals as Travel Picks Up (2020)
Airbnb Agrees to Provide Host Data to NYC in Settlement. Airbnb has settled a major lawsuit against New York City and agreed to hand over personal data on its hosts, helping officials track down those who rent their homes in violation of city regulations. (2020)
Airbnb Targeted by States Suspecting Tax-Collection Shortfalls. Suspecting that Airbnb Inc. and other rental marketplaces may be shorting states and local governments billions of dollars in taxes, lawmakers in at least a half-dozen states are pushing legislation to take control of the process. (2020)
Airbnb is engaged in “a city-by-city, block-by-block guerrilla war” against local government. (2019)
Unwelcome guests: Airbnb, cities battle over illegal short-term rentals. Airbnb does not have a good record complying with local laws. … “We're seeing commercialized, predatory companies that are trying to commercialize our residential communities in ways that are damaging to our citizens and our residents and our quality of life. It is predatory." … "Airbnb's illegal hotels are a growing problem in communities across the country, flaunting basic safety and security standards, zoning rules and taxes while also pushing affordable housing options further out of reach." (2018)
What Airbnb really does to a neighborhood. Key points included: Airbnbs have measureable impacts to affordable housing, and are linked to rising rents and changes in an area’s atmosphere; Neighborhood surveys showed 95% of neighbors had issues with STRs; These will become even more prevalent as Airbnb pushes to host one billion guests a year by 2028 – one billion guests per year, that’s a lot of new STRs. (2018)
Airbnb and the Unintended Consequences of 'Disruption.' [Airbnb] is unwittingly producing a subsidy of tourists, paid for by nonparticipating urban dwellers, who bear the cost. (2018)