Posted on 10/28/2016 1:18:37 AM PDT by Mr_Moonlight
I don’t want to see them in those horrible shelters, or trying to live on the street because the shelters are so dangerous—that’s for sure.
Actually, there would be a trickle-down effect of making more apartments available. You are asking if I want them in my building to prove your point that I’m stupid, but you knew what I meant.
No, not to prove you are stupid; maybe to point out that you might be thinking with your (good) heart instead of your (smart) head.
May I introduce you to the law of supply and demand? Both my heart and my head tell me that AirBnb reduces our housing stock and makes it even harder for a New Yorker to find an affordable place to live. That is fact.
And that only encourages more government programs: low-cost housing being constructed, Section 8, Tier II shelters (which end up being permanent housing, because no one wants to move), perpetuation of the housing projects, the homelessness-prevention program that pays your rent, SCRIE, and the rest of it.
AirBnb is a racket, for the landlords and for the tenants who are in expensive apartments and would like to have more disposable income.
I wish my daily paper, the New York Post, would stop pushing it as a “business.” They also want to do away with rent regulation, which would throw more than two million tenants out on the street.
Rent control reduces the (rental) housing supply. If a landlord can’t earn a sufficient return for his investment and work, why should he bother? He’ll just condo the building and sell off the units. The people you are talking about won’t be buying, and the left will be screaming for more “projects”.
Oh, I missed this one; who wants to stay in an AirB&B somewhere AFFORDABLE? That word, like it or not, in major cities indicates unsafe surroundings.
I made a distinction between unnecessary businesses that decrease the housing supply, with their attendant cost to the taxpayer to boot, and rent regulation, which houses too many people for it to be abolished and would only add enormously to the homeless problem if it were.
The owner can’t just “condo” the building. There are laws governing that. So there’s no risk of losing affordable housing stock with rent regulation. Not with that particular tool, anyway.
I know you’re not from New York, but the problems are complex here, and much larger than they are elsewhere, because of the 8-9 million population. You can’t just be a blanket liberal or a blanket conservative. You have to look at each problem individually and know something about it. As usual, one-size-fits-all does not apply.
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