The article doesn't mention it - and I can't find it anywhere - but in any neighborhood what is the highest proportion of units that are short-term rentals. Five percent? Ten percent in the super touristy areas? I have no idea and even before the other flaws in the study I am skeptical than anything short of 20% would make an impact on any major attribute of an area.
I see one stat in the paper that "40% of buildings had airbnb listings in some tracts" but if the buildings had 10 units in them each this still may mean a relatively small number of total listings were from Airbnbs. In fact, even in Boston there are some tracts where I suppose that the average building must have 30+ units which would meant that if 60% of buildings had no listing the total percentage of listings that are Airbnbs is relatively small.
>higher levels of violent crime did not appear immediately after Airbnb listings became available to tourists, but rather developed over the course of several years, the researchers said.
Alternative theory. Every area had some Airbnbs. In neighborhoods that were being wealthier/more popular/had more jobs decided it was easier to just do long-term rentals. In areas where landlords had trouble renting them out to anyone long-term (because locals know if a neighborhood is nice or not) they turned more units into Airbnbs because outsiders don't know/don't care.
I feel like trying to attribute specific numbers to the article's phenomenon is sort of a waste.
It really only takes one individual who is significantly disruptive to change the perception of trust and safety in any given region. The only limit (where percentages and such start creeping in) is in the physical reach that individual has. Anybody who has lived in the same neighborhood as "that guy" knows this to be true.
When "that guy" becomes more, the physical area may not change, but the level of trust and safety might, and that itself can propagate to other areas through gossip, news coverage, etc.
I don't have much of a point, I just wanted to say that the upper limit of "number of people required to make a place feel unsafe" is exactly one.
> I am skeptical than anything short of 20% would make an impact on any major attribute of an area.
That's not how market pricing works for things like property since the supply is basically fixed. Changing the available supply by even 5% can easily cause the price to change massively.
Let's say there are 100 homes in an area and normally 95 of them are lived in and 5 are up for sale. Anyone wanting to move to the area has 5 homes to choose from, so competition will force the price down to some level acceptable to the sellers. Now let's say that instead of 5 homes for sale, 4 of the owners decide to keep them for Airbnb rentals instead of selling. Now there's only 1 home on the market so if you want to move there you have to pay whatever the owner is charging or else wait an indefinite period of time until another home opens up. So the price will rise to the highest level a would-be resident is willing to pay, even though we only changed the availability numbers by 4%. In effect, property pricing (including apartment rentals) is determined "at the edges" so to speak.
> but in any neighborhood what is the highest proportion of units that are short-term rentals. Five percent? Ten percent in the super touristy areas?
In the US you can get close to 100%, where the only residents are cleaners, shuttle drivers, handymen, and property managers. There are even new development communities that are solely designed and zoned for rental. This, at least, is the case around Disney in FL.
With regards to your "alternate theory" here's a relevant line in the paper.
> To further test the direction of causality for the results, we use a lag/lead analysis in the spirit of Granger [33, 34]. This method is used when the sample includes multiple years and uses both lead and lagged versions of the treatment variable (τ can be both positive and negative).
I don't have enough experience in econometrics/statistics to evaluate this technique. But I would assume they've determined that the increase in crimes lags behind the increase in AirBNBs.
I’m curious. Why do you think anything less than 20% will not have an effect? Why isn’t that tipping point number, 0.01% instead of 20%, for example?
For example, gentrification effects in a community can be felt at much much lower numbers than that. In fact, it can take only a few handfuls of rich people moving into an area for it to start gentrifying because it completely changes the expectations landlords have. Suddenly landlords will greatly increase income requirements and rents and this leads to a feedback loop that makes people with an income above a certain level who wouldn’t even consider living in that area, to now make it an option.
The tipping point in gentrification, for example, isn’t caused by an increase in demand, but instead, an increase in expectations both on the supply and demand sides, which then leads to an increase in demands.
It only takes ~3% of short term rentals in theory to send prices skyrocketing.
If half the units that would be vacant in wait for a long term occupant are instead flipped on Airbnb, actual rental supply is flipped, even if in reality only 5% of units are Airbnbs.
Sigh. This appears to be one of those cases of media exaggeration for eyeballs. The study says:
> the effect on violence was only consistent visible for the measure of Airbnb penetration–or the extent to which buildings in the neighborhood have one or more listings (and for the measure of density, or the listings per household in the two-year lags). It was never present for overall usage, or the estimated quantity of Airbnb guests
And
> A second and related concern could be the potential bias due to omitted variables. Though the DID models control for the initial conditions of neighborhoods, they do not necessarily control for trends in these variables that parallel the increases in both Airbnb presence and crime. For example, there is some evidence that gentrifying neighborhoods experience increases in certain types of crime
And
> we have tested this hypothesis in a single city
So there's apparently a correlation between a single metric and a single class of crime in a single city, and there's a multi-year delay in the effect. The author speculates that erosion of social fabric is the culprit, but doesn't actually back this theory up with either data or references. One would at least expect some references to some other study about the correlations on emigration and violence (my two cents here is that it feels more likely that the former is caused by the latter, if a correlation exists at all). They even acknowledge that the correlation could be due to a factor that isn't being accounted for.
But then the article writer drops all nuance and blasts a title pegging blame squarely on AirBnB, even though it isn't even established that correlation is consistently true everywhere, let alone causation.
I mean, yeah, I get that people don't like predatory real estate renting, and want to hear that there's a neatly convenient evil entity to blame, but come on now.
>They even acknowledge that the correlation could be due to a factor that isn't being accounted for.
Related to this, they're performing a regression between Airbnb prevalence and crime, but they only control for a single variable: income[0]. They look at others in a robustness check, but a single control variable practically screams p-hacking.
They also don't address the fact that both Airbnb prevalence and crime are nonstationary[1]. Regressing two nonstationary time series results in a nonsense coefficient[2]. Two totally unrelated time series will have a high coefficient if both exhibit consistent trends.
[0] "We report the results based on using income as the main tract-level control variable"
/r/badeconomics is a shockingly sane place considering the sad state of most of Reddit (and HN for that matter). It always disappoints me to see how many people have extremely strong opinions on topics they know nothing about.
We're considering an Airbnb ordinance where I live. A major motivating factor is that Airbnbs are used frequently here to stage parties. It's difficult for homeowners to effectively police their properties for these (part of the reason they're Airbnb'ing them is that they're not living in the immediate vicinity).
Did you know Airbnb has a full ban on parties? If you're a neighbor and you find a party, you can call Airbnb and have it dealt with: https://www.airbnb.com/neighbors
This is kind of sad but very true from my experience. We knew most or all our neighbors but then my street got an Airbnb house and all sorts of people come by including a family reunion, parties, equipment dealer with trailer etc. Maybe unrelated but crime has increased (car breaking and catalytic converter thefts are all I know) and its hard to tell who lives on the street just due to the traffic.
A common quote on HN (and one that I firmly believe in) is:
> It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
This so applies to AirBnB. It's not salary per se but those that benefit by renting out units or those for whom this has saved them money I've found typically get so defensive about AirBnB to the point of calling detractors NIMBYists and the like.
I've long thought that AirBnB allows people to profit off something that others around them bear the negative externalities from but I think it's even worse than I would've pegged it. Clear negatives:
1. Reduces housing supply;
2. Creates safety problems;
3. Creates nuisance problems; and
4. Brings temporary residents into neighbourhoods that have no tie to that neighbourhood.
To be clear, I don't have a problem with people renting out rooms or an ADU on their property. Most cities don't either.
But AirBnB is clearly used to create illegal hotels and that's the problem.
> But AirBnB is clearly used to create illegal hotels and that's the problem.
The solution is increased enforcement of the laws that make these illegal.
The incentives aren't difficult: Create an anonymous tip line to report illegal AirBnB operations that violate zoning regulations. Have submitters provide the street address and URL of the AirBnB to make it easy. The person operating the AirBnB (or owner of the house) gets fined. The person submitting the tip about an illegal AirBnB receives 25% of the fine.
It wouldn't take long for illegal AirBnBs to close up shop when they realize there are negative repercussions for what they're doing. Keep it anonymous to avoid retribution.
I could even see bargain hunters looking for illegal AirBnBs to stay in, then reporting their hosts to collect their share of the resulting fine to recover some of the cost. The incentives are deeply stacked against the illegal AirBnB operators in this scenario.
Of course, this only works in areas where it's illegal to run temporary rentals. I expect we'll see more of those regulations as the problems with short-term AirBnBs in residential areas become more apparent.
Twice I've booked airbnb's in buildings where it was not allowed, and I didn't find out until picking up the keys. It's incredibly frustrating (one of building had concierge who gave us hard time). Next time, I'll just go with a traditional hotel to avoid the stress.
Both times, I saw other groups of people with luggage coming in and out. So it likely was impacting multiple units in both buildings.
> 4. Brings temporary residents into neighbourhoods that have no tie to that neighbourhood.
You're completely missing the real problem with this.
It's not just that short-term rentals bring in transients, keeping the housing unit available for short-term rentals displaces long-term residents who would have ties with the neighborhood, and in the best case of owner-occupied not just ties, but pride in ownership and a vested interest in maintaining both good relationships with the neighborhood and good working order of their property.
>I've long thought that AirBnB allows people to profit off something that others around them bear the negative externalities from
The more you think about it the more you begin to realise that this applies to almost everything you can think of. Our economic system is just bad at properly allocating rewards and value.
I have 100% issue with people turning their properties in SF into airbnb hotels. You're just skirting the fucking law at that point.
The area was zoned for -HOUSING- not a hotel.
I've used airbnb a lot in the past, but now that regulators have gotten a hold of it; it's basically a barely cheaper hotel with a lot more ??? on whether or not the place is good and the hosts live up to their reviews.
> It's not salary per se but those that benefit by renting out units or those for whom this has saved them money I've found typically get so defensive about AirBnB to the point of calling detractors NIMBYists and the like.
Isn't the other side of the argument also concerned with housing prices and money?
> To be clear, I don't have a problem with people renting out rooms or an ADU on their property.
What do you see as the differences between airbnb and this? The line between the two seems a little blurry to me and it seems odd to me that someone could be completely fine with one but completely against the other.
Exactly. The whole concept of residential property as an investment must go.
I wonder if enough AirBnB in the area could actually drive property cost down, because nobody would like to live there long term and then essentially wiping off all the profits people made by renting out. In the end only the AirBnB would really profit.
It's a business model clearly bases on a loophole and should be closed.
If someone wants to run a bed and breakfast they should get a suitable commercial property.
Well, you could include Craigslist in that, everything under the sun.
AirBnb/VRBO/Boooking.com all have their use.
The problem is when people rent/sublet their apt. in buildings that don't allow it, and cause nuisance to all.
Buildings should be able to opt out, and airbnb should respect it, and ban users that misuse it. But, i bet, in the name of profit, things get overlooked.
Anyways, if Airbnb is banned in a city, most of these apt will end up in VRBO/Booking.com/Craigslist, etc... etc... so it doesn't solve much. So, you have to ban all, and not just one. Is that realistic?
I am generally against airbnb as it induces rent-seeking behavior. This is bad for the economy because you are not adding value (in an economic sense). Plus the added dis benefits if increasing rent, reducing housing supply, etc. Ultimately it is a product of cheap money and as soon as the money is no longer cheap, it will be detrimental to airbnb. Sadly, the pandemic has increased our government's addiction to printing money...
I am a bit confused about this one. AirBnB does not destroy buildings, and they don't keep places empty, empty buildings make no money. In fact, before it started to be used as pseudo-hotels, it was a way for people to monetize the time they don't spend at home by having a tenant.
I mean, before AirBnB, where were travelers staying? Hotels are the obvious answer, but AFAIK hotels still have customers. So what is happening? Are there more travelers than before (outside of pandemics)?
Not saying that there is no problem with AirBnB, but it shouldn't reduce housing supply unless there is some deeper underlying problem.
With or without airbnb, states aren't about to create anything close to a policy which compels existing landowners to rent out parts of their property. How do you increase housing supply?
Externalities caused by Airbnb opposers:
1. Block people's access to tourism
2. Worsen the economy by artificially cuts demand from supply
3. Hurt tourism workers including restaurants workers, etc
4. Create segregation which is partially what nativism is about
5. Hurt people who live there and love talking to travellers
If you don't want "other people" in your sight and zero nuisance, buy the entire street. Personal preference relying on inefficient resource allocation should be paid for.
Airbnb should be a boon to the local economy. Tourists with money to spend at local businesses is literally the basis of the entire economy for multiple regions around the world.
It's only a 'problem' because our local governments have perverted the housing market (and hotel market) with a Gordian knot's worth of regulation and red tape. How is it that we as a society are so dysfunctional as to be unable to build concrete cubes with windows at an affordable price?
I have neither rented or rented out an Airbnb. However, I see no problem with a homeowner renting out his home for short periods.
Everything we do has negative externalities, including driving a car. I don't see how Airbnb's are considered so bad. Moreover this is a correlation study in one city. The title implies a causal analysis which this is not.
Pretty easy to phack your way to whatever conclusion you want using correlations. Moreover what is the magnitude of increase? From 0.0001% to 0.001% . The article should show some absolute counts.
As a user I love renting on these platforms, specially big city rentals. I'm sure airbnb style rentals contribute positively to the host city besides the sheer number of tourists. That includes the services economy surrounding rentals, which produce jobs in otherwise run-down places. Also newer tourist profiles, including long-haulers that engage differently with the city, from educational, to remote workers to health services patients. The whole change of dynamics has had a positive impact on tourism never seen before in places like Madrid, Oslo or Buenos Aires. It brings a fresh appeal to the old "life in the city" that is ephemeral yet profound and exciting.
As a resident I despise rentals. I want them away from my neighborhood. I'm glad cities like Barcelona limit them, but I believe they should be, instead, completely eradicated from central or dense neighborhoods and be taken, if anywhere, to specific, well researched into, suburbs that could actually get a boost from the rental economy. That is, given such "suburban rental benefit" concept even exists...
Otherwise, this fantastic hack into the hotel industry just rips too deep too fast into the delicate, slowly threaded fabric of our tightly knit neighborhoods.
In the book "Evicted" by Matthew Desmond he discusses how high turnover in residents negatively affects a neighborhood's sense of community. The book is insightful. Depressing but still insightful.
Editorial: This is one of things that led me to conclude that poverty is more than a financial condition. In fact, more and more I believe that poverty is a symptom of other "conditions." Conditions that aggregate to manifest and perpetuate poverty.
Hell, to satisfy me all they'd have to do is prove it's an actual BnB-type experience. Basically, prove the host lives on the property and it's either extra bedroom(s) or an ADU.
I understand the hate for AirBnB but when I didn’t have money it was really the only affordable way to travel. I don’t think I would’ve been able to afford my best vacations without it.
The AirBnb "effect" has directly led to increased home prices. A home turning a profit thus becomes more important than how its guests impact a neighborhood and community. Ignoring or spinning the social costs is a primary goal of Airbnb's PR machine. It has made many neighborhoods more transitory (i.e. less homesteading, more short term rentals). Acknowledge the social costs to community and it's not surprising to read that violent crime rates are trending up where AirBnbs thrive.
I'd say AirBnb increases travel by decreasing the cost of housing. It increases supply of an otherwise dormant asset. I agree that to argue that it has no effect on privacy of neighborhoods or crime is naïve. On the other hand, lowering the cost of international travel[0] enables more people to travel and to be exposed to more of the world. This is, in my view, a positive.
[0] San Francisco<->Milan Oct. 7-21: $522 on Lufthansa
We had anti-hoarding measures on masks but dont seem to have them on homes. Every additional income property you own (and used as such) should have an escalating hoarding penalty.
I’ve tried to tell this to people and I get blank stares every time.
If you take an AirBNB house off the AirBNB market and put it up for sale, it’s like you just built a house for that community. Even better, the market for houses dips lower because of the increased supply.
I really wish rental housing was banned. There is no real gain in productivity from allowing rental housing other than some scummy landlord who lives three states away getting a bit richer off of the dime of the actual residents in the city.
From micro economic levels, it makes sense, short term rental in many cases are more lucrative, thus prevalence of AirBnB can push out long term residents.
But from a macro level, that would mean the city is getting more tourists, more business and job opportunities for its residents, ultimately leading to a more prosperous populace, right? Or are there other forces at play preventing locals from benefiting from more tourism?
People earning money by collecting rent on real estate really aren’t contributing much of anything to anybody, more of a tax on the rest of us by directly taking our income or raising prices on the real estate which will do so otherwise.
As this topic becomes more and more mainstream, I look forward to the numerous Twitter posts sure to come from Airbnb employees about the taxing social implications that come with working at Airbnb, how it weighs on their conscious, and and their ultimate decision to follow what’s right and leave. But only after their RSU’s have vested, of course.
More seriously, I’ve been very disappointed with Airbnb recently. I spent the last two weeks in Manhattan. Every night at the radio city apartments/hotel (a nice, if average, hotel right near Times Square, 49th x 7th) was cheaper than all surrounding Airbnb’s, with the exception of one, which for several days listed cheaper at $90/night. As luck would have it, that Airbnb was infested with bedbugs, and I got a full refund from Airbnb after documenting the photos with proof.
Years ago, it used to be both cheaper and often higher quality to book stays via Airbnb. Nowadays, the majority that are priced reasonably (ie within $100 of local hotels) feel like high-priced hostels.
Another issue: each listing will almost always include an exorbitant cleaning fee, to the tune of 20-X% of the actual listing (I saw multiple rooms advertised around $150-200 with cleaning fees of $100).
In my opinion, Airbnb came to disrupt the hotel market, but hotels have caught up, and now they’re just disrupting communities.
I wouldn't mind the cleaning fees if it wasn't for the fact that of the 3 AirBnBs I've stayed in, 2 of them were not terribly clean despite the host charging a $200 cleaning fee for what was essentially a small 2 bedroom apartment with kitchenette.
I have a suspicion this fee is just pocketed by hosts who just wipe down the kitchen/bathroom, give the toilet and shower a quick clean, change the linens, and then give the floors a quick vacuum. I still find tons of dust on shelves, dust bunnies on floors and in light fixtures, finger prints on mirrors, dirty dishes in cabinets etc. I am by no means super anal about this stuff but if you're going to charge me $200 bucks for just the cleaning I'd expect something more thorough.
Cleaning a 1bdr. apt, is about 80-100 in NYC. Hotels have dedicated staff, that makes it economically cheap/feasible. AirBnb cleaning makes sense if you stay for a whole week, or more, and that fee gets amortized, otherwise, for short term stays, Airbnb is not cost effective.
I think AirBNB itself is at fault for the price inflation. They advise their hosts as to market prices using some sort of calculator (source: friend who runs an AirBNB) and the output seems to be absurd, but when everyone in a market follows it, it becomes the market. AirBNB is relying on the idea that it is big enough that the other guys (VRBO, etc) will follow suit since everyone wins. I have been shocked recently to see how much cheaper good quality hotels are than AirBNBs.
I used to love AirBNB. As it became more popular the quality plummeted.
On Booking.com - I have very rarely been extremely disappointed when I arrive at a hotel and it does not meet expectations. On AirBNB - it's like 50:50. Additionally, there wasn't much supply of entire apartments / houses on places like Booking.com a few years ago. Now there is plenty.
I avoid AirBNB now. It's just not worth the uncertainty for me. When I go on a vacation - the last thing I want is to be disappointed.
I think the reason why AirBnb in its early days was so cheap is that there were more hosts who let for fun and to socialise. Now that the novelty has fizzled out, the market is left with hosts that let for profit, with prices now reflecting the true costs of operating a hostel.
Same thing can be said for ride sharing platforms.
I think a lot about cleaning solutions because of this. You can't have shortstay accommodation without cleaning, you can't currently clean without human involvement, labour costs, etc. $100 works if you're exit-cleaning after a three month rental, but every 1-2 nights, it's insane. And Airbnb properties don't have the efficiencies of hotel cleaning teams (who will have targets/policies like 20 minutes to clean a room, no transport costs, etc).
It's a bigger problem for remote accommodation where staff are hard to find. I recently stayed in glamping tents in a national park where the operator had to drive 40 minutes each way on a rough dirt track to clean and reset the tents. Having to do that a few times a week would really knock down the enthusiasm.
Solve some of the cleaning problem and you have a huge market to disrupt.
As one example, beds and sheets and pillows and the like have barely changed in decades. Is there a workable format that would be quicker to deal with and acceptable to users?
> Another issue: each listing will almost always include an exorbitant cleaning fee, to the tune of 20-X% of the actual listing (I saw multiple rooms advertised around $150-200 with cleaning fees of $100).
That seems about right to me. The last time I had a professional cleaner clean my (at the time, 950 sq ft) home, around 5 years ago, it cost $100, plus tip. I'm sure costs have gone up since then, and IMO most Airbnb cleanings I've seen are more thorough than I remember that house cleaning being. I also expect cleaning costs have gone up due to COVID requirements.
As an aside, I think the percent-of-listing measure you're using doesn't make sense. It costs the same amount to clean a place if you stay there for one day or five. If the cleaning cost is going up as you add more days to a reservation, then that's weird and it sounds like the person managing the listing is doing something sketchy.
> In my opinion, Airbnb came to disrupt the hotel market, but hotels have caught up
I do think Airbnbs are still better than hotels in some situations. Hotels are just not all that fun if you have a bunch of friends who want to go on vacation together and hang out all the time, but common vacation spots will usually have plenty of rentals that sleep 8 or 10 or 12 or whatever (and will likely cost less than 4 or 5 or 6 hotel rooms).
Hell, even for a family of four, an Airbnb can be a much better experience. Sure, you can get a multi-bedroom suite at a hotel, but they're usually going to cost you more than an equivalent 2-bedroom Airbnb rental. Growing up, I remember my parents cramming all four of us into a small hotel room with two double beds, and it was not a pleasant experience at all.
When I'm traveling and am spending a week or more somewhere, I often enjoy cooking sometimes. Hotels usually don't offer rooms with kitchens, and those that do usually have crappy "efficiency" kitchens. Nearly all Airbnbs have a kitchen, and that usually doesn't add to the price like having a kitchen in a hotel room does. And even if I do go out for dinner, it's nice to always have a fridge to store leftovers, and a microwave or even stove/oven to use to reheat them. A hotel's minibar fridge is often not up to that task, and good luck reheating things.
> More seriously, I’ve been very disappointed with Airbnb recently. I spent the last two weeks in Manhattan. [...]
Definitely agree with you on Manhattan. For whatever reason, hotels tend to just be a better, cleaner, often cheaper choice there (I have a trip planned there that's coming up soon, and I've already booked a hotel). But I've done Airbnb in a couple dozen cities, both in and out of the US, and by and large the experience has been better than a hotel at the same price.
First, getting into really major concerns, this paper suffers from some serious potential for omitted variable bias. The goal of this study is to find the causal effect or treatment effect of Airbnb on violent crime: "This study tested the hypothesis that the arrival and growth of Airbnb, or home-sharing platforms in general, may increase crime and disorder in neighborhoods..." In other words, we want to know what would happen to violence if we could push a lever and increase or decrease Airbnb directly. A regression of violence on Airbnb tells us how violence tends to change with changes in Airbnb in the data. If there's some other factor that affects both Airbnb and violence (or affects one and is affected by the other), then the regression is going to find the mismash of the causal effect of Airbnb and the causal effect of that other factor and put it all on Airbnb.
This is especially problematic because the authors find changes in Airbnb penetration are correlated with census tract characteristics:
For Airbnb density (Fig 3a), we see that census tracts in the urban center (northeast on the map) show relatively high Airbnb presence from the beginning, but that in recent years the tracts with the highest level of Airbnb penetration emanate further out into surrounding, more residential neighborhoods.
This can be addressed by controlling for the confounding factor. Alternatively, we can look at a specific scenario where Airbnb penetration changed for reasons that almost certainly couldn't affect violence, and use that variation to find out how violence responds to Airbnb penetration.
Unfortunately, the paper only controlled for median income in the primary specification and percentage of black/Hispanic residents and homeownership rates in the robustness check (these additional controls are not in the database). This paper simply does not do enough to eliminate potential other explanations for why Airbnb penetration may be correlated with violence in a census tract without causing it.
I'm not that familiar with the crime literature, but from a very brief look at the abstract of one random paper, factors like economic inequality, poverty rates, population density, and divorce rates could predict violent crime. All of these could affect Airbnb penetration, such as through property prices (another potential confounding variable) or through amenities for tourists.
For example, increases in population density could both increase crime and increase Airbnb penetration (more amenities or maybe it's easier to buy new houses than existing houses). Or maybe Airbnb penetration increases more in areas with higher income inequality because there are cheap units near areas with rich amenities, and it's higher income inequality driving crime and Airbnb penetration. It could even be something unrelated to Airbnb that just so happened to affect urban and residential areas differently over these years. For example, maybe these regions had different changes in police presence during that time.
Second, another major concern is the potential nonstationarity in violent crime and Airbnb penetration. Airbnb has a very clear trend of increasing over time, as shown in Figure 1 of the paper. You can imagine violent crime also having a very clear time trend where this year's value depends heavily on last year's value. Controlling for year and neighborhood fixed effects, both a regression of violence and Airbnb penetration on its lagged (prior-year) value finds a coefficient of roughly 1, which indicates the presence of a time trend (technically you need a coefficient greater than or equal to 1, but coefficients close to 1 also produce similar problems with short time series like this one).
When you regress any non-stationary data series on another, you will always find a strong relationship between the two. That's true even with non-sensical relationships like GDP in the US and total recorded rainfall in Cambodia since Jan 1, 1900. You can think of time as the confounder which affects both series. Here, time is increasing both Airbnb penetration and violence. Even if they have nothing to do with each other, a regression will find a strong correlation between the two.
To avoid spurious correlations due to time trends, the most common way is to remove the time trend by looking at the change in the variables rather than their absolute values. That cancels out the time trend and allows for proper inference. This is why studies in finance usually look at returns (changes in values) rather than asset values. If we do that for this data, we again find the coefficient on Airbnb penetration becomes insignificant.
To conclude, the very least we can say about the results of this paper is that it is incomplete. Plenty of standard controls for crime are not included, which weakens the ability of the paper to argue Airbnb causally leads to more violence. Further, the authors did not properly handle the presence of non-stationary data.
We use difference-in-difference models (Eq (1)) to test whether a rise in the prevalence of Airbnb in a census tract in one year predicts increases in crime and disorder in the following year.
...
The models control for tract-level and year fixed effects. In order to make the parameter estimates that follow more interpretable, we note that the average census tract in the average year experienced 11.32 events of private conflict, 7.68 events of public social disorder, and 28.58 events of public violence per 1,000 residents.
I've not dug into the study enough to vouch for its quality as a whole - but it's clear the researchers are plenty aware of the differences between correlation and causation and are at least attempting to address them. This is actually often the case with scientific papers, even if it's lost in the media coverage of them.
As AirBnB has impact on well establish Hotel business what is likelihood that this study and later laws are sponsored by loosing party?
It is not uncommon for them to lobby to pass additional laws so they can prevent further loses/increase revenue.
I blame Airbnb in everything. Crime rates, sure. Homeless people, sure. Corruption in the government, def airbnb. Opioids, airbnb. (not really, I think that even though crime rates are correlated, they also should be handled by local government, culture, police and airbnb can't take the whole burden of blame. There're criminals, dumb people etc etc, and as a society we need to improve it)
It is not possible to be anonymous in AirBnB, to rent a flat they will ask you for multiple ID documents so they could confirm who you are, furthermore there is scoring system so anything fishy about guest or host will stay in the permanent record. I have used AirBnb a lot across the world, and overall I have not had any significantly bad experience.
handmodel|4 years ago
I see one stat in the paper that "40% of buildings had airbnb listings in some tracts" but if the buildings had 10 units in them each this still may mean a relatively small number of total listings were from Airbnbs. In fact, even in Boston there are some tracts where I suppose that the average building must have 30+ units which would meant that if 60% of buildings had no listing the total percentage of listings that are Airbnbs is relatively small.
>higher levels of violent crime did not appear immediately after Airbnb listings became available to tourists, but rather developed over the course of several years, the researchers said.
Alternative theory. Every area had some Airbnbs. In neighborhoods that were being wealthier/more popular/had more jobs decided it was easier to just do long-term rentals. In areas where landlords had trouble renting them out to anyone long-term (because locals know if a neighborhood is nice or not) they turned more units into Airbnbs because outsiders don't know/don't care.
jimmygrapes|4 years ago
I feel like trying to attribute specific numbers to the article's phenomenon is sort of a waste.
It really only takes one individual who is significantly disruptive to change the perception of trust and safety in any given region. The only limit (where percentages and such start creeping in) is in the physical reach that individual has. Anybody who has lived in the same neighborhood as "that guy" knows this to be true.
When "that guy" becomes more, the physical area may not change, but the level of trust and safety might, and that itself can propagate to other areas through gossip, news coverage, etc.
I don't have much of a point, I just wanted to say that the upper limit of "number of people required to make a place feel unsafe" is exactly one.
mdorazio|4 years ago
That's not how market pricing works for things like property since the supply is basically fixed. Changing the available supply by even 5% can easily cause the price to change massively.
Let's say there are 100 homes in an area and normally 95 of them are lived in and 5 are up for sale. Anyone wanting to move to the area has 5 homes to choose from, so competition will force the price down to some level acceptable to the sellers. Now let's say that instead of 5 homes for sale, 4 of the owners decide to keep them for Airbnb rentals instead of selling. Now there's only 1 home on the market so if you want to move there you have to pay whatever the owner is charging or else wait an indefinite period of time until another home opens up. So the price will rise to the highest level a would-be resident is willing to pay, even though we only changed the availability numbers by 4%. In effect, property pricing (including apartment rentals) is determined "at the edges" so to speak.
whycombagator|4 years ago
In the US you can get close to 100%, where the only residents are cleaners, shuttle drivers, handymen, and property managers. There are even new development communities that are solely designed and zoned for rental. This, at least, is the case around Disney in FL.
zucker42|4 years ago
> To further test the direction of causality for the results, we use a lag/lead analysis in the spirit of Granger [33, 34]. This method is used when the sample includes multiple years and uses both lead and lagged versions of the treatment variable (τ can be both positive and negative).
I don't have enough experience in econometrics/statistics to evaluate this technique. But I would assume they've determined that the increase in crimes lags behind the increase in AirBNBs.
tcoff91|4 years ago
addicted|4 years ago
For example, gentrification effects in a community can be felt at much much lower numbers than that. In fact, it can take only a few handfuls of rich people moving into an area for it to start gentrifying because it completely changes the expectations landlords have. Suddenly landlords will greatly increase income requirements and rents and this leads to a feedback loop that makes people with an income above a certain level who wouldn’t even consider living in that area, to now make it an option.
The tipping point in gentrification, for example, isn’t caused by an increase in demand, but instead, an increase in expectations both on the supply and demand sides, which then leads to an increase in demands.
sudosysgen|4 years ago
If half the units that would be vacant in wait for a long term occupant are instead flipped on Airbnb, actual rental supply is flipped, even if in reality only 5% of units are Airbnbs.
tim333|4 years ago
redis_mlc|4 years ago
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TroisM|4 years ago
I have seen areas close to 100%... in Hollywood, FL (not Airbnb though...)
lhorie|4 years ago
> the effect on violence was only consistent visible for the measure of Airbnb penetration–or the extent to which buildings in the neighborhood have one or more listings (and for the measure of density, or the listings per household in the two-year lags). It was never present for overall usage, or the estimated quantity of Airbnb guests
And
> A second and related concern could be the potential bias due to omitted variables. Though the DID models control for the initial conditions of neighborhoods, they do not necessarily control for trends in these variables that parallel the increases in both Airbnb presence and crime. For example, there is some evidence that gentrifying neighborhoods experience increases in certain types of crime
And
> we have tested this hypothesis in a single city
So there's apparently a correlation between a single metric and a single class of crime in a single city, and there's a multi-year delay in the effect. The author speculates that erosion of social fabric is the culprit, but doesn't actually back this theory up with either data or references. One would at least expect some references to some other study about the correlations on emigration and violence (my two cents here is that it feels more likely that the former is caused by the latter, if a correlation exists at all). They even acknowledge that the correlation could be due to a factor that isn't being accounted for.
But then the article writer drops all nuance and blasts a title pegging blame squarely on AirBnB, even though it isn't even established that correlation is consistently true everywhere, let alone causation.
I mean, yeah, I get that people don't like predatory real estate renting, and want to hear that there's a neatly convenient evil entity to blame, but come on now.
poormathskills|4 years ago
>They even acknowledge that the correlation could be due to a factor that isn't being accounted for.
Related to this, they're performing a regression between Airbnb prevalence and crime, but they only control for a single variable: income[0]. They look at others in a robustness check, but a single control variable practically screams p-hacking.
They also don't address the fact that both Airbnb prevalence and crime are nonstationary[1]. Regressing two nonstationary time series results in a nonsense coefficient[2]. Two totally unrelated time series will have a high coefficient if both exhibit consistent trends.
[0] "We report the results based on using income as the main tract-level control variable"
[1] They are consistent trends over time, see https://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/07/stationary....
[2] https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/94723/using-non-st...
unknown|4 years ago
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sobellian|4 years ago
millimeterman|4 years ago
tptacek|4 years ago
zain|4 years ago
porknubbins|4 years ago
cletus|4 years ago
> It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
This so applies to AirBnB. It's not salary per se but those that benefit by renting out units or those for whom this has saved them money I've found typically get so defensive about AirBnB to the point of calling detractors NIMBYists and the like.
I've long thought that AirBnB allows people to profit off something that others around them bear the negative externalities from but I think it's even worse than I would've pegged it. Clear negatives:
1. Reduces housing supply;
2. Creates safety problems;
3. Creates nuisance problems; and
4. Brings temporary residents into neighbourhoods that have no tie to that neighbourhood.
To be clear, I don't have a problem with people renting out rooms or an ADU on their property. Most cities don't either.
But AirBnB is clearly used to create illegal hotels and that's the problem.
PragmaticPulp|4 years ago
The solution is increased enforcement of the laws that make these illegal.
The incentives aren't difficult: Create an anonymous tip line to report illegal AirBnB operations that violate zoning regulations. Have submitters provide the street address and URL of the AirBnB to make it easy. The person operating the AirBnB (or owner of the house) gets fined. The person submitting the tip about an illegal AirBnB receives 25% of the fine.
It wouldn't take long for illegal AirBnBs to close up shop when they realize there are negative repercussions for what they're doing. Keep it anonymous to avoid retribution.
I could even see bargain hunters looking for illegal AirBnBs to stay in, then reporting their hosts to collect their share of the resulting fine to recover some of the cost. The incentives are deeply stacked against the illegal AirBnB operators in this scenario.
Of course, this only works in areas where it's illegal to run temporary rentals. I expect we'll see more of those regulations as the problems with short-term AirBnBs in residential areas become more apparent.
JMTQp8lwXL|4 years ago
Both times, I saw other groups of people with luggage coming in and out. So it likely was impacting multiple units in both buildings.
pengaru|4 years ago
You're completely missing the real problem with this.
It's not just that short-term rentals bring in transients, keeping the housing unit available for short-term rentals displaces long-term residents who would have ties with the neighborhood, and in the best case of owner-occupied not just ties, but pride in ownership and a vested interest in maintaining both good relationships with the neighborhood and good working order of their property.
andrepd|4 years ago
The more you think about it the more you begin to realise that this applies to almost everything you can think of. Our economic system is just bad at properly allocating rewards and value.
virtue3|4 years ago
The area was zoned for -HOUSING- not a hotel.
I've used airbnb a lot in the past, but now that regulators have gotten a hold of it; it's basically a barely cheaper hotel with a lot more ??? on whether or not the place is good and the hosts live up to their reviews.
bostonsre|4 years ago
Isn't the other side of the argument also concerned with housing prices and money?
> To be clear, I don't have a problem with people renting out rooms or an ADU on their property.
What do you see as the differences between airbnb and this? The line between the two seems a little blurry to me and it seems odd to me that someone could be completely fine with one but completely against the other.
callmeed|4 years ago
Where I live we call this "tourism"
intricatedetail|4 years ago
ardit33|4 years ago
The problem is when people rent/sublet their apt. in buildings that don't allow it, and cause nuisance to all.
Buildings should be able to opt out, and airbnb should respect it, and ban users that misuse it. But, i bet, in the name of profit, things get overlooked.
Anyways, if Airbnb is banned in a city, most of these apt will end up in VRBO/Booking.com/Craigslist, etc... etc... so it doesn't solve much. So, you have to ban all, and not just one. Is that realistic?
forrestthewoods|4 years ago
I agree. It shouldn’t be illegal.
dougSF70|4 years ago
visarga|4 years ago
That's the most attractive thing about AirBnB for me, seeing real homes and not living off a hotel room.
woopwoop|4 years ago
GuB-42|4 years ago
I am a bit confused about this one. AirBnB does not destroy buildings, and they don't keep places empty, empty buildings make no money. In fact, before it started to be used as pseudo-hotels, it was a way for people to monetize the time they don't spend at home by having a tenant.
I mean, before AirBnB, where were travelers staying? Hotels are the obvious answer, but AFAIK hotels still have customers. So what is happening? Are there more travelers than before (outside of pandemics)?
Not saying that there is no problem with AirBnB, but it shouldn't reduce housing supply unless there is some deeper underlying problem.
elzbardico|4 years ago
somethingyammy|4 years ago
[deleted]
threatofrain|4 years ago
glglwty|4 years ago
If you don't want "other people" in your sight and zero nuisance, buy the entire street. Personal preference relying on inefficient resource allocation should be paid for.
thereisnospork|4 years ago
It's only a 'problem' because our local governments have perverted the housing market (and hotel market) with a Gordian knot's worth of regulation and red tape. How is it that we as a society are so dysfunctional as to be unable to build concrete cubes with windows at an affordable price?
random314|4 years ago
Everything we do has negative externalities, including driving a car. I don't see how Airbnb's are considered so bad. Moreover this is a correlation study in one city. The title implies a causal analysis which this is not.
Pretty easy to phack your way to whatever conclusion you want using correlations. Moreover what is the magnitude of increase? From 0.0001% to 0.001% . The article should show some absolute counts.
ojosilva|4 years ago
As a resident I despise rentals. I want them away from my neighborhood. I'm glad cities like Barcelona limit them, but I believe they should be, instead, completely eradicated from central or dense neighborhoods and be taken, if anywhere, to specific, well researched into, suburbs that could actually get a boost from the rental economy. That is, given such "suburban rental benefit" concept even exists...
Otherwise, this fantastic hack into the hotel industry just rips too deep too fast into the delicate, slowly threaded fabric of our tightly knit neighborhoods.
chiefalchemist|4 years ago
https://www.evictedbook.com/
Editorial: This is one of things that led me to conclude that poverty is more than a financial condition. In fact, more and more I believe that poverty is a symptom of other "conditions." Conditions that aggregate to manifest and perpetuate poverty.
11thEarlOfMar|4 years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27859115
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
mupuff1234|4 years ago
Maybe something implementing a few basic (naive?) rules:
1. A property cannot be listed for more than 120 days a year.'
2. One cannot list more than 2 properties.
So limiting to people that aren't actually making a business out of bnb's.
paxys|4 years ago
Uber & Lyft started off by saying they aren't meant for professional drivers, just folks looking to "rideshare" in their free time.
Etsy was for creative people sitting at home making some crafts as a hobby.
Airbnb was for people who wanted to make some extra money by renting out a couch or spare room in their house for the night.
dorchadas|4 years ago
jareklupinski|4 years ago
turns out the problem was money all along
peanut_worm|4 years ago
DoubleDerper|4 years ago
cracker_jacks|4 years ago
11thEarlOfMar|4 years ago
[0] San Francisco<->Milan Oct. 7-21: $522 on Lufthansa
$22/night, 4.93/5 Rating: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/19010312 : $432
14 nights in Milan + Air fare for <$1,000.
Eat in the AirBnb for, what, $25/day? and you've spent under $1,500.
trident5000|4 years ago
jimbob45|4 years ago
If you take an AirBNB house off the AirBNB market and put it up for sale, it’s like you just built a house for that community. Even better, the market for houses dips lower because of the increased supply.
I really wish rental housing was banned. There is no real gain in productivity from allowing rental housing other than some scummy landlord who lives three states away getting a bit richer off of the dime of the actual residents in the city.
nell|4 years ago
mensetmanusman|4 years ago
People like renting their flats, people like not staying in motels, etc.
There will always be abusers in any system that substantially relies on good will. Go after the abuses.
analyst74|4 years ago
But from a macro level, that would mean the city is getting more tourists, more business and job opportunities for its residents, ultimately leading to a more prosperous populace, right? Or are there other forces at play preventing locals from benefiting from more tourism?
colechristensen|4 years ago
wyre|4 years ago
user3939382|4 years ago
adminscoffee|4 years ago
jwilber|4 years ago
More seriously, I’ve been very disappointed with Airbnb recently. I spent the last two weeks in Manhattan. Every night at the radio city apartments/hotel (a nice, if average, hotel right near Times Square, 49th x 7th) was cheaper than all surrounding Airbnb’s, with the exception of one, which for several days listed cheaper at $90/night. As luck would have it, that Airbnb was infested with bedbugs, and I got a full refund from Airbnb after documenting the photos with proof.
Years ago, it used to be both cheaper and often higher quality to book stays via Airbnb. Nowadays, the majority that are priced reasonably (ie within $100 of local hotels) feel like high-priced hostels.
Another issue: each listing will almost always include an exorbitant cleaning fee, to the tune of 20-X% of the actual listing (I saw multiple rooms advertised around $150-200 with cleaning fees of $100).
In my opinion, Airbnb came to disrupt the hotel market, but hotels have caught up, and now they’re just disrupting communities.
spamizbad|4 years ago
I have a suspicion this fee is just pocketed by hosts who just wipe down the kitchen/bathroom, give the toilet and shower a quick clean, change the linens, and then give the floors a quick vacuum. I still find tons of dust on shelves, dust bunnies on floors and in light fixtures, finger prints on mirrors, dirty dishes in cabinets etc. I am by no means super anal about this stuff but if you're going to charge me $200 bucks for just the cleaning I'd expect something more thorough.
ardit33|4 years ago
voisin|4 years ago
onlyrealcuzzo|4 years ago
On Booking.com - I have very rarely been extremely disappointed when I arrive at a hotel and it does not meet expectations. On AirBNB - it's like 50:50. Additionally, there wasn't much supply of entire apartments / houses on places like Booking.com a few years ago. Now there is plenty.
I avoid AirBNB now. It's just not worth the uncertainty for me. When I go on a vacation - the last thing I want is to be disappointed.
marderfarker2|4 years ago
Same thing can be said for ride sharing platforms.
wwweston|4 years ago
I am surprised that the market bears it for short stays.
prawn|4 years ago
It's a bigger problem for remote accommodation where staff are hard to find. I recently stayed in glamping tents in a national park where the operator had to drive 40 minutes each way on a rough dirt track to clean and reset the tents. Having to do that a few times a week would really knock down the enthusiasm.
Solve some of the cleaning problem and you have a huge market to disrupt.
As one example, beds and sheets and pillows and the like have barely changed in decades. Is there a workable format that would be quicker to deal with and acceptable to users?
js2|4 years ago
conscience.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan|4 years ago
kelnos|4 years ago
That seems about right to me. The last time I had a professional cleaner clean my (at the time, 950 sq ft) home, around 5 years ago, it cost $100, plus tip. I'm sure costs have gone up since then, and IMO most Airbnb cleanings I've seen are more thorough than I remember that house cleaning being. I also expect cleaning costs have gone up due to COVID requirements.
As an aside, I think the percent-of-listing measure you're using doesn't make sense. It costs the same amount to clean a place if you stay there for one day or five. If the cleaning cost is going up as you add more days to a reservation, then that's weird and it sounds like the person managing the listing is doing something sketchy.
> In my opinion, Airbnb came to disrupt the hotel market, but hotels have caught up
I do think Airbnbs are still better than hotels in some situations. Hotels are just not all that fun if you have a bunch of friends who want to go on vacation together and hang out all the time, but common vacation spots will usually have plenty of rentals that sleep 8 or 10 or 12 or whatever (and will likely cost less than 4 or 5 or 6 hotel rooms).
Hell, even for a family of four, an Airbnb can be a much better experience. Sure, you can get a multi-bedroom suite at a hotel, but they're usually going to cost you more than an equivalent 2-bedroom Airbnb rental. Growing up, I remember my parents cramming all four of us into a small hotel room with two double beds, and it was not a pleasant experience at all.
When I'm traveling and am spending a week or more somewhere, I often enjoy cooking sometimes. Hotels usually don't offer rooms with kitchens, and those that do usually have crappy "efficiency" kitchens. Nearly all Airbnbs have a kitchen, and that usually doesn't add to the price like having a kitchen in a hotel room does. And even if I do go out for dinner, it's nice to always have a fridge to store leftovers, and a microwave or even stove/oven to use to reheat them. A hotel's minibar fridge is often not up to that task, and good luck reheating things.
> More seriously, I’ve been very disappointed with Airbnb recently. I spent the last two weeks in Manhattan. [...]
Definitely agree with you on Manhattan. For whatever reason, hotels tend to just be a better, cleaner, often cheaper choice there (I have a trip planned there that's coming up soon, and I've already booked a hotel). But I've done Airbnb in a couple dozen cities, both in and out of the US, and by and large the experience has been better than a hotel at the same price.
unknown|4 years ago
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dontbeabill|4 years ago
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dontbeabill|4 years ago
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hamburgerwah|4 years ago
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diognesofsinope|4 years ago
This is especially problematic because the authors find changes in Airbnb penetration are correlated with census tract characteristics:
For Airbnb density (Fig 3a), we see that census tracts in the urban center (northeast on the map) show relatively high Airbnb presence from the beginning, but that in recent years the tracts with the highest level of Airbnb penetration emanate further out into surrounding, more residential neighborhoods.
This can be addressed by controlling for the confounding factor. Alternatively, we can look at a specific scenario where Airbnb penetration changed for reasons that almost certainly couldn't affect violence, and use that variation to find out how violence responds to Airbnb penetration.
Unfortunately, the paper only controlled for median income in the primary specification and percentage of black/Hispanic residents and homeownership rates in the robustness check (these additional controls are not in the database). This paper simply does not do enough to eliminate potential other explanations for why Airbnb penetration may be correlated with violence in a census tract without causing it.
I'm not that familiar with the crime literature, but from a very brief look at the abstract of one random paper, factors like economic inequality, poverty rates, population density, and divorce rates could predict violent crime. All of these could affect Airbnb penetration, such as through property prices (another potential confounding variable) or through amenities for tourists.
For example, increases in population density could both increase crime and increase Airbnb penetration (more amenities or maybe it's easier to buy new houses than existing houses). Or maybe Airbnb penetration increases more in areas with higher income inequality because there are cheap units near areas with rich amenities, and it's higher income inequality driving crime and Airbnb penetration. It could even be something unrelated to Airbnb that just so happened to affect urban and residential areas differently over these years. For example, maybe these regions had different changes in police presence during that time.
Second, another major concern is the potential nonstationarity in violent crime and Airbnb penetration. Airbnb has a very clear trend of increasing over time, as shown in Figure 1 of the paper. You can imagine violent crime also having a very clear time trend where this year's value depends heavily on last year's value. Controlling for year and neighborhood fixed effects, both a regression of violence and Airbnb penetration on its lagged (prior-year) value finds a coefficient of roughly 1, which indicates the presence of a time trend (technically you need a coefficient greater than or equal to 1, but coefficients close to 1 also produce similar problems with short time series like this one).
When you regress any non-stationary data series on another, you will always find a strong relationship between the two. That's true even with non-sensical relationships like GDP in the US and total recorded rainfall in Cambodia since Jan 1, 1900. You can think of time as the confounder which affects both series. Here, time is increasing both Airbnb penetration and violence. Even if they have nothing to do with each other, a regression will find a strong correlation between the two.
To avoid spurious correlations due to time trends, the most common way is to remove the time trend by looking at the change in the variables rather than their absolute values. That cancels out the time trend and allows for proper inference. This is why studies in finance usually look at returns (changes in values) rather than asset values. If we do that for this data, we again find the coefficient on Airbnb penetration becomes insignificant. To conclude, the very least we can say about the results of this paper is that it is incomplete. Plenty of standard controls for crime are not included, which weakens the ability of the paper to argue Airbnb causally leads to more violence. Further, the authors did not properly handle the presence of non-stationary data.
diognesofsinope|4 years ago
toptal|4 years ago
LatteLazy|4 years ago
agallant|4 years ago
I've not dug into the study enough to vouch for its quality as a whole - but it's clear the researchers are plenty aware of the differences between correlation and causation and are at least attempting to address them. This is actually often the case with scientific papers, even if it's lost in the media coverage of them.
ineptech|4 years ago
NiceWayToDoIT|4 years ago
m1117|4 years ago
renewiltord|4 years ago
It's probably spurious.
timwaagh|4 years ago
dntrkv|4 years ago
NiceWayToDoIT|4 years ago
It is not possible to be anonymous in AirBnB, to rent a flat they will ask you for multiple ID documents so they could confirm who you are, furthermore there is scoring system so anything fishy about guest or host will stay in the permanent record. I have used AirBnb a lot across the world, and overall I have not had any significantly bad experience.