Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments
I lived a few doors down to someone who basically ran an ad hoc AirBnB ... before Airbnb.   It was pretty terrible.  Parties all the time, trash, they parked anywhere (in other people&#x27;s driveways...) because there were likely no long term consequences for doing so, the folks staying there didn&#x27;t care because why should they?<p>I was on the association board, it&#x27;s kinda thankless job as we had to deal with this house.<p>We got the usual riot act &#x2F; pushback from the folks operating that short term rental about how the association was terrible and oh man the government and how we just were protecting hotels (like man, I don&#x27;t have any connection to hotels...).  They tried to organize the other folks who rented out their places (traditional long term rentals) to push us off the board, they actually got several to go along with it, but they failed (it wasn&#x27;t even close, we had a limit on how many units could rent out at once anyway so they never were going to have enough numbers).<p>In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association &#x2F; neighborhood.   Fortunately the law was on our side and they eventually sold the unit and left.<p>Local governments are run by the locals and they should get to decide where businesses like that operate and zone and so forth.   The idea that Airbnb should just get to be the almighty &quot;disruptor&quot; and land on your neighborhood with no recourse is pretty absurd at face value, especially when the argument is usually about how folks should have some freedom, but what they mean is their freedom, not the communities.