Indian workers are worse off, because they pay the same amount of taxes as an American worker with no salary hikes or promotions. Stuck with the same job for years. No freedom of job portability. Spouses cannot work, always at the edge of relocating based on where the bodyshops deploy them.
The H1B visa is for 6 years temporary stay, but the H1B worker pays for SSN which he have no use of.
well, they are "worse off" compared to their non-H1B counterparts here but are way better off being here as opposed to staying in India, which is why they are here in the first place.
Money isn't everything. Being put through the bodyshops, the stress of making ends meet on those low wages, and not really being able to do things outside work takes it's toll.
All of above is true! H1Bs have to go thru some agony for 5 years or till they get Green Cards. But all of my friends who landed on H1B in 2000 are doing great in 10-15 years now owning multiple homes and many running own businesses. You should also take into account that H1Bs do not carry heavy Student debt like American students do. They get inexpensive education abroad and start working the day they land in USA. They also share accommodation and save money in case they have to go back to home country. I've also worked for a decade with Indian outsourcing companies and understand their business model. As businesses responsible for creating shareholder wealth, they run for profits under current legal framework and even IBM, Accenture, Deloitte, Cap Gemini and other large Multinational consulting firms employ hundreds of thousands of employees in India and bring them to USA on H1B visas in similar business models. H1B reform is important but even more important is to train US students in new technologies. I'm a naturalized US citizen living in San Jose for 17 years. My son is in high school in San Jose and by the time he is ready for college, the 4 year college cost will be $200K. I think that needs to be addressed along with H1B reform. We need to lower entry barrier for US students to get into Science and technology by making college more affordable.
You'll have to be more specific. Quite a lot of what schools consider math is rote learning, from time tables in early years to forumalas in later ones.
If his I-140 is approved, make sure he wont lose his line in the long long queue for the greencard. ( 10 years ). Switching H1B is not that easy as it sounds. It comes with its own set of complications depending on what stage you are in for the process of greencard.
heck ! ask him to apply Canada express entry and forget H1B. There are good IT in Canada too if he is skilled enough.
American corporations want to make profit year over year. (The announcing the quarterly or annual reports ? )
IT jobs has a tradition of being highly paid. When the revenues are less, the course of action is to cut the expenses and hence the salaries. So if a corporation want to make profit, they can hire workers with the minimum lawful wage. Indian bodyshops are catering to that demand. Its that simple.
Cutting salaries or firing American workers will lead to PR nightmare. So American companies hire bodyshops or majorly Indian IT outsourcing companies like TCS or Infosys to do the IT jobs.
Most enterprise IT do not need high skills. ( I mean who wants to know about data structures or Big O to make a CRUD application or write queries ? ). So a major chunk of Indian IT workers fit in that category.
So American enterprises get the work done at a cheaper rate in India or through the H1B worker. So no firing or salary cuts for the American worker.
Fire an H1B worker, he will keep silent and go back to his country if he is a fulltime worker. If he is from a bodyshop, he will be deployed to another location in the US. No PR nightmare for the corporate company.
In a nutshell:
Indian outsourcing firms are only here because American corporations want more profit and revenues are not that great. Stop being greedy and outsourcing will end, that includes H1B too.
And by "stop being greedy" you mean overpay people to do work because of qualifications that are not applicable to the job, or because they happen to be American? Why should anyone do that?
Having used AirBnB for a while, I now prefer to stay in a hotel. Staying in AirBnB I don't feel safe at all and 80% of the AirBnB's I stayed had one problem or the other. There is no importance given for the safety or even a proper door. I dont want to deal with problems when I stay somewhere for pleasure or business. And No, I dont want to read hundreds of reviews before I make my decision. I am back to hotel stays. I hope their lobbying finds success.
> And No, I dont want to read hundreds of reviews before I make my decision. I am back to hotel stays. I hope their lobbying finds success.
The great thing about the free market is you get the choice. You don't have to pass a law to force everybody to also do as you choose.
There are definitely problems with some AirBNBs. Renting out an apartment as if it was a hotel room should not be allowed. However. that should be a contract issue between tenant/landlord or owner/HOA, and also a local zoning issue.
That said, there are also times that AirBNBs are very worthwhile. I've stayed in homes in the desert, far away from anything else. I've stayed in non-touristy neighborhoods in Venice, Stockholm, and Havana, that let me get away from the common areas and see local life.
Hotels definitely have its pros and cons, as do AirBNBs, but there should not be federal regulation outright banning it.
The issue in my mind is that AirBNB actively thwarts attempts by landlords, HOAs, and zoning officials to enforce their contracts. If it was all above-board, I'd have no issues. Truly. But frankly, if AirBNB was compliant with leases, HOAs, and zoning, they'd be out of business. And they know it.
People talk a lot about the free market, but I see a lot of externalities at play here. Am I as a landlord to be held responsible for the damage to my units caused by somebody running a gypsy hotel, in explicit violation of their lease, paying me not one extra penny? Are their neighbors obligated to deal with a bunch of spring breakers partying through the wall, also for free?
This whole thing smells like a bunch of valley billionaires arguing that they should be above the law so they can make their IPO valuation come out right.
Properties have been sublet and let on the black markets forever. airbnb is not changing much of that, only making it more visible.
Most airbnb landlords will quickly realize that it takes a huge amount of work to welcome guest for short stays, then they'll realize that they might loose a lot of money if not filled all the time.
Oh for sure. I've known plenty of people who've done relatively brief (~ 2mo) sublets completely against leases etc (of course NYC is still a bit of a Wild West as far as housing is concerned, particularly at the more affordable end of the rental market).
My point was that AirBnB has vastly inflated the potential scale of revolving door short black market sublets (the loud, drunken vacationers that seem to be the source of most disgruntlement/anti AirBnB mentality here in the HN comments) much more than, say, craigslist.
Fair point - again dependent on the property/neighborhood. I stayed in an AirBnB in Denver that was one of three cookie cutter buildings next to each other each on about 1/4 acre, built sometime in the last 5-10 years, all clearly used exclusively as short term rentals (as best I could tell).
Great AirBnB experience, literally no complaints, and no neighbors close enough to give us the stink eye (admittedly we were staying in the one that was in the middle of the three on that street). Mind you we were generally respectful and there for a very short time, not enough to really piss anyone off.
That seems sustainable to me, whether or not it's legal.
People AirBnB'ing their apartment in my current building (which has a 24 hour doorman/woman/person who pretty much knows everyone who lives there? obviously that shit wouldn't fly for long, never mind that it's flagrantly against the lease we all signed, there's no way to fly under the radar).
I meant that it's not sustainable because it takes a lot of work to welcome the guests, clean the flat and sheets all the time. It gets to a full time job really quickly if you have a few flat, and they better be in the same building.
Also, the price is expensive for guests... but as host, AirBnb takes 20-30% commission and you don't get paid for empty times. There are lots of emptiness if you do short rents.
I find the notion of business "self regulating" to be no more or less absurd for AirBnb than I would an oil or coal company. Of course I understand why they'd make the argument, I just can't fathom who would believe them here in the 21st century.
For a non-airbnb example of this, look at Ireland: they have minimal regulations/barriers to entry for starting a (real) B&B, and the result is that you can get great accommodations all over this heavily-touristed island for €35-55/night. Truly one of the great deals in European travel.
Similar in the UK, the regulations for B&Bs and guesthouses are pretty minimal compared to a hotel. The biggest issue people run into in getting licensed is that often some changes are needed to meet the fire code for overnight accommodations. Usually not hard to fix, but may involve things like installing fire doors at the top and bottom of stairwells, and installing lockable fire doors on any closets that are located beneath stairs.
I rented an entire 3br/2 ba apartment in Dublin for a week for $700, circa 2007. We had 15 people in there.
On the first night there a child cat burgled one of our wallets. He scaled the side of the building and came in through an open window. We caught him in the act, but he was too quick and scampered out the way he came. When we complained to the host (the pharmacy downstairs, really) they asked if we wanted a NEW apt in a different building or another apartment in that one (basically two apts for a week for the price of two nights in a hotel)
I had the same reaction. Then realized he meant a pint-sized cat burglar scaled the wall, snuck through a window, and lifted a wallet. To me this is extreme considering it would be far easier to be a pickpocket or scam artist.
People are talking a lot about safety regulations, as in, "well, if you're willing to take the risk of sleeping in someone's house, you should be able to," but what gets me is that safety's just one of the things hotel regulations ensure.
Another is access for the disabled. I've stayed in a few AirBNBs that would absolutely have been off-limits to someone in a wheelchair, but the number of times I've stayed in a hotel that wasn't disability-accessible? Zero.
Yeah, choice is great when you're talking about saving some bucks and taking on the risk of sleeping in an essentially-unlicensed hotel, but what about the people for whom the regulations guarantee them access to commerce or travel at all?
Like others have said, regulations develop out of a reaction to a lousy status quo. I think it'd be a shitty world to live in where people with disabilities were being shut out again, to the extent they used to be.
(Am I saying that, if you're going to let your room commercially, you should make it ADA-compliant? Maybe so. It's at least worth thinking about, instead of saying, by default, screw those folks in wheelchairs.)
ADA compliance is a fair point, but at the same time, I've lived in completely legal to rent apartments in NYC that were absolutely not wheelchair accessible.
All new buildings in NYC must have elevators/general wheel chair accessibility, but the old buildings are still there, and still being used.
Further, there are numerous AirBnB rentals that existed as licensed rental properties long before AirBnB came around that are most certainly not wheelchair accessible.
I think it would at least be fair for AirBnB to require listings that are/are not wheelchair accessible to say so on their listings. Beyond that I don't think it's fair to require owners of those properties to invest a large sum of money to make it accessible.
Oh, absolutely, I don't think the answer is black and white; neither "any exchange of housing for money must be fully ADA-compliant"-- nor "raising the question of ADA compliance is a burdensome regulation that should be ignored".
For me, the question that's worth asking is, how do we ensure, as new ways of doing old things develop, that the people who've been shut out in the past (i.e. the people that the ADA protects) aren't just getting shut out again?
People in wheelchairs, that's a thing. The ADA is the way that, up til now, we've set up to enforce that businesses must accommodate them. Stuff like AirBNB and Uber is bringing an absolute ton of new individuals, essentially doing business, who've simply never had to think about making business accessible to people with disabilities.
Maybe there's a new regulatory framework that needs to develop? Maybe there should be a burden on the companies like AirBNB and Uber to ensure that, wherever they operate, some percentage of their service offering is wheelchair-accessible? (Even if they're buying property or hiring drivers directly to satisfy that requirement?) I don't know, just brainstorming at this point, I guess.
It would cost those businesses more, of course, but I ask myself which world I'd rather live in--one in which my two wheelchair-bound friends could actually use AirBNB wherever they went, or one in which I said "hey, sucks you're locked out of that experience, but free market, yolo"?
I'm really not sure how best to handle it. Uber has definitely gotten some grief for their total inability to be accessible to people in wheelchairs in NYC, when there are yellow cabs that are, but that criticism has largely fallen by the wayside.
That cabin I rented with some friends in bumblefuck an hour outside of Boulder, CO - should they be required to install an elevator when the car we drove could just barely even get us there (even in the summer time)?
100% accessibility seems impossible (barring significant improvements in wheelchairs, which are definitely coming), but where exactly is the line?
I don't really know the answer. I think in general if you're making something new - you should make it as accessible as is reasonably feasible, but how much should we require to be "backported"?
If AirBnb stuck to it's early role as way for people to rent rooms in homes or vacation homes, it would be an amazing service. By seeking to "disrupt" the hotel industry, they kind of poisoned the well.
> The great thing about the free market is you get the choice.
Have you ever looked at the AirBNB rating system? It's a disaster. Five stars or get abuse. Without a trustable rating system here you won't get a free market.
That paper is about information asymmetry. If you know you're getting a room in someone's apartment, there is still no reason to prohibit informed customers from doing that.
You know you're getting a room, but you don't know if the room or experience will be plagued with trouble. Much the same as the "lemon car" problem--not all cars or rooms at "market price" are equal.
Having traveled enough to know that not all hotel rooms are created equally, I don't even know how that's a concern.
I've stayed in hotels that were frequented by prostitutes (not a value judgement, but it does change the experience of the stay considerably), hotels with drug dealers in the parking lot, etc. Even going with a big brand, I've had extremely disappointing experiences.
Most recently, I stayed at the Hyatt Regency in Louisville, which is a highrise hotel in which all the rooms are located around a central lobby. This is fine, assuming there aren't people screaming in the lobby, but surprise, there were literally people screaming in the lobby for long periods in each of the two nights we stayed there, and repeated calls to the front desk didn't resolve the situation.
We'd planned a longer stay, but ended up relocating after the second night of interrupted sleep, and somewhat ironically, ended up in a super quaint AirBNB that was a fraction of the price.
Yes, AirBNB can be a bit of a crapshoot, but that isn't a problem that's unique to AirBNB.
You know that the average quality is lower than a hotel, with reviews on top of that. And if you don't want to risk a lemon then you can still stay in a hotel.
You have hotels either way and you clearly can't save the market for not-hotel rooms by prohibiting it entirely. Where is the harm in allowing someone to knowingly take a risk in exchange for a discount?
They may or may not exist depending on the location, the layout of the building, the particular renter, the behavior of the homeowner, and probably about a thousand other variables that are impossible to even identify.
Your opinion piece is fine until your last line where you support using the state to ban other people from making the choice that you prefer not to make.
In fairness, the non-caricature prohibitionist is more like, "I don't like drunken fights breaking out in the street, so I think anyone profiting from public drinking should follow measures to reduce the risk of such fights breaking out."
There's a general rule about people who harm others with externalities. They always loudly wonder why the people they victimize can't just mind their own business.
a long term renter has a much greater vested interest in preserving the quality of life of the community and mitigating impact on the neighbors.
the fire safety issue is a bit of a red herring. that's something that is the responsibility of the landlord and the local fire safety inspector anyway, not really part of the long term vs short term rental debate.
the issues related to ABB tenants are about their lack of responsibility and accountability within the community, since they will be gone (forever) in a short period of time. the issues related to ABB hosts is that they evade regulations that their competitors cannot evade, and that (in some situations) they violate community laws or norms that exist for good reasons.
> the fire safety issue is a bit of a red herring.
Which was the only point I was making.
> that's something that is the responsibility of the landlord
So you agree it's red herring because fire safety is already regulated..
> the issues related to ABB tenants are about their lack of responsibility and accountability within the community
If I could demonstrate that responsibility and accountability were already regulated in communities - would you agree that your objections are red herring as well?
What's a hotel though? Where I'm from, running a bed and breakfast (defined as 4 or fewer rooms and 8 or fewer guests) doesn't require any kind of special licensing.
Of course running it out of an apartment runs afoul of every rental agreement I've seen.
A common zoning distinction is that a bed & breakfast is a private home where the host lives in the home. If the host does not live there, many cities/towns would then consider it a hotel and subject it to different rules.
I think a lot of the arm waving about airbnb is because of the latter situation. I don't think many people seem to have issues with renting out a spare room.
We don't have zoning in my country. I've had two companies, their address was always my apartment. I was also manager for a company - it was located in an apartment, then a house, then finally a commercial place (when we got to over 25 people).
> Your opinion piece is fine until your last line where you support using the state to ban other people from making the choice that you prefer not to make.
What's wrong with that? Virtually every regulatory law does this. Unless you are arguing that the state should not be able to regulate anything, I don't see why supporting regulations in one industry or another is a bad thing.
You can't sell an unsafe car. You can't run an unsafe restaurant. You can't build an unsafe building. You can't rent an unsafe home. You can't drive in an unsafe manner. You can't allow an unsafe number of people in your business. You can't run an unsafe salon. You can't practice medicine in an unsafe manner. You can't sell unsafe food.
Your usual airbnb property is not "an unsafe hotel." My flat is presently being let on airbnb and isn't suddenly unsafe because someone else is in it rather than me.
My experience is the opposite - 90% of the places I've stayed have clearly been people's homes or cottages. At least in the US. In Europe it was different but for me that's a much smaller sample size.
I have the same experience as yours. Of the 7-8 AirBNBs I have stayed at, only 1 felt like a hotel (it was in Hong Kong, and the cheapest place I could find.)
On the other hand, some of my best travel experiences have been eating meals with hosts, staying up talking about life and drinking by a bonfire with hosts, and otherwise getting the authentic AirBNB experience. Of course I wouldn't say that the hotel-type experience isn't out there (it may even be cheaper than hotels) but that's not why I do AirBNB. It would be a shame (both for hosts and guests) to have fewer opportunities like this available.
Are you looking for a kind of place that keeps you away from the illegal hotels? Is there a price point thing, or neighborhoods you tend to stay in? I have the same experience as you do, but I'm avoiding the kinds of searches that would ever put me in an illegal hotel.
I'm sure I am, because I prefer staying in actual flats and cottages, which is why I use Airbnb in the first place (that and price). On the other hand I don't see many listings that don't fit that description, and I always select the 'entire home/apt' filter, which presumably is where hotel-like operations would show up. It must vary a lot by local market.
When I read stories like these and think about my condo-owning NYC friends complaints about Abnb, I usually start wondering if the kinds of searches I'm giving Abnb are just not representative of the majority of users, and so I'm not really noticing the negative externalities they're creating.
> My flat is presently being let on airbnb and isn't suddenly unsafe because someone else is in it rather than me.
You might not have changed the smoke detector batteries in a decade, though. Fine if you want to risk your own life that way, but we've decided as a society that renting a hotel room means extra safety requirements and checks to protect the guests.
>Fine if you want to risk your own life that way, but we've decided as a society that renting a hotel room means extra safety requirements and checks to protect the guests.
Sorry, how did "we as a society" decide that? Governments are deciding the things you're talking about. What we as a society can do, is post and read reviews on hotels and Airbnb rentals, and we certainly do this.
>You are engaged in the political process aside from once-every-few-years voting, right?
I certainly have and do, and it is a pretty frustrating thing with which to deal. Thank goodness society is not bound by what government can do.
>That's how "we as a society" decided it.
I think that's a pretty low standard for judging society's opinion on anything. You get a lot more feedback on what society thinks by examining the day to day transactions and exchanges we're all doing.
> Governments are deciding the things you're talking about.
Governments are made up of our elected representatives and those our elected representatives appoint/hire. If we're unhappy with those decisions, we vote for someone else and tell them to change them. See Trump and the EPA for a current-events sample of this in action - the Right feels things are too regulated, they won the election, and now we're getting a bunch of regulations removed (to our likely detriment, IMO).
>Governments are made up of our elected representatives and those our elected representatives appoint/hire. If we're unhappy with those decisions, we vote for someone else and tell them to change them. See Trump and the EPA for a current-events sample of this in action - the Right feels things are too regulated, they won the election, and now we're getting a bunch of regulations removed (to our likely detriment, IMO).
This paints a rosier picture about the possibilities of change in such systems than I think are warranted, though I know some might argue that the sclerosis of politics is a feature as much as it is a drawback. That said, we make decisions, sometimes daily, regarding things we want in life. It may be as simple as which kinds of coffee to drink, or which laptop to buy, and those choices result in areas of society that can and do change with some speed.
Those daily decisions are usually far removed from their externalities. Yes, people will choose the $5 shirt over the $10, but it's hardly a sign that people in our society endorse the child slave labor that's happening behind the scenes. Government regulation happens a lot when individual small decisions eventually lead to things society as a whole doesn't like.
>Those daily decisions are usually far removed from their externalities. Yes, people will choose the $5 shirt over the $10, but it's hardly a sign that people in our society endorse the child slave labor that's happening behind the scenes. Government regulation happens a lot when individual small decisions eventually lead to things society as a whole doesn't like.
If people knowingly help that child labour scene to flourish, by what metric do we decide that "society" doesn't, in fact, like it, despite its actions? Election results? Pulling a lever or filling in a ballot every X years, by comparison, doesn't involve anything remotely close to that level of engagement and activity. Even writing the occasional letter to a legislator is a paltry amount of effort, by comparison.
I'm not intending to be glib here, I'm quite familiar with the arguments that equate society with representative government. I'm just interested in how representative such systems really are of said socieity.
> If people knowingly help that child labour scene to flourish, by what metric do we decide that "society" doesn't, in fact, like it, despite its actions?
Completely false premise. They're not "knowingly" helping the child labor scene - they're just picking the cheap shirt. Walmart doesn't put up a sign "this stuff made with child slave labor!" - they might not even know themselves.
>Completely false premise. They're not "knowingly" helping the child labor scene - they're just picking the cheap shirt. Walmart doesn't put up a sign "this stuff made with child slave labor!" - they might not even know themselves.
If Walmart did put up such a sign, it might have a shaming effect. Obviously they don't and we shouldn't expect it. People who are aware of what's going on can go in and out while plugging their ears, doing the equivalent of singing, "naah-naah" to the origins of their products.
Meanwhile, government, which I'm to understand is to be equated with society, seems to take no issue with trade with countries where such conditions prevail. Every once in a while, a politician (like Trump) will decry how China (as an example) does business, but there seems to be little action on that front.
Yes, there are in fact less (or no) disability access requirements for a private residence. The typical home, if used as a hotel, would not be in compliance with access requirements imposed on hotels. This is one way that the deck is stacked against hotels.
So your flat has been inspected by the hotel commission and your hotel permit is displayed in a prominent location in your flat and you've kept logs of all required maintenance and I can view your flat's inspection records?
Huh? Why does he have to do that? I can understand being suspicious of those who actually come and STAY in the Airbnb, but to use your line of argument against the person renting out the room makes no sense to me. What exactly does the hotel permit specify? That the toilet is clean? That the building is structurally sound?
Just wait until an AirBNB customer dies in a fire because the property didn't meet fire safety requirements. AirBNB probably wouldn't survive the fallout.
I don't know if they do. If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck.
At the end of they day they are directly competing with hotels. In order to ensure the competition is fair, they should be subject to the same regulations.
What if I just want to rent out one room in my home on the side, not as a business? Why, then, should I be subject to the same requirements as a huge corporation with dedicated multistory buildings, many more customers, staff, and so forth?
To me, it sounds like the taxi industry pre-Uber. Lots of questionable-value regulation created by incumbents that doesn't really hurt anyone in the real world when it's mostly ignored.
Most Airbnbs I've stayed at do not offer meals. In my local jurisdiction, all hotels must provide meals like your definition lays out. By that fact an Airbnb would /not/ qualify as a hotel legally
If providing a meal is part of the definition that makes something a hotel, that's true; the way you state it is a requirement that hotels must comply with, though, which would mean AirBnB might qualify as a hotel, but also be in violation of the requirement.
Theres lots of places where AirBnB (or hosts on the platform) meets the definition of a hotel and simultaneously often fail to meet the legal obligations of a hotel.
It certainly depends on where you live but almost all jurisdictions have those sorts of requirements. For example, first thing I saw on Google
>Environmental health specialists inspect every hotel at least twice a year or more often as deemed necessary to ensure compliance with the Hotel, Food Service Establishment, and Public Swimming Pool Act of 1985* and the hotel rules and regulations. Current hotel permits must be displayed in a prominent location for the public to view and the inspection report must be available for public scrutiny.
Maybe this is more true of countries like India, where I'm from, where I can imagine hygiene standards being more "flexible". But here in Western Europe for example, or the US, airbnbs are almost better maintained than I'd maintain my own house. And I think there's a good reason for this: the impact of reviews. Even in India, I can't imagine a place going far looking like a cheapo dorm room, because people will definitely look at reviews.
I can understand hotels having a legitimate objection to the differential regulation that gives Airbnb hosts a cost advantage, but there are good reasons for exempting (some) hosts: generally, once you run a business at scale, there's a disconnect that leads to cutting corners with safety, which is what prompts these regulations.
If a hotel room is just one of a thousand properties (the thinking goes) then the owner might be too casual about safety issues -- hence regs to force them to care. But if it's a room in the owner's very own house, there is no such "incentive incompatibility": a fire is much more than just a financial loss for them, so -- if anything -- they're overcautious! Thus, it's reasonable to exempt the renting out of one's primary residence from these additional safety regs.
With that said, your general point still stands: many of these hosts are "superhosts" who rent 3+ properties, which does (from the perspective of regulatory concerns) look like a hotel business and which therefore does merit similar regulation.
Maybe because by and large, hotels have a hard time getting around being inspected. So there is no need for the average consumer to spend the time to do the research so they can say "yep, government regulators are doing a good job!"
As with most regulations, it drives up the cost a bit for the end user, but it's worthwhile - and when done properly, invisible to the consumer.
If the legislation actually tests the safety, instead of a blanket ban, then I can see your point. Because many motels I've stayed at are unsafe. On multiple occasions I've gotten a key card to my room without showing ID (having forgotten it in the room).
So the hotel lobby is taking away my choices.. to keep me safe? Now that's some seriously good hospitality. The hotel lobby is like the paternal figure I've always wanted.
Safety regulations don't typically form out if nowhere. You grew up in a world where the previous generations lobbied for safety regulations in response to an actual lack of safety. It's like the new anti vaccinations movement- there's a whole generation who grew up not watching children be maimed and killed by what's now vaccine preventable infectious diseases so now suddenly vaccinations are poison. Absolutely no frame of reference.
In terms of safety hotel lobby is pissed because they have to follow regulations and pay associated taxes whereas AirBnB isn't. The hotel lobby certainly would be in favor of loosening safety regulations in general as compliance will certainly cut into their bottom line at least a little.
You can pretend the conversation is about safety but there's more to it than that. There are legitimate safety regulations, which could be monitored with a $100 random annual inspection. And then there are the actual regulations which are usually just encoding the business practices of the incumbent into law so that other companies with other advantages are impossible to make legal, regardless of safety.
If it were actually about safety, the "hotel commission" would try to make it as easy and as cheap as possible to get inspected. The fact that they don't suggests it's more about gatekeeping.
Maybe on a per rule basis they tend to be common sense. But if even one rule out of 100 is an unnecessary encoding of business model, then requiring a permit is a de facto monopoly granted to the incumbents.
So even if most rules are common sense, that doesn't change the fact that most permit requirements are predatory business tactics.
I want to feed and house the homeless in my neighborhood but it's illegal due to "safety" concerns. Apparently them sleeping on the street and shitting in the bushes is safer than me building them a tiny house with a composting toilet and a wash basin.
> The hotel lobby certainly would be in favor of loosening safety regulations in general as compliance will certainly cut into their bottom line at least a little.
I'm pretty sure they would be in favor of tightening regulations as much as possible, as long as those regulations are draconically enforced. The incumbents can comply with anything and pass the buck to the customer while any potential competitor cannot enter the market because the upfront regulatory cost is so immense.
> You grew up in a world where the previous generations lobbied for safety regulations in response to an actual lack of safety
Sure hope you're not talking about the tobacco lobby. Tell me which company paid for what safety regulation. I'd like to applaud these upstanding corporate citizens.
Great observation. Fire inspectors perform an entirely different inspection on commercial property than that of a SFR or even multi family residence. There is a reason and it was paid in blood.
I'd like to address this. Not everyone can afford a new car complete with mandatory TPMS, side airbags, and traction control. When we as a society decide to put requirements on new cars, we price some marginal consumers out of a new car and into a less-safe used car.
As the price of new cars increases, so to does the price of those used cars. So there again, we're pushing less well off consumers into cars that aren't as safe.
Personally, I think manufacturers should have the ability to sell any car they want. At the same time, they should be required to put a notice on the window sticker that says "We used the value of $X to drive the design of our safety features" (or something like that). If you want an ultra-safe car, you look for one that has $1,000,000. But people knowingly buy motorcycles and Corvettes, so obviously not everyone has the same tolerance for risk.
Car safety isn't just about the people driving them. Many car safety features like anti-lock breaks, traction control, and backup cameras are just as helpful for everyone outside of the car as they are for people inside the card.
Forcing unsafe cars out of the market through attrition has benefits for everyone else.
Unsafe cars are also raise the death raise inside and outside of the car and raises health costs that are borne by all members of society. People should not be allowed to drive unsafe cars.
And you shouldn't apply car safety rules to motorcycles or bicycles.
Airbnb isn't a hotel. It should have to live by "the rules", but those rules should be tailored to it's industry not a tangentially related industry threatened by its existence.
In this case, Airbnb is a motorcycle with 4 wheels, a roof and windows. While technically still running a motorcycle engine, the perception it is actively courting among its users is that of a car.
So in once camp, people are saying it should be regulated for what it feels like: a car. In the other camp, people are saying that it should be regulated for what it's made of: a motorcycle. There are good (and bad) arguments for both sides.
How about this: I hope the hotels successfully lobby to enforce existing zoning laws. I don't want my neighbors running a business out of their house. If they break the law, punish them. Simple as that.
>Neighbors of what critics say is a “party house” in the Glenwood community told the Glendale News-Press that the constant partying in the 1300 block of Norton Avenue was interfering with their sleep in the early-morning hours. They said they’d find beer bottles in the street, people fighting on the sidewalk in the early-morning hours, parking clogged and loud music blaring.
>Frank Higginbotham, who lives across the street from the house, said he saw tour buses with about 30 people pull up to the residence for a party about two weeks ago.
>Earlier in December, neighbors, said, there was one party that had to be shut down using a powerful spotlight from a hovering police helicopter and several police officers.
>“This was like a war zone,” he said, adding that parties have been going on every weekend for months. “Every night I came home, I was scared to think about what I was going to find here.”
Related to most of the above: a lot of people like to know their neighbors so that they can be comfortable talking to them if there's a problem. Full time rentals mess that up. Now you might well find yourself going to complain to a stranger who couldn't care less what you think, and it's a different stranger every weekend.
Because I live in a residential neighborhood with residential zoning, and I don't want to deal with itinerant neighbors with little regard for the neighborhood. You want to run a B&B? Go through the proper legal channels and build a legitimate business.
But, we want govt to ensure our safety at work, from the drugs we buy at the pharmacy. An ordinary person doesn't have the tools to verify this information for himself.
>> I dont want to deal with problems when I stay somewhere for pleasure or business
This is why I've stopped using AirBnB. I had used it for multiple business trips and personal stays, and in only 2 of the places I've stayed has the host had any sense of professionalism. One slept in and wasn't up at the time they said breakfast was served. I eventually left before they woke up. Another canceled at the last minute because they were traveling. Too late for me to alter my other travel plans, so my only option was to take an expensive hotel room I wouldn't have booked otherwise, or miss that part of my planned vacation. Another had family staying and they clearly weren't equipped for all the guests.
The problem with AirBnB is it's usually additional, passive income. It initially feels like this glorious free market, but there's not enough skin in the game for them. If they want to blow you off at the last minute you just have to with an expensive, last-minute back up plan. And they just forfeit some income they weren't really counting on anyway. I've been jerked around by hotels too, but not nearly as often.
Yeah the larger market is working, the specific market that is the AirBnB community kinda sucks in that sellers have disproportionate power.
I felt like I was the ideal AirBnB user. I have low standards for where I sleep and can usually be flexible schedule-wise, and I also value low prices over most other factors. But I just can't afford last minute cancellations and people not living up to the expectations they set themselves. I'm pretty sure you won't find many people who are more open to what AirBnB could be than that...
I've never stayed at an AirBnB but this is the exact issue I have with using Uber - the quality is so incredibly inconsistent. They seem to encourage any random yahoo to sign up and start driving with minimal (no?) training.
Most of the Uber/Lyft drivers I've been picked up by are recent immigrants. The language barrier isn't a big deal but they blindly follow the directions on whatever driving app they are using (Google, Apple, Waze) and have no local knowledge. There are a few roads near me that are closed for construction or oneway only. So I've gotten into the habit of looking over their shoulder and interjecting where they should actually turn rather than what the app tells them.
Curious what area you've used it in? I've only used it in San Francisco / San Jose and once or twice in other cities, and have actually had reliable experiences. The last couple times the vehicle quality was way lower than before, though.
I travel a lot so pretty much everywhere along the east coast. I haven't been to the west coast since Uber has existed. Dont get me wrong, I've had great service with Uber as well but it's totally hit or miss.
I still use it though because it is much more reliable than a cab most places and usually cheaper and I don't have to worry about payment.
I've stayed in an AirBnB maybe a dozen times and always had some problem or other that I've been expected just to accept - because it's AirBnB and not an hotel?
I've stayed in lots more hotels and experienced fewer problems. The times I've had resulted in either a sincere apology or full refund (the last time for the 2 days stay rather than the one night I complained about).
I can see the advantage of AirBnB for a group of people who are willing to compromise in return for a cost saving but not much else.
You make it sound like cost saving is a throwaway matter, an afterthought. I'm a grad student. Before Airbnb, I could only stay in hostels, which are worse than both hotels and airbnbs. Airbnb is awesome if I don't want to spend my holidays staying woken up by idiotic frat boys.
A hotel is also less authentic. I stayed in AirBnB and hotels both when traveling through Europe and the AirBnB gives you a bit more local flavor vs hotels, which tend to be very standardized. I also was traveling with kids and AirBnB allows you to rent out an entire apartment for the price of a single hotel room. Much better. Hotels should lower their prices and increase their options and then maybe they would compete? Instead of anti-competitive legislation...
Got an AirBnB in Montreal Canada in December 2016. The photos were great. The owner was quick to respond. So I booked it and reached the place.
Bummer 1: No cable. ( But in the listing it was there)
Bummer 2: No safety. The owner had converted an apartment into two, separated by a thin wall. The wall had come off and he had the gypsum wall leaning and cautioned me not to touch it.
Since it was for 2 days and in the middle of a heavy snowfall, I let it pass. Fast forward some hours, a couple of people checked into the other half of the apartment, started playing loud music, shouting and smoking. The smoke started coming into my half of the place because the wall was not really sealed.
Experience 2:
Rented a place which had a profile photo of a family. I thought great ! When I checked in, I felt it was some sort of "setup" just for the purpose of renting it out for AirBnB, I asked the owner where she lived. She said "nearby". I felt something fishy as there was no family ! The reviews even said there was a family (fake reviews ? ).
So after the owner left, I googled the address and to my surprise, I found that the address is under a rental agency. Next I found that the door lock is not working and internet is less than the speeds of dial up. I left the next day and disputed it on AirBnB.
AirBnB said, "Its legal for rental agencies to list on AirBnB". ( what was the photo of that family then ? ) Since AirBnB was not willing to refund and gave me a 25$ coupon, I disputed with AMEX and got all my money back.
That was my last & final stay using AirBnB. Deleted my AirBnB account after this incident.
After staying in AirBnB, I realized why I have to pay more in hotels. In hotels, we take things like security,clean beds,heating,cooling, a 24 hour reception etc for granted.
But in AirBnB I have to waste my time behind all those things rather than enjoy my vacation or fulfill my purpose of the visit.
Although I do not read hundred of reviews per stay I'm very picky and only choose the best.. this way I have stayed in multiple countries and have had very few issues with Airbnb.
To be fair with Hotels you also have to do your work and read the reviews.
The key difference from the FY 2017 Cap press release is that the FY 2018 news release does not say anything about lottery. So there is a speculation that this year there will not be a lottery for picking H1B petitions.
IELTS score can evaluate a person's ability in English skills. Canada Express Entry gives points for English skills. While H1B (highly skilled visa) is based on "lottery"
I suspect that the OP is not describing language proficiency. I have met many American-born (and speaking) developers who are still terrible at communicating.
Not that developers are alone in this of course, but it's a profession that allows people to work alone (and often at home/in isolated environments) a lot more than other jobs do.
The H1B visa is for 6 years temporary stay, but the H1B worker pays for SSN which he have no use of.