{"id":67289,"date":"2015-12-30T11:59:32","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T16:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=67289"},"modified":"2019-11-06T16:46:46","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T21:46:46","slug":"who-really-runs-the-airbnbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/12\/30\/who-really-runs-the-airbnbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Who really runs the Airbnbs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2<\/a>When you travel, the option to stay in a private home instead of a hotel might seem like a nice idea. Your experience of the city might be a little more authentic, maybe you’ll meet a local, and you can keep your money out of the hands of giant corporations. It’s a tiny way to fight the shrinking of the middle class.<\/p>\n

These options, though, may not be a panacea. After discovering that his\u00a0Brooklyn neighborhood had 1,500 listings on Airbnb,\u00a0Murray Cox decided to take a closer look. How many residences now invite tourists? How small scale were the profits? Did the money really go to locals?<\/p>\n

New Orleans wanted to know the answers to these questions, too. The city has been hit by what nola.com reporter Robert McClendon\u00a0calls<\/a>\u00a0a “Airbnb gold rush.” It turns out the city currently has about 2,600 rentals on Airbnb, plus another 1,000 or so on VRBO.com. This has sparked\u00a0a\u00a0heated debate<\/a>\u00a0among residents, business owners, and politicians about the future of the practice.<\/p>\n

So,\u00a0Cox jumped in to give us the\u00a0data<\/a>\u00a0and figure out where the money is going.<\/p>\n

\"4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Are Airbnb hosts living in the spaces they rent?<\/p>\n

Cox found that they generally are\u00a0not. Only 34% of rentals are for rooms or shared rooms; 66%\u00a0of listings are for an entire home or apartment. More than two-thirds (69%) are rented year-round. Almost half of all hosts operate at least two rentals.<\/p>\n

These numbers suggest that your modal Airbnb host\u00a0doesn’t live\u00a0in the home they rent out. Some may actually live in another city altogether. Others are using Airbnb as an investment opportunity, buying homes and turning them into full time rentals.<\/p>\n

What’s the downside?<\/p>\n

Locals are complaining about deterioration in the feeling\u00a0of community in their neighborhoods. It’s difficult to make friends with your neighbors when they turn over twice a week. Tourists are also more likely than locals to come home drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace and quiet.<\/p>\n

And they are pricing people who actually live in New Orleans out of the rental market. Short-term renting offers owners the opportunity to make four or five times the amount of money they could make with a long-term tenant, so it\u2019s an economic no-brainer to sign up for Airbnb. But, as more and more people do so, there are fewer and fewer places for locals to live and so the supply-and-demand curve increasingly favors owners who can jack up long-term rental prices.<\/p>\n

So, when you give your money to an Airbnb host in New Orleans or elsewhere, you might be giving some extra money to a local, but you might also be harming the residential neighborhoods you enjoy and the long-term viability of local life.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you travel, the option to stay in a private home instead of a hotel might seem like a nice idea. Your experience of the city might be a little more authentic, maybe you’ll meet a local, and you can keep your money out of the hands of giant corporations. It’s a tiny way to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,15,36,8080,85,304],"class_list":["post-67289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-culture","tag-economics","tag-housingresidential-segregation","tag-politics","tag-the-state"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/01\/212.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67289"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72954,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67289\/revisions\/72954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}