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I wonder about Hawaii though… which has a strong tradition of both hotels and vacation rentals way before there was ever an Airbnb.
I can’t look at the Times article because I’ve already run up against my paywall this month. Too many nightmare stories about you know who and what they have done to us. 
If you get a Los Angeles library card (which you can do online) you get unlimited access to the New York Times. I can’t stop thanking the friend who told me about this. I used to run through my ten articles on the first day of the month. Here’s the website to get a Los Angeles library card.
@EllenN thank you for sharing that information! I support our free American libraries. However, alternately - for those who can afford to do so - I encourage you to buy a subscription to support journalism and the pursuit of the truth. As the Washington Post says “Democracy dies in the Darkness.”
Oh you are right. That is true of Hawaii as well. Here though, you must prove you are a resident to get a library card. I can get to the Times by going through the library, very true.
I did buy a sub to the WaPo and intend to buy one to the Times. These papers are doing important work right now. I do not have a problem supporting writers and journalists. As the Post says, “Democracy dies in darkness.”
OMG! We both posted basically the same philosophy!!!
I definitely agree with you there! And in NYC landlords shouldn’t be taking away long term housing from folks to do Airbnb. At the same time, I don’t think people who share their home and rent out a room or two to make ends meet should be penalized and treated as a hotel.
Update: in the original forum, other people are sharing similar “getting out of the short term rental business now” stories, so I’m not the only one unnerved.
This morning I chatted with a friend irl who has done short term and traditional renting and thinks she’ll be moving to longer term (6-9 month) rentals next, once her current traditional renter moves on. That was reassuring, that I’m not crazy to consider that. I will have to make a lot of changes to the space, but most of them are changes we were going to make for when my teenager moves into the room anyway, so it’s not a hardship/ foolish investment.
Even after only 24 hours, I’m like “maybe it would work if we did X”… I just can’t quit you guys. 
@konacoconutz Ha!! I can’t believe we both quoted the WaPo tagline! After the attack on journalism started coming from the White House itself I bought subs to WaPo, Economist and Foreign Policy. I already had the NYT.
I also added The Guardian which has been doing some terrific journalism covering the state of US politics.
Not to mention it’s a great source for recipes.
I also subscribed to several periodicals after the election just for the sake of trying to do my small part to keep them afloat.
Update update: it turns out the OP is (literally) the poster child for Airbnb in NYC. She was one of the faces they used in their first public relations ad campaign. (I didn’t recognize her name, but someone attacked her and someone else schooled him about her history with airbnb)
So she was definitely targeted, but I suspect it was by the hotel lobby not her neighbors. (Also, I’m feeling so relieved - 2.5 years ago I was approached to be a face for Airbnb in NYC, what with being a cute young family not breaking any laws/ lease agreements. But since I was pregnant and knew we’d be taking a year off it didn’t seem worth it for the exposure. Now I feel like I dodged a bullet. And airbnb not helping her at all seems extra indecent.)
… and I just canceled my subscription to the Nyt after their puff piece on Nazis, but I love my teen vogue subscription and clearly I need to subscribe to the Washington Post… though i think i just spent all my discretionary money this month on the Alabama election. Maybe I’ll ask for a subscription for Christmas.
That’s so poor from Airbnb! No surprises though!
kind of a relief, it had been suspected there was more to this than meets the trousers.
Does this mean you’ll re-list??? Hope so…
Must read the NYT piece. And I am always pleasantly surprised by the number of people here who put up articles from The Guardian, my place of sanity at the moment.
Maybe I missed it…but is the woman actually breaking any laws? Why are they attacking her if she is completely legal?
Hi @Alia_Gee,
I got curious about this, and did a search. I think you must mean https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/us/ohio-hovater-white-nationalist.html
(Sorry, I’m going to ramble a bit now. It’s that time of day.)
I didn’t think it was a puff piece. I think the intention of the article was just to show that those kind of people were, really, just people, like everyone else. And try to shed some light on what drives these people. Though I didn’t think it was a particularly interesting article either. I suspect a more talented (and opinionated) journalist, like, say, Eric Blair, might have been able to do something with it. And Mr. Hovater doesn’t seem like a very pleasant man. But lots of perfectly respectable people are not.
Presumably you saw the response from the NYT. I suppose the apparently violent response that the post generated is healthy. From the POV of this outsider, I (and I suspect many others) worry about the US going facist. Especially given the frankly horrifying history of the US, and its parent country, Britain.
As an Indian, I’m particularly aware of British imperial history. It’s dismaying that many, both in the West, and outside it, are not. To the credit of the British, they never went fascist. But they (or their ruling classes) still managed to commit a truly impressive series of awe-inspiring crimes, while not being fascist.
Fascism seems to be considered the big bad in the West these days. And that’s well and good. I’m glad that Americans (and others) are trying to hold the line. But it’s not the only source of evil in this world.
I think I’ll stop now. I hope I didn’t offend anyone - I didn’t mean to. I just felt like writing this down. Maybe I should start a blog…
Better to fly under the radar than be too visible on Air.
I agree. I think it is the hotel lobby at the heart of it with many willing supporters (city, housing groups, etc). Realistically I think air hosts don’t stand a chance because we are not an organized body with legal teams, media outlets and lobbyists at our disposal.
City of Toronto just passed laws that mean I will have to shut down. Airbnb have given up the fight. They fully support the new restrictions even though they will lose the majority their income from our city because of them. I think they know there is nothing they can do and politely complying is their best option.
Yes, there is value to saying “evil doesn’t always twist its mustache” … but they also didn’t contextualize any of his statements, talk to experts in the rise of hate groups (Southern Poverty Law Center), or do anything but say He’s a guy just like me! …
As a paper of record, you need to also say “but here’s where he’s lying/wrong”
A puff piece it is, a puff piece it remains (in my eyes).
… not offended by your thoughts at all. I’ve heard interesting conversations about how satyagraha and Gandhi’s particular brand of non violence worked for the British (in as much as it did), but would not have worked against the Nazis. The British (er, again with the broad brush strokes) could feel shame and had not completely dehumanized their colonies. The nazis dehumanized their own citizens. Passive resisters in India would have been chucked into the ovens that much faster.
And yet, pain is pain and sometimes measuring the degree of wrongness is not helpful.
May we all get through these interesting times with our sense of shame and ability to find joy both intact.