Political organizing against airbnb being outlawed

My city’s politicians are taking steps to outlaw airbnb, perhaps exempting shared situations. The next town over recently did it. I am trying to decide if I have the energy to fight it. After you factor in my time, the money is the same if I put in more hours outside the home, but I prefer to work at home. I wrote to 5 other hosts in my city about the recent moves to gauge interest in organizing, and I got only 1 affirmative but brief response, one maybe and 3 non responses (that rejected my inquiry). It is somewhat awkward that I had to send an inquiry with fake dates to message them but that is the only way to write to an owner (other than sending a snail mail) and it is not as though I’m trying to sell them something, I’m telling them about the potential end of their airbnb business, I would think they would care, I chose people with at least 75 reviews and tried to find people who seemed like they were personally involved, though none of them advertise living on site like me.

I know that if many owners contacted their alderman and if we all identified the instances where our guests were staying near family who are voters in my town and asked them to ask the family to contact, then we could probably stop it. But I’m not a leader and if I can’t even get people to reply not sure there is anything I can do. I don’t have a question but I welcome comments.

How do you know the non-responses “rejected my inquiry”? They didn’t respond, so you can’t know. I’d be a bit leery of someone contacting me, un-asked, who starts in on something like this… I’d do my my own research before jumping on a bandwagon.

I understand your frustration with not getting other hosts to jump on your bandwagon; but that’s just it – it is your bandwagon at this point.

A whopping 5 other hosts, eh? If you are really interested, why stop at 5? Six people can’t do much against a municipality – I know from experience. But 60 can. Why not contact every host in your metro area?

Where I live, Los Angeles, CA, Airbnb organized hosts to protest regulation. I think that you will have more success if you contact Airbnb than if you contact other hosts.

In order to send my inquiry about upcoming legal issues affecting us all, I had to send an airbnb “inquiry” and put in some fake dates. When they rejected the “inquiry” that tells me they read about how their business might be outlawed and decided not to reply for some reason. I fully expected them to reject the “inquiry” since I wasn’t a real reservation inquiry but with a reply back such as “oh my it would detrimental to me to not be able to rent short term anymore, I hope this doesn’t go through”

I only wrote to five so far not become I’m lazy, but to gauge interest and retune my message accordingly and get advice here. I know that I read every single message that comes into my airbnb inbox, so this is not the same thing as a mass mailing.

Can you tell me more about how that happened? Unfortunately my city is not as big as LA, but if they were smart they would assign a staff person that could do the reaching out for me. Really in a town as small as mine, it is all about bombarding the elected officials with messages. I could contact customer service but I don’t have much confidence my request would get bumped to anyone.

I would not advise contacting hosts that way. It’s annoying and unproductive. Someone has to decline you so the inquiry doesn’t count against them. You might be able to find local hosts through a Facebook group. That could be a better way to organize.

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Why can’t they just decline the reservation and also reply to my message?

I live in Ireland and here they are talking to set up a limit of 90 days, just as in London

Because multiple declines affects your ranking

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You actually made a reservation request?
Honestly, I would not reply to you either.
If Air had intended us to chat with other hosts they would have made a feature that allows it.
You are making yourself quite Obnoxious.

Airbnb had an employee whose job title is Community Mobilization contact me and other hosts. She set up regular meetings of hosts in specific areas. I went to one.

It sounds like there is no efficient or effective or non obnoxious way to contact other hosts about an existential threat to their livelihood.

Try to find out from Airbnb if there is a local mobilization team member. We have one here in the Bronx and he organizes events where local hosts can meet up.
From our organizer: I took off his name but this is how his emails are signed.

Name of organizer
Mobilization Team
AirbnbAction NY!

I’ve been trying to find a Boston mobilization person, so far unsuccessfully. Will search more.

Well yes and no . Original poster is trying to do something good. And it is hard to get with other hosts. We are going through the same issue of new tougher regulations coming to the townships around Traverse City. , Michigan. So we got a group together via identifying the airbnb properties from description and map location, and also tax records. As long as the homes are single family we were able to identify the hosts and we left notes in the mailbox to help get organized. We need more members in our alliance as well. You are correct. Goverment will listen to 60. 6 is not enough. But our group of 6 did present at our Planning Commission and they seemed to listen. We have a lot of work to do. Air should allow online communication between hosts, but that is highly unlikely. Regards. Curt