This Airbnb alternative won’t destroy Canada’s housing market
This Airbnb alternative won't destroy Canada's housing market ⋆ The Breach
Fairbnb’s new co-op platform aims to offer short-term rentals without the destructive side effects by Kunal Chaudhary • The Breach
TL;DR- hosts must prove that the property for rent is their primary residence, and 50% of service fees go into community land trusts to support affordable housing.
I'd certainly support it over the other guys if it's available in my travel destinations.
without the destructive side effects by Kunal Chaudhary
We're blaming it all on one person now?
Because AirBnB already destroyed it
Land trusts are such an interesting concept and I do hope that they succeed. That said it sucks that it has to come to this and that the government doesnt do more in order to curb affordability crisis. The failure of pruit igo and other housing projects echoes all over north america and is used as proof that public housing is a failure while ignoring the many many other factors that went into making these projects a failure.(from poor maintenance, out of place high density, intentionally kneecapped funding structure, and of course just the bad timing of subsidized suburban sprawl hollowing out cities in general). But land trusts are at least something to help compete with developers and put downward pressures on real estate pricing.
Regarding airBnB though I feel like the impact on housing prices is over stated. The units that exist really only number in the thousands, and while it is awful there are some scumbag landlords who use it as a way to do short-term rentals without the rental protections, when it comes to housing in major cities like Toronto or NYC this is a drop in the bucket. The issue, especially in torronto is lack of public competing at more affordable prices, and the poor zoning options that mean that a stones throw from a street of high rises is a single family home neighborhood.
If there was more generous density zoning then toronto could become a lot more dense while also spreading things out a little. It wouldnt need a street of high rises because low rises and mid rises in more places would be cheaper to build, more humane in scale, and also be more dense.
Most importantly an issue that plagues north american cities that isnt addressed is the density of its suburbs. There is high demand for urban living within metro areas, but urban density falls off a cliff. So people who want that lifestyle only have one choice and it's to go into the city. If suburbs were more urban, more able to house people, and not just decentralized single family homes around stroads then we'd have a lot of pressure relief from the city itself.
And the craziest thing is that density doesnt mean high rises. It doesnt mean tall buildings and heavy traffic, and low green space. Just across the border in the buffalo metro area there is the suburb of kenmore ny which has a pop density of 4,088.77/km2 compared to Toronto's 4,427.8/km2 . Look at this place: https://maps.app.goo.gl/SeGrD7t5ytxcZQsa7
It's a lot of single family homes, some commercial drags with the major village center being on delaware with low rise units, and split houses(two flats) distributed throughout the village. This is the thing that is most frustrating about nimby anti-density proponents. You can still have a nice sfh, with some land to bbq, parks neaby, a driveway to park your car in, and all that other expected nonsense and have density. The character of your neighborhood doesnt have to turn into midtown manhattan in order to become more dense.
You can't redistribute your way out of a shortage. Any solution to the housing crisis that doesn't involve a shitload more housing is rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic.
It’s more than just that though. Adding more housing to the market without dealing with large scale short term rentals and people hoarding investment properties will just lead to more hoarding as the people who already own property use the basically nonexistent interest rate to leverage their assets to keep buying up more profit properties.
They’ve already tackled interest, but they still need to do the rest before building more will actually help.
In the meantime, freeing up housing not currently available to homebuyers who want somewhere to live would certainly help, and would free up more long term rentals as well, which would help with the absurd prices rentals have reached.
No. The fix is to correct the issue of investors.
Punishing housing taxes of 50% of the value of the house per year for every house per family beyond the first.
Ban ownership of housing by companies and all non-permanent residents.
Great, so some renters convert into owners, but net occupancy doesn't change, rent doesn't go down, and the market gets worse because there's less incentive to build more.
Then what?
I like the idea, but how would that work for apartment buildings?
I thought building more houses required backhoes and concrete, but you do it your way and see how that works.
This isn't a really good take, but I keep hearing it all the time. There's around 2.4 people per housing unit in Canada based on the latest data from Stats Canada and CMHC. That's not really a shortage, between families and room mates it's very easy to fit that 2.4 number into what we have available.
The "shortage" is people wanting it a) at a lower price and b) wanting larger housing than they currently have. c) wanting it in specific places that are highly desirable (specific cities)
I'm not saying it's wrong to want larger houses or want it cheaper, but there isn't actually a shortage of housing to meet people's basic needs.
If someone wants to eat a steak, but can't afford it, we don't say there's a shortage of beef. If someone had the money but couldn't buy it because it wasn't available at the grocery store or butcher, that's an actual shortage.
It's lower in every other G7 country.
2.4 might not sound like much, but then consider all the single people living alone. We could live in bigger groups like they do in the third world, but that's going to be unpopular with a lot of people.
Yes, yes it is. But again that's do to low supply shifting equilibrium prices higher.
The shortage is investors hoarding.
Explain your reasoning to mulriple people I know renting a single room or a basement while the entire rest of house is empty due to the foreign owner moving back to thier country after adding a single person to get around vacancy law. one friend hasn't seen their owner in over 3 years. 3500 sq ft home empty. There are tons of these that drive housing scarcity and can't go above 2.4