Do you know if house prices are still a problem there?
Most definitely. Southern California in general has some of the highest housing prices in the US. I think the AirBnB regulations are only part of the equation. They need to drastically reduce the barriers to construction of higher density housing, for instance.
LA actually has "vanlords", people who rent out old, beat up vans parked on the street to homeless people, for hundreds of dollars a month. Some real dystopian shit if I've ever seen any.
I think I had heard of the idea before, so I didn't come up with it. I just did a quick search and one of the first results says LA does this. There are probably other cities too...
I don't know, and based on a quick search, it doesn't appear that it's been done. California is currently working on a law to limit corporate ownership to 1,000 homes, lol.
In addition to only renting out single rooms, I also thought of the scenario where someone goes to visit a relative and rents their whole apartment while they're away, perhaps when there is some major event in their town that causes all hotels to be sold out. Both of those scenarios would be addressed by the rule I proposed to only allow renting out the primary residence on AirBnB.
But that's another complaint without providing actual examples. I could just as easily complain about the same things from liberal lemmy.world posters.
Ok, I understand you feel that way and believe that you're being sincere. I just rarely get to see actual examples to back up all the complaints. Like someone else commented on some other thread I read today, I see 10x more complaints about hexbears and tankies than I see actual bad behavior from them.
Not necessarily when the topic is anti-western sentiment, since much of the West is pretty ignorant about why much of the rest of the world feels that way.
Another example I saw a few weeks ago, with things like “the French deserve a thousand charlie hebdos” (terrorist attack) https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/24552489.
Ok, that's the best example I've seen so far of what you have been talking about. Wishing terrorism on all French people is going too far. It would have been much more productive for them to take the opportunity to remind and educate people about France's (and other Western powers') terrible legacy in the middle east instead.
I had read that lemmy.world pre-emptive defederation with hexbear post a while back with interest, and shook my head. The only thing I've seen so far that seems like a legitimate complaint is the posting of the pig poop balls emoji and perhaps excessive emojis in general. Neither of those seem like grounds for blocking a whole instance instead of just banning individuals for posting pig poop balls.
Thanks, I hadn't realized that 0.19.5 was very stable or that SDF was among the last to upgrade to that. I have posted a question to see what their plans are.
Crack down on AirBnB
Forbid ownership for non-residents.
Ah, yes, I forgot to mention AirBnB! Those are both good calls.
The AirBnb issue is a little complicated because I've seen some good arguments that it can help people afford to keep their homes. But I think that could easily be addressed by a single, simple rule: you are only allowed to rent your primary residence as determined by tax records.
I was wondering the same thing about why they hadn't upgraded, and after a little searching, I found out that there have been some bugs introduced that have not yet been completely resolved by 0.19.7. Supposedly 0.19.8 will fix them, so I'm hoping that that's why they haven't upgraded yet. If that's why they haven't upgraded yet, I appreciate the focus on stability.
Thanks for the links. Unfortunately, they did not answer my questions. The first link is a string of complaints without evidence. I didn't read the entire thread but read many of the top posts. The second one is the same thing. A lot of complaints of nothing. I still have the impression that people complain about hexbear because it challenges their beliefs. What I'm really trying to understand is what's so egregious about hexbear that would make it necessary to protect people new to Lemmy and entire major instances from them. If you could link me to specific comments with evidence and explanations of patterns, it might help me understand.
I don’t use hotmail but have considered it. I’m probably going to move to protonmail instead for the better privacy. But what’s wrong with using hotmail, and what do you think people should use instead? Hotmail is essentially outlook online nowadays, a very sophisticated email client with a few advantages over gmail, if that’s what you’re comparing against.
Good to hear about any moves in the right direction anywhere.