The VAT solution to social problems, since my wife is convinced that China has no sales tax because sales tax is included in the price, unlike here where it's added at the end.

history is not going to be kind to Xi Jinping and the CCP when it all spins apart and the world sees just how manipulated the numbers were, reported by the Party. I kind of wonder if the Party itself actually knows real numbers. There's a shell and pea game even within the party, always protecting yourself.

A sad but apt description.

the government to fix it and then screams about taxes. This place is the real nut barn.

They don't care and just want it to vanish.

(771.8/580 - 1) * 100% = 33.1%.
So for every 3 in Jan. 2022, there were 4 in Jan. 2024

They are both cutting into the long term housing inventory and driving up rents.

But municipalities have little to no appetite to regulate them. People like staying in them, and I guess that outweighs all the harm they cause. I have begged people not to use them for years, to no avail.

I’ve tried, very hard, to get my local officials to regulate it, fell on def ears. I contacted every elected official I could think of, they either ignored me entirely or laughed at me. My local zoning refuses to enforce what we already have on the books and one of them even told me he thought the STR concept was “kinda neat”. I beat on elected officials doors for 2 straight years about STRs. I got nowhere. I still beat on doors, but not as much as I used to.

My city went from around 300 single family houses used as full-time STRs in 2021 to over 1,000 today. The person that owns the one next door to me plays games with ownership (transfers to different LLCs each year to avoid taxes) and in 3 years time she has bought up 4 more single family houses in my city to use as full-time hotels, making that a total of 5 homes that are no longer available for local families. She lives in a 1.5 million dollar house in another city. From what I can tell, it’s a game to her. There are A LOT of little mini STR empires like this everywhere. One person buying up multiple houses and running full-time hotels in residential areas.

I edited to add that my city ALSO has a very large homeless population and it’s getting larger every day. The STRs drive up the cost of housing (and property taxes). The house next door to me could have been a wonderful entry level home for a young family. But nope. It’s a hotel (there’s a Marriott about a half mile away too). What a waste.

Last edited Fri Dec 27, 2024, 09:23 PM - Edit history (1)

combined.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-homelessness-rose-record-18-182345246.html

Nobody ever seems to want to talk about that.

that claims it's "not cost-effective" to build anything smaller than a "McMansion". Until we can get rid of the narrative of people not being able to live in something "under 2000 sqft", then this will go on forever.

To suggest that anyone live in something that is not worthy of envy is to say that we are not America! We have to d**kwave! We have to have a house bigger than the last one! Onward and Upward! Screw anything that does not say, "MY C**K IS THE BIGGEST!!"

This should not be necessary, but...

About 40% of the unhoused live outdoors or in other unlivable places.

NBC News, 12/27/24
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/u-s-homelessness-rises-18-amid-affordable-housing-shortage/ar-AA1wARDs

Stop using your house or any other house you own as a means to build generational wealth. And stop try to get rich off of your house. Your house is for living in. You house should be like your car, you use it, it depreciates and you sell it and find another one that you like better.

But that’s the ugly fact no one in high cost housing cities and states wants to touch. You remove the incentive to get rich off buying a house, and it will become an more affordable purchase, like a car or an appliance.

It’s a real problem. I agree with you 100%. Stop using single family homes to get rich. It’s gross. I’m seeing my city get decimated by STR operators looking to get rich.

And to those that use them? Stop using them. You are hurting the neighborhoods you stay in. I can guarantee you the direct neighbors don’t like you there. Your single family STR stay has displaced a family. STRs destroy neighborhoods. They make housing completely unaffordable for locals and contribute to people becoming unhoused, which hurts the community way more than the tourist dollars help it.

This is a hill I will die on.

They just won't. In the meantime, it's ruining cities.

Which is why we need some sweeping regulations on them. Right now it’s regulated by town/city. Airbnb spends a LOT of $ lobbying local politicians too. Ran into that here. Very difficult to fight that as a local resident. Can’t afford to compete with the major $ the STR lobbying brings. We desperately need broader regulations, on a federal level as well as local zoning laws enforced, etc.

It really boils down to 3 things:
1: we have people getting (or hoping) to get rich off a passive income (STRs)
2: we have local and federal politicians benefiting from the lobbying $ the STR platforms like Airbnb, Verbo, etc bring their way
3: we have the people that use them who like the convenience and everything else be damned.

At the very least, people should research who their “host” is- if the host identifies as a real estate investor, that property should be avoided because those are the people who are destroying communities. If someone is renting out their house they live in- totally different animal. It’s the mini hotel empires consisting of multiple single-family homes owned/run by one operator that’s the problem.

Lake Tahoe is a great example of STRs run amuck. There are so many STRs there that now the operators along with the local business can’t find help, since everyone who would work those jobs has been priced out of living anywhere near there. I believe they recently were forced to put in some regulations and restrictions with teeth because of it.

I was absolutely shocked at how quickly the full-time, whole house STRs grew here in my area between 2021 and 2024. I’m not in a major tourist area either. And at the same time the cost of housing is going up and up, pricing the locals out. The Airbnb next to me is always full. She collects around 8k a month in “rent” on that one house. It’s a small house, entry level, she bought it in 2021 for 200k. Perfect for a starting out family, or downsizing older person. She would never be able to rent long term for the money the STR brings in. She has all her property placed in tax loopholes too. 40-somethings- I forget the name off the top of my head- Its a loophole that avoids capital gain taxes and allows her to extract the equity from one house, as long as she takes that gain (from the extracted equity) and buys another house of equal value. This is how the little empires are born. It’s very bad for anyone that hopes to own a home, or rent an apartment to actually live in. People who stay in these places are ready screwing themselves in long run.

Most, if not all, of the people I know who use Airbnbs own their own houses. They don't care that it drives up rents for people like me.

understand why it jumped so high. I can understand increases but ours jumped a much larger amount than I remember in past years. OTOH, our home has increased in value as well. We paid $155,000 and it is now worth nearly $400,000. Some family members say we should sell and then move into assisted living but they are expensive around here. I do realize, tho, that you have to take into consideration the cost of groceries but I figure that those costs are now being figured in assisted living rent increases, too.

had anything to do with the surge. Rent gouging since the end of the pandemic played a role. Lots of empty building but not enough housing stock .

Cities allow them because they get less resistance when raising taxes.

I wonder if they are also a means of sheltering income from taxes and writing off home improvements.

I think people imagine a certain thing when they hear of homelessness and it's not necessarily the thing that these reports talk about. Homelessness includes people living in any kind of temporary housing as well as people on the streets. It includes all people, not just citizens. Your conception of homelessness should not be "an American that's living on the streets due to a failed system". It is much broader than that.

That why when commenters are sarcastically saying Trump will fix this will find themselves at a loss when the homeless numbers go down in a couple of years. The "fix" was to deport asylum seekers and to stop them from entering the country in the first place. I suppose it's worth noting that there may be legitimate disagreement on if that's a better or worse outcome than the current system, since an overburdened asylum system in not a great outcome for asylum seekers or the existing homeless people in the country.

The short-to-medium term solution for asylum seekers is to increase the capacity of the asylum system to process the claims so that these people get on with their lives in a more permanent fashion. The long term solution to homelessness is to build more homes. We need mostly regular homes as most homelessness are people that simply can't afford a place to live. We will need specialized housing for the much smaller number of people that are homeless in the stereotypical way.


From the reports, a couple of excerpts to illustrate:

in the biggest city near me. Whole blocks of tents and camps. Hundreds of acres total, across the city, according to the news. I've never seen so many homeless people stoned out of their minds on fentanyl sitting at stop lights with signs. Its horrifying, and its literally everywhere.

I want them and the crime that comes with them gone just like anyone else, but not at the cost of prison sentences. Unless a major crime is committed, these people need addiction and mental health treatment more than anything. I shudder to think of the private prison complexes lining their pockets with state funds to "house" these people, when in reality then need treatment and dignity from their fellow Americans.

Always high, but now, no holds barred. On top of that, they got most of the manufacturing jobs exported to other countries, making it harder to make a living. Now the same geniuses who destroyed the American job market want to impose tariffs to drive prices even higher on top of the inflationt heir freed caused. They really want to kill as many people as they can.

When will the majority of people in the world say enough is enough?