Also Airbnb tends to kill communities by making it way too expensive for people to actually live there and sleeping in a complete stranger's house does not sound too safe.

[+] ghariksforge@lemmy.world -9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's the difference between renting a house on Airbnb and tearing said house to build a hotel?

[–] theragu40@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, 8 lots with 8 houses can sleep what...like 30-40 people max?

On that same space you can build a 5 story hotel with 80 rooms that sleep up to 4 each. That's a vast increase in density and a much more efficient use of space.

I'm generalizing of course, but this is the gist.

[–] CodeInvasion@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The same argument could be said for an apartment building too. We need to collectively realize that Single Family Houses are a luxury that most of us will never see in our lifetimes. Our grandparents were able to enjoy them at low prices because the US had half the population it does today.

Restrictive building codes that only permit building SFH is the cause of our housing shortage and not short term rentals that consist of 0.2%-1% of all dwellings.

[–] theragu40@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah that is certainly the logical next step.

I live in a SFH and I won't pretend I don't like it. I also won't pretend that I don't like being surrounded by other SFHs, because half the reason I moved here was to have the sort of idyllic neighborhood feel I had when growing up. So I understand people who have a hard time accepting the idea of higher density housing.

At the same time, I regularly think about how fortunate I am to have bought out house when we did about a decade ago. If we were entering the market today we would struggle to buy. The people who move into our neighborhood today are in a completely different financial stratosphere than us, which is sort of odd.

We have a fair amount of higher density housing in my city but there will probably need to be more as time goes on.

I'd love for there to be some way to scale zoning regulations in an intelligent way. Just spit balling, but maybe you say ok look, you can restrict to SFH until population hits a certain point and then this or this area opens as available for higher density construction without needing to convince people in real time. I realize that has its own issues, but I just wish there were more creative ways to deal with it that didn't involve trying to convince people when the need is already urgent.